World: r3wp

Does anybody know that if Rebol 3 will conform to the new security 
norms iin Windows Vista with respect to file system access?

For example, from what I've read about Vista the default security 
settings don't allow programs to save files in the Program Files 
directory tree.

Though I understand in some cases  that Vista may simply redirect 
the files to another folder, eg

C:\Program Files\MyProg

to
C:\Users\Me\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\
  Program Files\MyProg

Steeve - you see? And I would put in amongst 10 concerns towards 
View apps. There is nothing worse than e.g. trying to shape something 
and your cursor still showing arrow ...

The cursor demo was done about a month ago, so that issue was solved 
then. Using different cursors is in active use in the GUI.

What's being done about printing?  Is there better mapping of draw 
to postscript?  The ability to use different coordinate systems??

Graham - I would not bet on it ...

Hmm.  Carl said it would be supported .. but I guess he has forgotten

Dunno how to best support printing on various platforms. I think 
that R3 team will let us to do our best in open-source part ....

Postscript and ghostscript

on all platforms

Imagine - if Cyphre worked on View kernel alone, he imo concentrated 
upon rich-text, proper AGG integration, etc.

yes, interesting. In fact, I am not that skilled to know the answer 
- under Windows, I once looked into API, and there seems to be some 
API for printing, however that has nothing in common with Postcript 
- you get bitmap area and then you somehow submit it to driver ...

9 years and no decent printer support

that would be native support for printing imo. So - what's with postscript? 
We would have to be sure, that such engine can translate ANY possible 
UI you create in View ... is that possible? If not, you simply have 
to write some kind of dialect - and here we are once again - you 
will do the work twice ...

so, if we don't wrap upon OS specific printing support imo, then 
we already have our solution - generate html, pdf, postscript, but 
always - do the work twice ...

the problem with pdf and html is that we don't have native viewers

but with postscript, we might be able to get a decent preview in 
draw

that is true ... but ghostscript is not native too, no?

ah, so you mean - give me the ability to use such draw commands, 
which will automatically translate into postscript ...

I'm not suggesting writing a postscript interpreter ...

that would work .. automatic translation of draw into postscript

Of course we could just have display postscript :)

next pcs had that years ago

I remember, in SAP, they had their SAP Script - the tool you used 
to do your forms for printing. They left it, and integrated PDF instead. 
I wonder if the requirement for PDF reader is problem for you? I 
know it is a dependency, but it is imo being regarded de-facto standard, 
no?

so, as for me, I would maybe prefer PS too, otoh, from the practical 
pov, I would maybe prefer PDF, because I can generate .pdf file, 
and send it to others too ....

I guess the question is whether one wants to use pdf as a print preview 
mechanism . or use draw

I had something different in mind - simply when you want to prepare 
and send electronic files for your customers, at least for me pdf 
is de-facto standard. So by having ability to generate pdf, I have 
two works done in one way. Of course there is that Adobe Reader dependency, 
but .... however, I understand your case ...

generating pdf from ps is easy enough with ghostscript installed

Umm, it's not directly R3 related, but I think Gabriele's PDF-Maker.r 
is a fairly large step toward cross-platform printing.  It's three 
flavour right now, pdf-maker.r in rebol.org, pdf-maker version 2 
on Gabriele's site (the target for future work and with some wicked 
powerful REBOL directed typesetting) and inside the rebol.org qml-ed 
package with the ease of qml input, pumping out pdf.


V2 at http://www.colellachiara.com/soft/PDFM2/is where x-platform 
printing may come from, methinks.

except this commits us to using a 3rd party viewer

but it is like saying that something commits us to use web browser 
- there is no decent platform without Adobe Reader or the clone. 
Even on Amiga :-)

I'd like more options while draw is in the cooking pot as it were.

I don't know PS/PDF formats in depth but is there any problem to 
write PS/PDF->DRAW viewer even with R2 DRAW abilities?

AFAIK one guy here at Rebol3 world did even own chinese(or was it 
japanese?) font viewer/editor using R2 DRAW....

There are some problems with text alignment and sizes.

Under R2 Draw, it's impossible to center and right align text correctly.

Draw and View sizes for text do not match.

I think this is all solved in R3 draw, but I don't know about text 
sizes.

graham: previewing ps is as hard as previewing pdf, as long as the 
source is a rebol dialect.

graham: i don't know any user whit gs installed. every single pc 
i have ever seen has a pdf reader of some kind installed (usually 
just adobe)

I'm personally more interested in using Windows printing directly 
and feed data to that. I don't know yet though how that works, but 
I'll be working on a solution for that for R3.

right now I'm stuck in a mix of GS, Printfile and using postscript.r 
to generate printable output.

I'm still trying to figure out a way to kick Pekr for making me think 
the 14th was THE DAY!  :>)  LOL

I've been away so long was this the rumor?

it was a joke, of course. The bad part of the joke, which makes it 
joke a less, is the fact I dared to post it to Announce channel :-)

As opposed to the 'Humour' channel... :)
Louis will 3.0 have what you need for your program?

I can't help being disappointed (although I trust the team to do 
great work)

I need something being tested on older versions of REBOL. So if some 
of you could run this little piece of code and report, what the end 
value is, and what version of REBOL under what OS and on what hardware. 
The piece of code:

x: 1.0 while [(1.0 + (x / 2.0)) > 1.0] [x: x / 2.0]

On my G4 iBook, system/version is 2.7.5.2.4 and I get: 3.5527136788005E-15