World: r3wp

Release announcement: http://www.rebol.com/article/0447.html
Simple change notes: http://www.rebol.com/docs/v2-7.html


I'm trying to post the more detailed release notes in the comments 
of the announcement blog, but I'm getting caught by the blogger limits. 
One more message and I'll be done.

Impressive list of changes.

And incomplete - I'm waiting for it to let me post again,

There, the list is done for this release.

Why is Carl saying he has released 2.7.7 with TLS ??

I use Ladislav's 'closure.  Does the one in 2.7.7 supercede this 
now?

Looks like there is no easily accessible documentation for the R2/forward 
stuff ....

There is easily accessible documentation on the R2/Forward stuff: 
The R3 manual. Any differences from the R3 behavior is documented 
in extensive code comments in the R2/Forward source, which you can 
get in R3 (for now) chat, aka DevBase.

The CLOSURE in 2.7.7 supercedes Ladislav's one, and is derived from 
it. Go Ladislav go!

I don't know much about the TLS support in R2, if any. I guess I'll 
find out when we migrate the old RAMBO tickets to CureCode.

Easy = web accessible.

I suspect the TLS thing is an error .. unless he has been hiding 
it from us all these years!

The R3 manual is web accessible. R2/Forward itself is only useful 
to programmers, and they can and should use DevBase.

I went to the wiki .. and searched on funct ... didn't find the docs

OK, now that we have 2.7.7 released (even though there is more work 
to do, i.e. platforms and the SDK), it is time to look ahead to 2.7.8 
- which is scheduled for release in one month on February 1. The 
primary goal of this release is to migrate to REBOL's new development 
infrastructure. This means:

- Migrating the RAMBO database to a new CureCode project and retiring 
RAMBO.

- Using Carl's generation code for the manual to regenerate the R2 
manual, so we can start to get to work updating it.

- Porting the chat client to R2 using the new functions and building 
a CHAT function into R2 similar to the R3 version.


The R2 chat client might be limited to the ASCII character set, though 
support for the Latin-1 character set might be possible. Still text 
mode for now, though if anyone wants to write a GUI client (Henrik?) 
we can put it on the official RT reb site accessible from the View 
desktop. The server is accessed through a simple RPC protocol and 
is designed to be easily scriptable.


It turns out that Carl already rewrote the installer for 2.7.something, 
but it was turned off because of a couple minor bugs that we were 
able to fix in 2.7.7. With any luck, only minor fixes to the registry 
usage will be needed and we'll be good to go.


As for the rest, it's up to you. Graham seems to have a good tweak 
to the http protocol, and others may want to contribute their fixes.

What's the best way of searching the wiki?

Which one, the manual or DocBase? DocBase: http://www.rebol.net/wiki/Main_Page
- the manual: http://www.rebol.com/r3/docs/

looking at the wrong one .. .I was looking at rebol.net

Right. The manual is the official docs (which need some work still), 
and the rebol.net wiki is for community stuff.

If you want to contribute to R2 development, get on R3 chat. The 
client is R3-only for now, but the server and message store will 
be the same when accessed from any other R3 or R2 clients, or web 
clients if we really want them.

For simplicity people refer to it as chat, but the server and message 
store is really DevBase 3. CHAT is just the name of the function 
built into R3 (and later R2) that calls a DevBase client script from 
some web server.

I put a full list of my changed and added features in the comments 
here: http://www.rebol.com/cgi-bin/blog.r?view=0447#comments

Once someone tells me where to put it I will put that information 
on the web.

You could create a hyperlink for each of your new functions to the 
manual pages :)

Only take you a couple of mins to write the code to do that!

The next version should have support for the links to the online 
docs right from the R2 command line, just like R3.

will the word browser be updated with these for the next version?

>> cnt
== 2
>> cnt
== 2
>> val: -- cnt
== 2
>> val
== 2
>> cnt
== 1

what's the point of returning the prior value instead of the new 
value?

Hmm..  Kinda creepy.. but then there is word   first+ and not first++ 
which would be logical..

FIRST+ was made first, a few years ago. ++ and -- were added months 
later. The prior vale is returned rather than the new value because 
it is the most useful thing to return. We're aware of the difference 
from C, but since postfix operations are impossible in REBOL we rather 
quickly remembered that C compatibility makes no difference to us 
whatsoever :)

Well. those aren't as creepy as those math words in  Spin.  That 
one has gone really creative.

Spin?

It's the programming language specially made for Parallax Propeller.. 
  It's speciality is that the bytecode-runtime fits under 2kbyte..

Runtime? nah. wrong word.. I shoud say bytecode.-running engine..

Those are always fun :)

Just  a question of Rebol docs.. (at this point Rebol2 preferred), 
If I want to find all necessary (and possible) stuff of Serial port, 
where shoud I look? I woudl like to set various speeds on Serial 
port, also control DTR line manually..  That kind of stuff is needed 
on Propeller Downloader since it uses DTR to toggle microcontrollers 
reset line. And if possible in a way it is portable (no DLLs ?). 


(page 4 ) http://www.parallax.com/Portals/0/Downloads/docs/prod/prop/PropellerDatasheet-v1.2.pdf

I know that the Source code is the most obvious place to look, but... 
  Luckily this ain't anything I'd mandatorly need to do since there 
are some (allmost) ok tools for the chip, but it would be good to 
know where to look.

google ... http://www.rebol.com/docs/changes.html#section-6.3

There are two additional port fields that can't be set with a URL, 
but can be set in a port specification block or by manually changing 
them. The RTS-CTS field specifies whether hardware handshaking should 
be used on the port. The default is ON. To change the default, do:

ser-port/rts-cts: off
update ser-port

dunno if that means you can toggle DTR or not.

yep.. I noticed that page too.. And based on that one, it looks like 
that level of control is not at Rebol.  


I did that port: open  thingy and then  ? port ... it gives a huge 
list of  parameters, but most of them seem to be more Ethernet/tcp 
related than Serial port..

ask Brian if it can be added to Rebol 2.7.8 :)

Post the request on CureCode once we have a R2 project for it.

definitive answer is here http://www.mail-archive.com/[rebol-list-:-rebol-:-com]/msg11178.html

Well.. If I had money on it, (or even dream of money) I would.. But 
that's not the case so it can be,,     Holder Kruse? sounds awfully 
familiar..

He used to work for Rebol Tech, and did the SSL implementation ... 
and prior to that was an Amiga networking guy

Ah.. Now I remember.. Some (many?) years ago people were trying to 
reach him so that they could register his net stack and get keyocdes.. 
(or ask him to release it free if he's not willing to sell it anymore).. 
AFIK neither happened.. Luckily there are some new (PPC) native stacks 
available.

Yep , that was him.

Btw.. he was wrong about using Xon/Xoff instead or HW handshake.. 
 those are used even today  and If I had to choose one Id' definitley 
go hardware. keeps the serial line pure 8.bit, and workd more reliable 
on multitasking PC:s...

Looks like we do have TLS after all ... :)