World: r3wp

(moving to Android group...)

Am I missing something really basic......Here's my first attempt 
in many months to play with the R3 GUI.
New console session, R3-a110.exe:
    >> load-gui
    Fetching GUI...
    GUI Version: 0.2.1
    (Developer test GUI theme)
    ** Script error: size-text has no value

    ** Where: font-char-size? make make-text-style parse fontize do do 
    either load-gui
    ** Near: font-char-size? self

You need to get a GUI build and download Henrik's compiled R3 GUI 
code. Look above here for the links.

Please, don't expect LOAD-GUI to work. It loads old Car's GUI that's 
not compatible with A110 anymore.

http://94.145.78.91/files/r3/gui/r3.exe
http://94.145.78.91/files/r3/gui/r3lib.dll
http://94.145.78.91/files/r3/gui/r3-gui.r3

Thanks.....I was trying to follow the step-by-step example:
    http://www.rebol.com/r3/docs/gui/guide.html#section-3

The recent R3 builds have focused on core changes. The GUI has been 
developed separately.

http://94.145.78.91/files/r3/gui/style-browser.r3

is perhaps useful too.

We should probably just get rid of LOAD-GUI, for the time being.

Or adapt it to load r3-gui snapshots from somewhere instead.

The load-gui issue is there too often.. we should remove/replace 
it ASAP

load-gui: func [ ][ alert "See faq" ]

ooops .. that won't work .. can't have an alert without the GUI!

I also see as a priority to fix the status of gui :

- declare publicly if r3-gui is the official gui development or not
- then fix the load-gui call function
- and finally update the gui official documentation page.

It should not be too difficult, and, to my opinion, it it really 
important and urgent, because it prevents to develop experimental 
visual applications.

Could the gui development team meet Carl in order to convince him 
to take a decision ?

the GUI team should be in daily contact with Carl via their scrum 
system

But I am not sure Carl is involved with the GUI team decisions, to 
go this or that direction. But as Carl has nothing better, I just 
hope he will integrate. But as we know Carl, he might want to revise 
the code first. Let's hope one months black-out period is over soon 
- Carl is not available on any public channel ....

Months are shorter in the Czech Republic?

Perhaps they are working hard for our Christmas gift :-)

Carl is currently only observing, but I've not seen any comments 
from him on GUI development. But at this time, the number of RM Asset 
programs and tools that requires the R3 GUI is growing, so we are 
not in a position where we can hand things over to Carl and expect 
him to evaluate, rewrite and finish it.

Last comment from Carl was about 6 hours, 40 minutes ago in RM Assets 
world.

As for docs, I'm not sure when they will be done as some GUI concepts 
are not finished, but perhaps after beginning to write the first 
apps.

Kaj: months= month's - a typo, and maybe even then incorrect wording 
...

Henrik - public channels are all dead though. Twitter, blogs, and 
even R3 Chat last login is 15 Nov. Hopefully Carl is taking a break 
to refresh, and to do some beta decisions ....

And I agree, it is a one way ticket. Carl was way too long away from 
the GUI topic. RMA surely is going to use its own gui for its own 
apps. And the official R3 GUI? Who knows, but I bet ppl will prefer 
RMA's work, than having nothing in the end ....

... after all - anyone can have suggestions to R3 GUI, so even general 
R3 community should get what will mot probably fit us all ....

mot= most

I watched Carl's AmiWest talk ... and he again calls for simplicity.

The trouble is, simplicity doesn't scale ... as seen with VID and 
IOS

ie. the case for simplicity in this format remains unproven

I wouldn't say that about VID. VID is simply incomplete. A completed 
VID would not be much more complex.

that's my point

The simple approach leads to incomplete product

I thought your point was that "simplicity doesn't scale". Simplicity 
is not the same as completeness.

doesn't scale means doesn't complete

That doesn't make sense... The VID Extension Kit won't entirely prove 
simplicity, because it needs to work around a buggy View, but when 
building all the necessary subsystems, the principle of VID is sound 
for highly scalable apps.

Unproven assertions

Not unproven. Take REBOL functions for managing series. Are they 
incomplete?

Making simple architectures is hard. It requires an understanding 
of how to design systems that will work both in the big and in the 
small, while remaining simple. If you don't have this understanding 
(or don't get enough time to finish the design), you will tend to 
add more systems to cure the symptoms or counteract existing systems 
for scalability. I thought this was pretty basic?

That's also my point, achieving the necessary simplicity has been 
too hard so far and has failed.

You might get 80% there with this approach ... but not all the way

The 80% however makes it seem that you can get all the way...

I'm not sure what that means. The 80% rule is part of good design 
for where you need to be, not for where we currently are with VID. 
VID does not follow the 80% rule since its incomplete.

load-gui.r must be update to check the Rebol version and print an 
error if it is not compatible.

what was the last version compatible with load-gui?

Work in A96, doesn't in A99. I don't have A97 nor A98 to check !

The last version it works under is: R3-a97-3-1

I'd say complex systems out there have proven that they don't scale

We have setup official R3-GUI download place: http://www.rm-asset.com/code/downloads/files/r3-gui.r3.zip

To access all our stuff directly: http://www.rm-asset.com/code/downloads/

Thanks, Robert!