World: r3wp

Carl asked Gabriele to build VID.

he then decided that what Gabriele built was too hard to use for 
the average person.

ie. Gabriele was contracted to do this work.

most of people to tell you the truth plan a little with rebol see 
some of it capabilities then face a lack ( not able to do something 
they want to do ) and abandon rebol ....

so the bar needs to be lowered does it not?

the concept of virtual machine implicates the impossible to apport 
real new things to it...

unless you have a way to use existng things

Rebol and VID were a S shaped learning curve.

easy to start off ... steep learning curve do anything after that 
...then flattens off again.

in my opinion that depends what you means by visual interface ? Is 
it some buttons some text and some pictures or is it 3D  content 
menubars and lot of flicking a bouncing widgets ?

the latter :)

plus if anytime the community ask for extention carl reply by I change 
it all that will not make rebol be better known and accepted as a 
trusted solution for buisness area...

the reality of now in day computing industries is that they need 
more ppl to design web site or financial software (for traders and 
banks) than people to do nice visual interface.

even financial software needs a decent gui

doing vid a webbrowser like librarie hum ... but webbrowser now in 
day are dependant on  flash plug in so in a way things are not done 
 in anymore on the webrowser layer

Maybe Carl is writing a web browser??

Carl 'In other words, when you download R3 and run it, it will look 
like a web browser."

So, it's the web, just with REBOL as the HTML. :-)

Do you remember my Vidwiki ?  I think it's similar to that idea

Getting rid of the desktop metaphor which is confusing because it 
doesn't behave like a desktop

but  achieving a web browser is more than only connect to a http 
server retrive and renders HTTP once again that way to think was 
OK in years 90  but not in years 2008 ...  Yes most of what do a 
webbrowser is to rederised HTML  page but what about the video streaming 
or animated interfaces (what flash is ablem to bring to a  webbrowser 
and make the 2008 web sites so hum dynamic)

He hasn't said he won't address that.

Maybe we will have video streaming containers we can popup and animate

even netscape based webbrowsers (opera firefox etc ) had to evolve 
to feet what IE and the set of pluging designed by the industry was 
then bale to do

I take it you're venting some frustrations ... but we aren't in a 
position to deal with them lacking the information.

And yes, it's all Carl's fault.

for example opera webbrowser functionnalities: It render HTML content 
(some times with some strange bug), you have voice speech sinthesis 
to read the content of a page for blind people for example  you have 
voice command system  to operate it, you have widgets (external kind 
of mini GUI  sofware pieces to show you web information on an extend 
way) you have a plugin system with lot of plugings you can use P2P 
bitorrent to download you can connect to IRC read your mails ... 
 So yes now in day web browser are not only web browser and that's 
a matter of  fact  this evolution took 10  years of constent apports 
I don't see rebol going this way in only a couple of month ...

well after a deep reflection VID2 widgets set was already to reflect 
the kind of widget  you can renderize in HTML

like H1 H2 H3 H4 area button radio

etc ...

the font set is short too  you can''t use any font you want and as 
the .fnt file community is really inventiv we are missing something

I get the feeling that Carl wants VID3.4 to be just right, so it 
takes a little time to do.


The point in the webbrowser form factor is to provide a more recognizable 
launcher. I don't think the idea is to compete with existing webbrowsers 
at all. We don't even know if it will be capable of displaying HTML 
webpages.

well with vID2 we done a MDP Makedoc  renderer so doing HTML  one 
is not so hard with actual VID but the fact is MD GUI  and MDP GUI 
 gots a big lack of widgets for the none document rendering part 
wich I will call the IHM (menu bars, tab-panels, ability to resize 
easyly the whole content  or part of it   and that what lead us to 
do rebGUI ... to enhance that aspect.)

a stronger link betwin 

networking" and "visual" modules ??? hum that's like if Carl was 
preteneding we can't already do that !!??"


I haven't mentioned this, because I was afraid I would get it wrong 
and Carl would bash me for it. :-) What I'm writing here below is 
one of the reasons to switch to a webbrowser mentality. It was also 
one of the the reasons for dumping VID3.


Webbrowser mentality helps building infrastructure, very quickly. 
There is allegedly a stronger link now between VID and networking 
in the same way as there is a link between HTML and HTTP. When you 
create a link in a webpage, it takes only a few tags in one line 
of code (even inline) to do that. You don't do anything else but 
provide the link. The browser takes care of the rest, and you can 
build an entire infrastructure with hyperlinks. You don't have to 
worry about TCP ports or wait for acknowledge from the server. The 
basic philosophy that goes behind hyperlinking is its extreme simplicity, 
which is why it's so widespread. It's easy to grasp and easy to code.

When you for example write in a forum, you are often capable of providing 
hyperlinks. As a result, hyperlinking is available to any users, 
who have just the basic knowledge of coding, which to them is "typing 
funny chars to make a link".

Carl wants the same thing in VID3.4, where you must currently work 
with ports, store things in words and do something with the words 
in order to get where you need to go. You need to do some programming 
and make complex decisions. That level of detail must not go away 
of course, but there is a simplifying element that's missing, and 
that is to use buttons directly as hyperlinks. If successful, anyone 
could code simple VID GUIs.


I'm still sure I'm getting it a bit wrong, so there's not much point 
discussing it right now. He emphasized very strongly about building 
infrastructure through very simple methods that most people can understand 
and use. He talked about this more than about VID itself.

VID was already simple  in comparasion to what are the other libraries 
I don't know if you ever tryed to deal with transparencies with raw 
X llibrary that pain in the head number 1  ^^.   Well i'm not against 
simplifying the system but first how does the industry shape their 
GUI 99.9 percent of the time the GUI  is build using a GUI designer 
and the only thing you have to do is set thru the GUI designer interface 
the settings for the widgets you graphically picked and organised 
then you have to write the call back code... Then to take your example 
back with the hyperlink people then don't code they only format text 
en even then most of now in days forum like PHP BB  use javascripted/pugined 
rich text area  to format their  text you push a button it insert 
the text the way you want. and some of them on the php engine level 
are able to recognize http:// footage to build on the fly the hyperlink 
without requiering any tag adding by the user .... I'm not sure separating 
the way you organise the widget to the way you configure them will 
lead us to more easy way

but that take us back to the main ask do we want a rebolvm that we 
can extend and make code over or do we want a monolitic VM  where 
you can't do any extend.  I like VID becaus it was enough flexible 
to allow rebGUI  and other VID based library to be done.

buton the other hand none of those libraries could go further than 
what was VID engine capable of the events where still the same and 
still handle the same way for example. If you wanted to do a rich 
text area you will have to deal with that

you could do transparent buttons (hum that's partly false  you can 
do that if you draw your button using AGG  then you use mouse position 
when  left clic is done to simulate the reaction of your button) 
or windows

We need more information on what Carl is cooking ...

hum so lets imagine due to the few information how a VID "page" will 
be page [ <button text="my text on the button" action: [  some-callback] 
 bgcolor: red fgcolor: pink size:100x50  position: 0x0 >

A few questions I have about R3:


Will R3 be open source in some fashion?  For example if Carl were 
to retire or expire, would the language remain viable or would the 
evolution of operating systems make it obsolete.


Will R3 be capable to access low level hardware?  For example, will 
I be able to read sections of a hard drive directly?

Will R3 enable me to send ICMP packets over the network?


What is the primary revenue source for RT expected to be from the 
production of R3?  Is is the software alone or some other licensing 
models?


I'm sure I'll have other questions but curious of these for now as 
I contemplate the future of my programming skills.

1. There is a clause that makes sure the code will be opened or transfered 
to a different instance in case of RT's demise, but I'm not exactly 
sure on which circumstances it counts.


2. You should be able to access drivers directly, anything that fits 
with R3's device model. See http://www.rebol.net/r3blogs/0087.html

3. See 2.


4. Products built on top of R3. R3 itself will be free as in beer.

Then how is RT to make any money $$$?

See 4. :-)

So Carl doesn't need to make money from R3?

I don't think he can make money from R3. R2 has specific barriers 
that prevent you from implementing specific things in the free version. 
Those barriers are gone in R3.

I'll guess I'll hang on for a bit longer.

My take on it is that REBOL/IOS made more money than R2 did. It's 
just well-known that a lot of people didn't like paying for essential 
features like better security algorithms, ODBC or DLL access (DLL 
is now free in R2 though). When that is the case, it's easier to 
just flip over to an open source language like Python which do these 
things for free. I also know that RT is wanting to build apps based 
on REBOL, and not just sell REBOL itself.

forgot the SDK... that must have made a few $ as well. I don't think 
that will be free for R3.

What would be included in the R3 SDK?