World: r3wp

About the LLVM question on OSNews, someone with an account there 
could anwser by posting this link to a similar question on the Red's 
ML: http://groups.google.com/group/red-lang/browse_thread/thread/eeca0a4787da56c2?hl=en

And maybe few questions to Doc:


1) R3 got some stuff as codecs (not yet implemented) and devices 
for async. Will you think about such abstractions too? (e.g. ports), 
or is Red going to be more "straighforward"/traditional?


2) as View is mostly open-sourced too - will event system allow to 
eventually port View engine to Red later?


3) as 2) requires 'parse, do you plan to have kind of R3 parse too? 
Is that even possible? (as Red is not so dynamic as REBOL?)

1) Ports and devices: yes, definitely. What features does exactly 
"codecs" cover in R3?


2) I was not aware that it was allowed to use View sources with anything 
else than R3?


3) Parse: absolutely. Not sure yet if it will be 100% compatible 
with R3, but it will at least, support R2's whole parse dialect. 
Red should be as "dynamic" as REBOL for the code<=>data paradigm 
once the JIT compiler will be in place.

View sources: If it's BSD licensed (essentially) what would prevent 
them from being usable elsewhere?

If View sources are available under BSD, I will be glad to have it 
as one of the possible libraries for making GUI apps.

I will ask formally.

Petr, it has been a bit of a process in my head in the past few months, 
but to be honest, I've decided to move all my R3 developments and 
plans to Red. All of those also apply to Syllable

I've been waiting for a decade to be able to use REBOL, because it 
never ran on Syllable, and for the past half decade, all subsystems 
were planned to be replaced, seemingly making it uneconomical to 
start using R2 on other platforms

In the past two years I made a lot of effort to get R3 running on 
Syllable Server and then Syllable Desktop, and just now that it was 
becoming somewhat usable, it's being abandoned

This after going through the Atari trauma, and having decided never 
to do that again, seeing all those other people go through the Commodore 
trauma, the Amiga trauma, the RISC OS trauma and the BeOS trauma

I made an exception for REBOL because it's brilliance couldn't be 
found anywhere else, and I paid dearly

Kaj: thanks for your answer to the LLVM comment on OSNews.

Hope I'm saying it right

Yes, it is nicely summed up.

The Rebol source headers say .. free to use as long as you keep the 
headers intact.  And then refers you to the full license .. whereever 
that may lie.

Are the View sources complete in the host-kit or are some part of 
it sill buried in the closed Core?

I think they are complete, but the official word is that the host 
kit will be separated under two licenses: one part open source and 
one part not open source. Both projected licenses are still unspecified

The interfaces between REBOL and AGG are rather REBOL specific. I'm 
not sure it's worth it to try to use them in Red

Cyphre says that it's easily possible to use the AGG part outside 
of R3.

License is a question for Carl. Perhaps it's simpler to just interface 
AGG directly. Not sure.

If you get a BSD licence. The purpose of the other unspecified licence 
is specifically to prevent REBOL competitors

Well, latest AGG version (2.5) is distributed under GPL, development 
has stopped in 2006, it doesn't support hardware acceleration AFAIK, 
so it's a no-go. Cairo seems like a more modern graphic vector engine. 
Anyway, it is open to any contributor, as I don't plan to work personally 
on a View-like engine for Red.

2.4 is BSD. 2.5 is only slightly improved. A residual community around 
AGG has been continuing with 2.4 and has made a few fixes to it

http://agg.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/agg/

There are basically four options: AGG, Fog, Cairo and Skia

I was always unimpressed with Cairo. If you want a full-featured 
library, Skia looks better

AGG and FOG may perform better, but I'm not sure. The choice between 
those two is difficult. AGG is basically abandoned, but still more 
popular than Fog

I have heard about Skia, I agree, it seems like a nice library. Never 
heard about Fog before, but its performances are impressive: http://code.google.com/p/fog/wiki/Benchmarks

Comparing against Cairo is like taking candy from a kid :-)

I'd like to know how it compares to AGG and Skia

I also want to know if rendering quality in Skia is as good as in 
AGG. It sucks in Cairo, or at least it always did. Fog is likely 
to be as good as AGG, because it builds on the same principles

Implemented character set tests and case conversion in the C library 
binding

talking about the C library... will Red compile against the uclibc?

Red/System is written in REBOL

From conversations that I have followed, it does not directly access 
C libraries.

Sorry, I should have written "does not access C libraries"

From a quick check of the source - none of the compiler, the emitter 
or the linker reference any external library.

The first Red complier will be also be written in REBOL. The Red 
Roadmap shows that a beta of Red should be published in Septermber 
2011.

As far as i know, Red/System executables don't rely on C libraries 
either unless they are explicitly declared in the program.

Correct. The question would presumably be: "Will the Red C library 
binding link with uCLibC?"

I'm binding against the ANSI C specification of the standard C library, 
so I have no reason to think that not any C library would work

However, Red will probably soon start using parts of the C library 
binding, so it's likely that future Red programs will almost all 
need to link with a C library

Kaj, you stated: "In the past two years I made a lot of effort to 
get R3 running on Syllable Server and then Syllable Desktop, and 
just now that it was becoming somewhat usable, it's being abandoned."


What exactly is being abandoned? I tried to read back through the 
previous messages, but I'm missing something.

Carl has disappeared for a while .. with no indication as to when 
active R3 development is to recommence

ddhaing - Carl does not do any active R3 development (unless something 
is being done without our knowledge) since 10/2011. That is half 
a year. Carl also does not treat REBOL community well, so some ppl 
get the impression of R3 being "abandoned". Carl replied to Oldes, 
that he is working on some Linux embedded contact, which even does 
not allow him to use the R3. Any question about the R3 development 
plan, stays being unanswered. My take is, that if Carl does not resurface 
soon enough, clearly stating how he plans to proceed with R3, he 
effectively burries R3 under, as ppl might get their free time to 
Red instead.

above - 10/2010

That is annoying, Carl should at least say when he is going to come 
back to R3, even if it is 6 or 9 months later, we should know. Red 
is going great, but I think we'll need them both because Red is a 
compiled language. I use many Rebol scripts on my customer's servers 
to be able to change them easily on the fly.

Red will support high-level scripting through thanks to its JIT-compiler. 
So, building or loading new scripts on-the-fly from your compiled 
Red app will be possible.

(-through)

That will be great. How about binding? Will be similar to Rebol?