World: r3wp

Henrik - as a developer, you should understand priorities.

And you seem not to.

pekr, I do. you are the one ignoring priorities between developers.

Petr;  I'm chuckling as I type this ... so take it for what it is 
...

Hey!  Stop dissin' the developers!

:)

Thank you, Brian :-)

We talk two complety separated issues here. First is my proposal 
to AT LEAST release Core like products. You talk about current development 
aproach. Of course VID is more important. But you still describe 
model which is happening here, which is like without any strategy 
being defined.

yes, that would be a good argument, but Carl wants VID out as quickly 
as possible.

Henrik - we will see ....

gotta go to the other world. Carl is delivering a lot of info right 
now :-)

I think there is strategy...we may not be in that loop...yet.  And 
I'll agree it's a little frustrating, mainly because we all feel 
and care deeply.  We all want "better" for REBOL.

Brian - many of my words here are not because of my comfort. But 
I bear with guys as Graham, Kaj, and others ....

I agree completely.  Let's push to get more people included.  There 
are people here who have put in the time and just deserve an open 
door, or at the very very least, a window seat.

It seems we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel 
:-)

yeah, that was a quick turnaround there :-)

petr: no matter how much time does vid take, either we release in 
whatever state it is, or we wait until it's finished. inventing something 
unrelated like adding pop just takes time from the end goal of R3, 
and does not help anyone. people want a toy to play it? so, let's 
just release early and often, no matter how badly it crashes or how 
much it destroys your hd - we put a warning in there. people want 
a finished product? then, just wait until it is there, and don't 
tell me you want a date for it, because noone in the world is able 
to give you one.

petr... yes... anyone is able to write imap or pop. i don't think 
i'm a god or something like that, you know.

If someone needs pop, imap or ftp now, probably he will write it 
self. If it's not good enough for official R3, discard it. Someone 
else will try again.

I would prefer R3 now, even if it is unfinished, but with a clear 
plan and roadmap what it should support and what not.

And from time to time the roadmap should be updated to the reality.

Gabriele, it is not going to be a toy. By playing with it, we can 
adjust our brains to it and be ready when R3 is ready, and we can 
even help. This is the very way a community works. Either you want 
a community or you don't

A community has to be developed together with the product

I'd rather have a polished R3/core sooner than later, same goes for 
R3/View. I don't have any inside into the current development state, 
so I don't know how much it will take to get a polished product ready.

On the other hand, I feel it is really important for the community 
to see _something_. To be able to adjust, learn, be ready.

Maybe some people will see the the current state, and think that 
this isn't worth their time, but nowadays people should know about 
alpha, beta, pre-alpha, development ... versions.

And Pekr, yes, everyone _can_ code a pop / imap / ... protocol in 
rebol. You may not yet be abel to, but you can. On the other hand, 
you can't code the port system, or view basics, because wou would 
need access to the c source code.

We're going to end up with two groups of people ... those with 1 
year or more of R3 experience, and the others with none

On the bright side, the R3 coders won't have time to delve into Syllable 
Server ;-)

Ingo - I don't agree at all. It is like saying everyone CAN code 
in C, because you have plenty of free text editors available. You 
would not probably want to see My rebol code and surely you would 
not accept it being part of official distro. So really - No - not 
everybody CAN code pop, imap protocol. If so - why did it take so 
long to get proper FTP protocol ready? Apop? etc.?

And yes, from some perspective, ppl like Cyphre, Ladislav, Gabriele, 
DocKimbel are kind of REBOL "gods", not easily replacable.

However - this discussion is probably a moot point, as Carl seems 
to be taking some contrete aproach to cure the situation.

Cool

Pekr, I'm not saying you will be able to code anythiong worthwhile, 
but you _can_ code it. You have all the tools. But there are parts 
in Rebol where you _can_not_ because you don't have access to the 
code. 

I just feel that those parts, which build the foundation and need 
access to the closed C implementation of R3 should get the most attention, 
at this point in time.

Ingo - but Gabriele is coding VID, which is too only a rebol level 
code, not C one ...

VID3 is not as trivial to implement as protocols, so it's a higher 
priority task.

yes, ftp is so trivial, that we can't get it right for 10 years :-)

probably because no one really worked on it.

anyway - this discussion has nothing in common with initial ideas, 
so regard it just being a normal chat, not that I try to suggest 
what is more important. Once again - my mention of protocols was 
there only for the case, if Carl would not agree to "full" release, 
so I just mentioned it, what could be completed in some sane time-frame 
and released e.g. for Christmas, nothing more. That is no more valid 
or so it seems, but we will see what next week brings to the table 
:-)

Henrik - as for FTP - I think that Gabriele and Romano and Reichart 
might be actually right, that FTP is a real mess :-)

yes, it is unfortunately a mess. I'm not sure what should be done 
with it, other than be implemented by someone who is an expert on 
the FTP protocol, rather than just implement a rudimentary one that 
follows the RFC.

Ehm, I actually worked on the FTP scheme, testing it for Romano who 
did a LOT of bugfixing on it

then Kaj is the perfect man for the job. :-)

No, I'm not :-)

:-)

I think we have two competing goals, quick path to real beta and 
community access and education.  Both are important but for different 
reasons.  It is self defeating for us the community to slow down 
the final goal but at the same time we can't plan or begin the ramp 
up while there is nothing available.  I am still willing to wait 
for the open beta but by the same hand I would also welcome an open 
alpha and understand that we have to take it as it is.  This means 
not pushing on the real team with "noise" of whatever type as to 
distract them.


I worry though that the ramp up is important - if you look at rebol.org 
and scripts it seems so much of it is old, years old, or ancient 
in internet time.  That has to change as well as the wealth of documentation 
and articles has to expand drastically.  The only way that can happen 
in a timely fashion is with community access.  I'd be very willing 
to help on those fronts as best I can.

Yes, it's very demotivating for new people looking in to see that 
almost everything is old and even doesn't work anymore. We have that 
problem in Syllable, too, and I'm pretty sure it has been damaging

The biggest problem is that they will walk away before contacting 
you, so you don't know you're loosing people

Well, what I'm trying to say. If Carl is not capable or willing to 
keep up the communication channels while he is deep into coding, 
then let the code speak for itself.

I think all of us have seen to many great tools going down the drain, 
too many unkept promises (talking globally not about a specific product 
/ company). That's why I thiink that it's better to release whatever 
there is, now, than to wait for christmas to release a product which 
isn't meant to be perfect, either.

Exactly

it seems that someone from Apple are volunteering to help with the 
OSX port of R3.

That would certainly help open some doors and get the product some 
notice.

Cool

except too many cooks !