World: r3wp

Posted the on-going history of the Alpha releases to the REBOL Week 
blog.  Please note;  The work is on-going.  R3 is still in ALPHA. 
This is an informational blog posting only...for the curious.

Q: is there any information on the minimum system requirements for 
running R3? (regarding cpu memory) I can emagine that wont differ 
much from the current statement...

probably smaller memory requirements, but otherwise the same.

Q: are there any functional changes to the parse-dialect in R3 or 
is it purely the speed optimization that gets a thoroughly restructuring?

sorry parse-function i ment

There is a new algorithm for empty parse to avoid the some end infinite 
loop...afaik, and I know little. :)

yes i read someting like that in Carls blog..

But what Im actualy missing in the global Blogs on R3 is a statement 
on the functional behaviors on R3 function? I assume they globaly 
stay the same and no big impact is to be expected, besides new functions...

The debugger (o some sort of core hook call) will be there in R3 
alpha ?

We can probably at least count on having the STACK function: http://www.rebol.net/r3blogs/0075.html

Rebolinth, the main difference between functions in R2 and R3 is 
that the values assigned to the local variables in an R3 functions 
are freed after the function returns, while that is not the case 
in R2. Oh, and they're faster.

There are more function types too, with other context or execution 
models. For instance, the closure! type has the same context model 
as R2's USE function - actually, USE in R3 is implemented using closures.

If I misunderstood you and you were asking about the behavior of 
particular functions, you'll have to ask about them individually. 
Many are changing from mezzanine to native, others are changing from 
native to mezzanine or a hybrid of the two. Many are going to be 
able to do more.

Small R3 update:


We can do modal popup windows now and fully borderless windows. This 
should help in building a real popup menu that isn't limited to the 
size of the main window, like in R2.

I'm building VID3 tests so we can find bugs in the layout engine.

Alpha 81 was released yesterday.

332 bug reports in the tracker.

Soft font shadows are cool. :-)

Just curious if anyone has any info on tables in vid3. They were 
pretty poor in R2 but I think they are a key element for many apps. 
I took a quick look at "turbogrid" mentioned in the Tech News forum 
and its crap. it's Ajax based.  A list-view based app in a plug in 
would blow it away.

there is a simple text list for emergency testing right now, but 
a new one will be written. I hope it will feature many of the features 
from LIST-VIEW, without taking up too much code. LIST-VIEW for R2 
is almost as big as the entire of VID3.

About plug-in...I need to change my mindset about it. I always avoided 
thinking: "Nobody wants t have to download a plug in o use your site. 
But I find myself needing to do it all the time and some of these 
new technologies like silverlight, require a download of some sort. 
 Rebol plugin downloads so fast it really is a minor annoyance. WE 
just need it on more platforms and browsers.

My take on graphical tables;  R2 had a beautiful base for this with 
list and supply.  Downside was that the documentation was so limited 
and late comming that no one could comes to grips and we all mostly 
ignored it.  We lost out on the ability to build on the shoulders 
of giants as using list and supply pretty much meant learning by 
expermentation, coding from first principles and not from tool kits 
and cookbooks.  Hopefully the power gems of R3 and VID3 will not 
suffer the same fate.

btiffin, I agree. Clear and complete documentation is essential. 
Few people will take the time to study source code. No matter how 
great a language is, it is useless unless people can easily use it 
to do what they need to do.  An inferior language that is documented 
well is very likely going to attract more users than a great language 
that no one can figure out how to use.  Core is fairly well documented 
I think, but I have never been able to get past problems in View. 
 I'm really hoping that the docs for REBOL3 will fully explain View 
and give lots of examples, especially showing how to interface view 
with databases, etc.  But writing good docs is very difficult, because 
the creators of the language know it so well that it is difficult 
for them to put themselves into a beginners shoes.  It is easy for 
them to assume that the beginner already understands things that 
, in fact, he doesn't understand at all. Anyway, I have high hopes 
for R3.  And I can do more with R2 than I ever dreamed possible, 
so I really can't complain at all.  That doesn't lower my hopes for 
better view docs though. That is the way we humans are: the more 
we get the more we want.  :>)  They call that being spoiled.

Gabrielle, I beg you if you solve the problem of 307 redirection 
wtih R3. Can you send me a link to download it ? thanks.

Rondon, we don't have SSL in R3 yet, so your script will *not* work 
with R3 yet. I will let you know once we get there.

do you have a little idea when we can download a version of R3bol 
?

probably some time early 2008. maybe earlier. :-)

Wasn't there some talk that r3 will have a new filesystem? Is this 
still going to happen?

uh, filesystem? IIRC RT was talking about RIF - rebol idexed files, 
so kind of file with header, for custom db and other purposes. That 
is all I remember ....

Davide: there is new trace mode which prints out a lot of informations.. 
for example:
>> trace on
<-- trace => unset!
>> print 1 + 2
 1: print : native! [value]
 2: 1
 3: + : op! [value1 value2]
 4: 2
<-- + => 3
3
<-- print => unset!
>>

RIF is not on the programme yet, AFAIK

Early 2008? Well, that royally messes up my planning

Judging by myself, I think a lot of REBOL projects are postponed 
waiting for stuff that doesn't come

Kaj, there is a lot of work being done. A lot needs to be finished 
before R3 can be useful for anything that R2 can't do outside benchmarking 
and a few demos. I wouldn't start planning thing until the first 
beta comes out.

Sure, I'm familiar with how it works in big projects. The point is 
that the only ones who can give try to give meaningful estimates 
are the ones doing the projects, and we all know what dates were 
promised over time

True. I've said before that those dates were completely unrealistic. 
One month from first alpha to first beta? No way. Not even if all 
of us worked 24/7.

This has been going on since time immemorial. Can you blame anyone 
but the foolhardiest fans for walking away?

Of course not. I think the problem is that people expect R3 to be 
done in a hurry, since we already have R2, so what's the big hold 
up? (and personally I think the beta date of 1st August caused more 
negative talk and damage than I think Carl expected.)

I don't need a perfect R3. I just need to make some forms and other 
simple things, but I don't want to have to redo them a few months 
later

I can say "when R3 comes out, everything will be good", but the reality 
is that there will probably be as much work after the first beta 
as has been before it.

Those expectations were entirely created

I don't need a perfect R3. I just need to make some forms... 

 <-- For that you need VID3 to be complete and the view system as 
 well. You need skins and you need a functioning event system. You 
 need keyboard input and a proper way to direct form text data to 
 objects or file storage. Furthermore since you don't want to change 
 it, we have to have the layout dialect in feature freeze, which it 
 isn't. It's currently undergoing design review, before we add more 
 features. Not simple. :-)

Than even a lot less was done so far than I thought until now. Why 
did we hear that implementing basic View would "take a day" after 
Core?

where did you hear that?

Gabriele said something to that effect when Carl opened development 
and the beta promises were still in effect

ok. that's not a good thing to say.

I understand that geeks tend to brag about their abilities, but this 
is a business that has been running for a decade, for heaven's sake

ok. I can only say, don't trust release dates until after beta is 
out. then we can talk more about it.

You're saying don't trust dates until they have become meaningless?

I'm sorry, but there is a breaking point for everyone

Kaj, I don't know what to say, other than a lot of work is being 
done. Please don't resort to planning around R3 yet. Use R2.

It's far too late for that. The promises started almost two years 
ago, as an extension of much earlier promises. You shouldn't be the 
one to field this criticism, but I am putting my reputation on the 
line for this in a number of places, and I hate to be pushed around

its seems like an issue of transparency

or lack of it