World: r4wp

I think you don't want to understand me, but my time is up

Btw, you can't run applications for Linux on Unix without a compatibility 
library either. Bringing MS into it is just an insult.

Ah, see, you do understand me :-)

I don't expect Red and R3 to have the same system model, because 
if they did there would be no point to having Red at all. Being able 
to have extensions that can integrate into both would be an unusually 
amazing bonus :)

I still don't know if you really don't see it, but I could easily 
define them

For that matter, I expect to make my own Rebol spinoff language that 
will follow a completely different system model than either Red or 
Rebol, and the only reason to do so is because those other languages 
don't cover that situation (otherwise I would have been more active 
in Red so far). Being different justifies their existence; interoperating 
with each other justifies their cooperation :)

I don't expect Red and R3 to be compatible because Red is compiled 
and R3 is interpreted. Both models have their place and their strengths. 
That doesn't mean that they can't be compatible with each other where 
that makes sense, or interoperate with each other where that makes 
sense.

I don't expect Red and R3 to be compatible because Red is compiled 
and R3 is interpreted.
 I hope you like surprizes then. ;-)

I don't expect it, but that doesn't mean that we won't do our best 
to fake it :)

Are you planning to use the direct binding model, and value slots?

Out of curiosity...

Assuming that Red will be compiled (even JIT), the actual semantics 
will be different even if the outside behavior will appear to be 
similar enough that it won't matter for most people, hence the "fake 
it" phrase. It would be a disservice to us if we got a compiler, 
which has definite if minimal disadvantges over an interpreter, without 
getting the advantages of a compiler such as a practical optimizer. 
The behavior of R3 and Red could be quite similar to an outside observer 
that doesn't look closely, but they would require different optimization 
strategies to get the most efficient code. In that way I don't expect 
them to be compatible - they would likely be even less compatible 
than R2 and R3. But that's not really a problem :)

Are you planning to use the direct binding model, and value slots?
 That's already there in Red runtime.

Red runtime library

Sorry for the dumb questions, I've been too busy to participate yet 
:(

Semantics will be very close, probably 99% close, as I've moved from 
a statically typed system to an hybrid static/dynamic typing system.

So, no lexical binding? Or do you plan to infer lexical binding where 
possible, and use direct where not?

So, if all goes well, you'll have the full REBOL model + optimizations. 
There are many ways to optimize and on many different abstraction 
levels. Yet, some atomic operations will remain "unoptimized", like 
series atomic manipulations (maybe we'll figure out a way to optimize 
them too in the future).

Lexical binding will be added when we'll add contexts (in a few weeks), 
along with dynamic binding (yes, you'll be able to have fun with 
BIND again ;-)).

In a couple of days, I'll release the first Red alpha with a blog 
entry to describe it, you'll be able to get a better picture of what's 
in Red already and where it's heading.

So, my module system will end up being of more use to you. I'll be 
sure to write up that TRANSCODE/part option request for R3 in CureCode, 
for your reference.

I ran into the need for that with multi-scripts.

Well, maybe. :-) I must admit I haven't yet dived into R3 module 
system to see if it fits well our needs.

our needs
: they are not yet clearly defined, btw.

It isn't specifically for R3. Most of the design decisions were based 
around the constraints of the direct binding model, and of making 
it as simple as possible for people who are not used to modular programming 
to use. Beyond that, we just made it as powerful as possible without 
killing the usability.

Being simple

 is probably the most important feature I would require from a module 
 system.

There are still some parts that I could use a little help with though, 
like resolving import cycles. And there are some bugs and/or weaknesses 
in the native code that I've had to work around in my patches collection.

The "being simple" part was mostly driven by Carl. I tried to make 
it simple, but it took some doing to make it even more simple for 
Carl. There's a lot of subtle code in there to make it simple enough 
for Carl to want to use it.

Resolving import cycles

: we've solved that in Red/System compiler by having a simple "included 
files" list and it stops inclusion if already done once. But we do 
that at compile-time, so it's easy.

I thought that something similar would work for R3, but haven't done 
it yet. R3 releases kind-of stopped before I got the chance.

A module system is where you would find a lot of places where the 
internals would be different, due to the compilation thing, but the 
external behavior could appear to be the same. There are a lot of 
nice tricks in R3's module system, and I've gone through a lot of 
trouble to make it possible to have the module system be handled 
by a preprocessor that doesn't have to execute any of the code in 
the modukle bodies to resolve dependencies. It was designed with 
preprocessors like prebol or Ladislav's include in mind. And all 
of that is in the specifications of how modules are declared, not 
in the actual mechanism that implements it, so the concepts would 
be portable to Red.

There's no reason that Red couldn't also implement compressed scripts, 
checksums, multi-scripts and embedded scripts the same way too. All 
of those apply to all scripts, not just modules, so they could work 
the same way for runtime-compiled Red scripts as well.

Certainly, but AOT compilation would be a big plus. Also, in Red 
we need to modularize the compilation process itself, so  we can 
do incremental AOT compilation on multi-files projects instead of 
having to rebuild everything (include runtime libraries) each time. 
We need to, somehow, match those compilation units with the higher-level 
module system (it's not the only option, but probably the most simple).

Multi-scripts would be mostly a packaging method. It could even help 
AOT compiled scripts at the script distribution phase. I'm thinking 
of install-time-compiled scripts, for instance. It would also help 
with mixed-Rebol-Red projects like what I described above for R3 
extensions. Also, it could help for data files in some cases, or 
metadata embedded in other files.

Well, the R3 module system is designed to be statically resolvable, 
so the same method would work for resolving Red modules in a project.

That is why Needs and Exports are headers rather than function calls, 
and export and hidden are module-code-block keywords instead of functions. 
You can determine the whole dependency chain by loading the script, 
examining the header, and searching the top block of the source for 
the keywords.

The same goes for extensions - their embedded module wrapper is treated 
like any other module. You could AOT compile R3 extension wrappers 
that dynamically load the extension's native code at runtime.

Here are block-embedded multi-scripts:
[rebol []
print "hello world"]
[red []
print "hello world"]

Here are length-specified multi-scripts (which can be faster at times):
rebol [length: 19]
print "hello world"
red [length: 19]
print "hello world"

Note that if you specify the length, it applies to the length of 
the script after the header and an optional newline after it (cr, 
crlf or lf). Same goes for the checksum. Both apply to binary data, 
meaning the source in UTF-8 encoding and with newlines in the style 
that they are specified in the file.

With compressed scripts, you can either have raw compressed data, 
or binary! syntax compressed data, after the header and an optional 
trailing newline. If you have raw binary data and a length header 
then it is only decompressed until the end of the length (with DECOMPRESS/part). 
The option of binary! syntax is useful for block-embedded scripts 
or scripts posted in a text environment, and it doesn't really combine 
well with the length header so that is ignored in this case; one 
of them had to take precedence (until I get TRANSCODE/part) so I 
picked compression. It is more likely that the length header and 
raw compressed data would be combined, anyways, For compressed scripts, 
the checksum applies to the decompressed binary data.

install-time-compiled scripts
 We'll support that option too.


Statically resolvable module system: that's a very useful feature 
to have, not only for compilation, but for auto-documentation generation 
too.

The same method that is used for compressed scripts could be used 
for encrypted scripts too, or for precompiled modules that you are 
packaging together. The same method used for checksums could be used 
for cryptographic signatures as well.

This also lets you store scripts or modules in databases too.

You should take upcoming red|rebin format also into account. That 
might be a preferable method sometimes rather than compressed scripts. 
Red will pre-compile most of the scripts content, but we might keep 
some "code" blocks in source form for reflection (when used by the 
script and inferred by the compiler).

I wanted to publish my redbin specs earlier, but stopped when I read 
that R3 might use a copyleft license.

The community is leaning more towards Apache now, so as long as you 
don't patent redbin (or grant use of the patent) it would be usable.

An asymetric permissive licensing model between Red and R3 might 
prevent me from publishing info about what we'll do next, to prevent 
the features from being implemented first with a copyleft license 
attached. It would just be unfair to Red, so I would have to be cautious 
about that.

Don't underestimate the value of treating the header and the rest 
of the script differently. It lets you put a lot of static information 
in the header without even looking in the sctipt data at all.

Right, the header is a great source of metadata.