World: r3wp

Paul;  I count Giuseppe as one of the unsung heroes.  You too.  :)

I remember starting a form of REBOL documentation project way back 
in the early days.  I ran a REBOL documentation search engine which 
was all M$ based and Holger I think it was came back and said they 
liked my site greatly but thought I need to ensure that REBOL was 
captilized.  Every since then I tried to remember to Capitilize REBOL.

thanks Brian, throw yourself on the list.

There just aren't enough Vikings in the boat to make for a roar. 
 :)

Yes Paul, it is REBOL, R E B O L ! I have still to wix it in my mind.

indeed.

Oh and Giuseppe, just so ya know ... I do count myself as amateur, 
in the main ... rank amateur.  Clown even.  :)

But I'll defend RT to the ... umm, ... nah. 

be prepared to die for what you believe ... but keep those commitments 
to a minimum
   :)

:-)

However, a last consideration before continuing my work to organize 
my room: REBOL Tech continues to upset peole creating timelines. 
Please, tell Carl to not give dates anymore or Pekr will sometime 
kill him ! :-)

I will not kill anyone. If development goes as "fast" as it does, 
Carl might actually decide to kill himself without my help :-) <black 
"humour" off>

The situation is not the easy one. My understanding is, that RT is 
kind of "one man show", with external contractors. I guess (but surely 
can't know for sure), that there is noone else contracted nowadays.

Giuseppe: if you should admit that R3 is going to be released in 
2010, then it is easy situation for me - I quit.

R3 is going out in 2008, period. I'll push for it. Well, I don't 
expect it being feature complete, but we should define what goes 
into 3.0, what goes into 3.1.

The thing is as follows - I talked to Carl almost on daily basis 
some two months back, for quite some time. And I am glad, that RT 
has some strategy. Those who say otherwise, are not correct. But 
- having some strategy and being able to fulfill it, are two different 
things.

If you notice rebol.com R3 strategy page, you will clearly see - 
VID revision (happening now), and then LNS revision in order to be 
able to release DevBase, and finally sources, both C and R level, 
to let ppl plug-in imediatelly - that will make us busy, will not? 
:-)

I can see the release of open-source parts really crucial, as it 
will allow for some fixes, and to start porting efforts, better understanding 
of REBOL internals by the community ...

The thing I don't understand is RT and its investors, and the organisation 
(management) of the project. There are fatal mistakes, like letting 
Gabriele go to work for Qtask for 1 months, ending in 6 month delay 
in VID development.

Those things really worry me. We either admit REBOL is hobby project, 
without any influence on computing world, or we should take our work 
seriously - there is competition out there - Flash/Flex, JavaFX, 
Silverlight being in beta 2.0. I am not investor, so I can't make 
any suggestions. But being one, I would try to manage some dev. team, 
working 5 days, 8 hours in a week as a minimum ....

What Carl should realize is that it's not feasible to compete in 
this world as a one man band even if you're a genius.  You need to 
open source as much as possible, and I think it's a mistake using 
Altme.

this developing behind closed doors is very discouraging even for 
those of us with access to the r3alpha world.

RT is like a black hole with the only information escaping the radition 
from the event horizon.

Occasionally RT behaves like a quasar but then drifts back into an 
ordinary black hole ... and we bathe in cold Hawking radiation.

hehe, alone on r3-alpha world now - now it is MY world :-)

Pekr, I have a clear vision of the development cycle and time: 2010 
is the year we will go out of beta.

So quit now ! :-)

I like the project and I appreciate the effiorts of Carl and the 
community and I take it as is. It is a gift of a genius which has 
spent a lot of money during the years and which surely doesn't have 
other golden treasures to give to project.

in 2010 REBOL will be irrelevant ...

I am not so pessimistic. REBOL in 2010 will be a nice programming 
language. It will be our role to develop the connections to the outer 
world like the community did with REBOL 2.

Petr, I think you overestimate the competition.  Rebol has an enduring 
quality that, so long as the company keeps going, will be very relevant 
in 2010 and beyond.  Just as it's relevant now, despite previous 
predictions to the contrary...

I think that's true ... because there's a fundamental language advantage 
that can not be overcome no matter what the competition does.

I said a long time ago that computer languages don't age like the 
software technologies built upon them. still think I'm right. :-)

I am not sure I overestimate it that much. There is several layers 
to my statement. As for the technology and its quality, I can agree 
- REBOL is nice technology. But - from the marketing/adoption side, 
you have some open windows available. The first one was during the 
momentum of REBOL being new. We wasted it greatly. I can see another 
widnow being open, for some year or max two years back - RIA. I do 
remember when I first tried Adobe Air - it was a joke. Attempt at 
non system UI, and they repeated some mistakes of ours. Now we can 
see articles about Flash/Flex, Silverlight, Curl, etc., but no REBOL. 
In 2010 that market will be well established. Mobile players will 
choose their technologies and they will not be able to look back.

It is really important to get R3 out the door in 2008.

I find it interesting that there is so much focus on comparing REBOL 
to Flash/Silverlight. REBOL does far more than both of them together 
do. In the long run, I think REBOL can become more relevant than 
Flash or Silverlight, as they are narrowly focused technologies that 
at some point will become outdated and replaced by other technologies 
that do a better job in the same narrow field. REBOL has no such 
limitation.

Narrow field? Why do you consider them being narrow? Is Action Scrip 
somehow limited? And look into most mp3 players, their UI, their 
games, etc. - everything Flash based. The market for such device 
starts being crowded. We will see what impact will there be on Android 
and Symbian in the future ...

I would definitely not be using action script for 90% of the work 
I do with REBOL...

It may well be a missed opportunity for Rebol as a front end, but 
frankly I'd rather see R3 done right than speculatively rush it to 
market.  I see greater opportunities in the future for a feature 
complete, mature R3.


Even if R3 were the perfect combination of front and back end, RT 
does not have the leverage of Adobe or MS to establish R3 in the 
way you suggest.  The future of Rebol as I see it is in the grassroots, 
and for that, R3 must be all that it can be.

On the other hand, RT should be pushing for the spectrum of Rebol 
products - Base/Core/View to be included on every OS distribution. 
 Imagine if that had been pursued a few years back: .r would truly 
be write once, run anywhere...

Nice analysis, Chris ...

I said it already many times and now there is a new opportunity, 
quicktime browser plugin is today much more popular thanks to iTunes, 
it is installed in more than 80% of personal computers. quicktime 
once had a wired scripting language (qscript), Live stage Pro was 
the only editor for that. Now apple just announced they are working 
on Quicktime X, they will either drop scripting completely or they 
will put something new in. That new scripting in the quicktime plugin 
SHOULD BE REBOL !! it is a win-win solution. rebol would have access 
to  about 200 media formats, apple will offer the best language for 
scripting medias, and not limited to that. See, apple really has 
no interest in seeing flash ported to the iPhone, because the sell 
iPhones games on their iTunes store, and many other reason. Also 
in the last year apple has enhanced javascript ability to control 
quicktime movies in the browser. I have no idea about waht agreement 
apple and RT should come to, but I'm sure nobody can argument against 
this theory! Long life rebol! 8-)

If you want to see REBOL expand then build APPS and distribute them 
with a BSD license.   If REBOL isn't "everywhere" then it isn't just 
Carl's fault - it is ours also.

quicktime always sucked, sucks now, and will suck forever. It can 
take FF3 down. Besides that - who is Apple to define "standard"? 
Who caros of .mov container? That format is rudiculous and irrelevant 
:-)

ok Pekr, it suck but it still is one of the most installed browser 
plugins, add rebol to it and you get rebol installed on all those 
computers on the next quicktime upgrade, or try and have people install 
rebol plugin.. ;-)

I guarantee you, that .mov is pretty much ignored by Windows users, 
and very often found being obtrusive. It is recognised by those favoring 
Mac platform, but not otherwise. Yes, REBOL as a system language 
of anything would be benefical, but that will not easily happen imo 
...

Petr, Apple actually succeeded in making the MOV format a standard: 
the MP4 format is indeed MOV with some restrictions. Notice that 
MOV and AVI are both IFF clones (AVI just has the length in reverse 
order, indeed it's called RIFF, while MOV swaps chunck type and length). 
The way they are being used is another matter :)

Gabriele .. any updates on what is happening?

There is a dearth of visible activity

I don't really see more than what you see...

Oh .. I assumed that there were private groups

Gabriele, I understand you. Mov might be technologically even superior. 
So I don't know if it is licencsing of Apple or ignorance of Windows 
probrammers, but - I just want to use one codeck pack - ffdshow for 
e.g. It is some 5 years I met some video, which was not able to work 
with it. Any player! But - quicktime is painfull exception! I don't 
want quicktime player! I want it to play with any player I choose. 
And it does not seem being so. So, I have also VNC, just to have 
such problems as getting sound, but not picture, etc. So - no mov 
for me.