World: r4wp

Thank you Peter! :-)

You're welcomed. Any news how the implementation goes? Is it as expected, 
or any new design complications arose? :-) I miss you blogging from 
time to time. Well, most probably no details to blog about, so looking 
forward to see first Red alpha in upcoming weeks :-)

Doc, have you considered using kickstarter for funding?

I thought about that recently too!

VIA Technologies competition to Raspberry Pi - http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/22/via-technologies-outs-49-apc-android-barebones/

eh, wrong group, although :-)

Maarten: yes, but they are two show-stoppers for that, firstly you 
need to be based in USA, secondly you need to get a big enough user 
base.

Pekr: I will write a blog entry that will give more details once 
I publish the new commits.

http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://www.red-lang.org/ says 
red site is down

Temporary outage

It's works ok now. I don't know if the temporary outages are caused 
by the Blogger platform or domain servers...probably the Blogger 
domain redirection.

Any updates on a date for Red ( not system ) ?

alpha ..

@DocLimbel Is there a way to speed updates? Could you ask for some 
specific functions or some other piece of code to be developed ?

Marco - I think that what we are waiting for is a significant part 
of work being done to see first draft or RED alpha, including compiler. 
Those things might take some time. I believe that once published, 
we will see more regular updates again. Just my opinion of course 
...

Yes, but still we want to help where we can. Taking over simple tasks 
to free DocKimble for more complex work that is of yet above our 
abilities. So Doc, try and delegate some simple tasks to this community.

It is easier to start with these kinds of tasks than to fork Red 
on Github and then wondering about and think of somthing useful to 
contribute.

It's usually much easier for a primary author if contributors take 
on tasks that are isolated from the central core. There is huge opportunity 
for such contributions in a platform type work. Why don't you pick 
some library or library binding to write that interests you?

I don't know what you mean by that. A library or library-binding 
that is interesting to me? Okay let's say I find it important to 
use Red as I do with REBOL on my Apache driven website (no option 
to choose the server with my webhostingservice) to process rebol 
scripts and rsp scripts. I think there is a world of Red users to 
be won if Red could do this, at least we would be able to run Red/Redsp 
scripts on the apacheservers potential customers will have their 
websites hosted on, if you still can follow, they may not be too 
enthousiast changing websitehosting services only because we have 
some fun Rebol/Red scripting to offer. So where would I start?

Red is compiled, it is not a convenient solution imo to work with 
CGI imo ...

Arnold - I think, that right now, we have to wait. There's only a 
Red/System low level (VM) language RED will compile to. You can do 
some library binding using Red/System. What you most probably will 
want to program in, though, is Red itself. Doc is working on it ...

I guess so. I see it like a compiled Red compiler deciding if the 
called script has already been compiled, if so the script is executed, 
but if no match is found b'tween the compiled script and source it 
will be (re)compiled and then executed.

That i also why some of us are trying to get some modest programming 
work to contribute directly in the right place.

Red will have scripting support I think, so it can be used as CGI.

It will! Even if we have to bribe Doc into it ;-)

:-)

I've never understood how people can look at an unfinished volunteer 
platform such as Red or Syllable and not see scores of interesting 
things to do, or think they have to wait for some magic milestone, 
so it's probably me

But there you go: using Red on Apache is a very concrete and interesting 
task

Red is actually quite suitable for CGI, because the compiled executables 
are absolutely tiny, like they were in languages such as C when CGI 
was introduced. This means the performance will be quite good, not 
like the performance hit CGI suffers with heavy modern programming 
environments such as REBOL where the whole virtual machine needs 
to be started for every request. At the same time, you still have 
the advantages that made CGI popular: simplicity, robustness and 
security

You'll have to research the CGI interface a bit and maybe make it 
like the REBOL one. It's quite simple: you need standard output, 
which is just printing, standard input, and reading environment variables

Printing is included in Red/System. Reading environment variables 
is in my C library binding. The only problem is standard input. I 
think it can be bound on Windows to platform specific functions, 
but on Unix platforms it requires importing the standard file descriptor 
data, which Red/System can't do yet. So that would be the only limitation 
to wait for here, but it can already be done on Windows

Moving up, you could write a FastCGI server that would solve that 
problem and would also be more performant

Another option would be writing an Apache module in Red/System. I 
think that would require producing a plug-in as a shared library. 
The Red/System linker can't do that yet, so that would be another 
one to wait for

I think the FastCGI server is doable now. Instead of writing a complete 
one, you could probably also find a library written in C and bind 
to it

If you want RSP templating with that, you'd have to port one of the 
REBOL versions to Red. If you want it to be close to the REBOL version, 
you'd have to wait for Red for that, but you could also write a simpler 
version in Red/System

@Marco: I don't see any simple way to speed up updates for now, but 
if you have propositions, I'll be glad to review them.

@Graham and others: I should have wrote you earlier about what I 
am currently doing instead of leaving you with no info, sorry for 
that, I was very busy these last weeks, with both real life events 
(good ones ;-)) and a new customer from which I accepted a short-term 
job to help pay the bills. The contributions I've received so far 
*are* helpful and I can't thank enough all the people that made donations! 
But their are not enough to cover all my expenses here, if I could 
get 3-4 times more from donations, that would be perfect, but as 
long as the userbase won't be larger I think that it won't be  possible.


So I've accepted a short contract (til end of june) to build a trading 
bot generator with a visual editor (GUI in View) that emits MQ4 language 
source code for feeding the Metatrader4 application. Of course, I'm 
building it in REBOL (Red not ready yet for that). The plan was to 
work part-time on it and part-time on Red, but these last two weeks 
I had to work almost only on that project. I still have a few days 
of intensive work on it, then I'll switch to part-time.


I have quite a lot of code to commit (the Red compiler), but I'll 
wait to finish first the internal modifications in Red/System (to 
ease the integration with Red) before publishing it.

Thanks for the update.

Good news for Red's sustainability

got to pay the bills first for sure

Doc - thanks for posting a status update - that's what we asked for 
- being informed, no push on you to hurry the release. This is exactly 
what we expected from Carl, kind of honest message to the few in 
community, describing the reality. The worst thing is information 
embargo.

Pity there's not more donations, simply put our community is not 
large enough, yet, to gain 300-400 EUR/month, which would pay your 
bills. I will continue to donate, as my bills will allow me to ....

I hope we will gain more ppl looking into Red, I am warming up with 
BeagleBone, so I hope we can show something to the community in half 
a year. But right now, even my priorities are shifted - LED screen 
business, marketing company, photo studio, etc ...

I've tried donating a couple of times, but Paypal won't let me. I'm 
a bit weary of using bank transfers.

Doc: Sometimes working on a project is good, your brain still thinks 
on Red in background I'm sure, so short breaks are not bad, they 
make your ideas more mature. Thanks for sharing the status.

Pekr: right, 400 EUR/month would be enough. 


I believe that the Raspberry pi board has a huge potential, we should 
try our best to support it and build tools for it in Red.

(I'm still waiting for mine to be delivered)

Endo: true, but I've found the perfect way to keep my mind fresh, 
I go on hiking in mountains here almost each Sunday.

Each sunday?? I able to do it here once or twice a year! jealous 
:(

So Doc - do you expect anything being released let's say for the 
July/August?