World: r4wp

R2-level cross-platform console for Red
 would be great!! Thanks Doc!

Nice addition indeed. That will differ it from R3 too ....

Thanks for the report, Gregg. It could also be that this XP machine 
doesn't have networking. Perhaps Windows doesn't understand that 
it can use localhost

That's a massive patch, Fork

It's impressive and depressing at the same time, because there are 
so many differences between R2 and R3. My CMS was much less work 
to port because I wrote it in very basic REBOL specifically to avoid 
these problems

Thanks, yes, impressive and depressing about sums it up.  :-)

The most annoying parts of course being when obscure bugs in Rebol 
itself lead you on wild goose chases, but that's one of the reasons 
why I think that the largest and most actively developed codebase 
written in Rebol should be stressing R3, not R2, which is dead.

It is my hope that the R2 legacy can be shed, but clearly it is not 
the time today...maybe a couple of months.  R3 patches must be taken 
in a timely manner. The current situation is untenable, so we are 
going to have to agree on a development branch.

Well, it's not the largest code base. Most active, I don't know

The most optimal path is to shed the legacy of R3, as well, and bootstrap 
straight into Red

Kaj, sometimes an interpreted language is optimal, and other times 
a compiled language is.  I hope both R3 and Red will become fully 
functional released software.

Bo: Red has an interpreter built-in.

Either I didn't know that or I forgot.  Thanks for reminding me!

It would be fun to have you comment on the next Syllable article 
on OSNews, where some people have taken it upon themselves to paint 
me as unable to handle compiled languages :-)

If Rebol were not open source and if there were not Rebol-focused 
designers such as BrianH/etc I would be very much on the "bootstrap 
ASAP and escape this ecology" point of view.

But I think that what we must realize is that Rebol and Red are essentially 
occupying a mostly similar design space, where the design choices 
getting hammered out, correct, and consistent are more important 
than performance...and will be for a while longer.

To me this lends a prioritization balance such that what's good for 
Rebol 3 is good for Red, and bootstrap should be delayed until those 
issues have been solved intelligently and in a way that converges 
the two.

Rebol's conventional ANSI C implementation makes it more "boring" 
than Red, but this boringness will be an advantage in pitching the 
interpreter as a replacement for awk/sed/whatever-crap-people-are-using. 
 If they cannot read the source or understand the toolchain, they 
will be suspicious.

A healthy Rebol gives Red another avenue for attack, especially if 
any *unnecessary* incompatibilities have been hammered out.

At first Rebol's boring and (to my taste) "shooting from the hip" 
C source code, a relic of another era, got me down a little.  But 
it's very clear.  The boringness is an asset, it plays well with 
others...

Convergence is key in my mind as well Brian.

Red is going to freak a lot of people out, despite being open source. 
 Having both options gives more growth potential, and the easier 
it is to walk between them the more strength the whole ecology will 
have.

I think a different class of people will freak out, in a good way, 
over Red.

@Fork: Precisely why Carl chose to use C...cross platform compatibility 
and clean coding.  As far as code goes, I'd much prefer "boring" 
to "messy" or "complicated".

What is Red being developed in?

Kaj - I would definitely stay away frorm publishing Syllable news 
to OSnews, if it is related to Red/REBOL only, it creates very negative 
ractions ....

Bo - I think it is being developed in Red/System?

Bo, it's done in Red/System. The big advantage is that it has a very 
simple and portable tool-chain, much smaller than C.

Bo - I can suggest you to look into following slides - http://www.red-lang.org/p/about.html

You know what they say: any publicity is good publicity

Bo - Most recent Red talk here (remastered, subtitled), current status: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjPKj0_HBTY

RaspberryPi coming in luxury blue version - wonder, when we get Red 
one? :-) http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/04/raspberry-pi-coming-in-limited-edition-blue/

What is Red being developed in?


Red compiler is written in R2, the interpreter and whole runtime 
library is written in Red/System.

Just for interest ...... If Red compiler had to migrate to R3, how 
much effort do you think would be needed to convert the code?

Fork just did that, but it's unfinished. See his link above

Or my links in the Syllable group, for that matter

There's also a summary here:

https://github.com/dockimbel/Red/pull/421

Thanks.....Looks like the Rebol subset used in Rec Compiler is close 
to R3 compliant.
Though loss of hash! may slow compile times.

Fork may have more details on the effort, but he started working 
on the port to R3 roughly two months ago.

With the famous words of: "Well I'm also sick right now so I kind 
of have to tackle little things that don't need a lot of focus. Looking 
at building Red with the open source r3 release."

(Also note that hash! is not really "lost" in any definitive sense, 
its functionality can be recovered in several conceivable ways, some 
of them probably not needing any modification to the "core".)

Sorry, I meant to say what language is Red/System developed in, but 
now I remember that I build my Red/System programs in R2 currently. 
 For some reason, I thought Red/System's low-level code was in C, 
but I guess that's just because Red/System code kind of looks like 
C.

@Fork, I watched that video previously.

@Pekr, the red one is currently in production, but only available 
in China.  No, I'm not kidding.

The reason is that China has a different set of electronic certifications 
that aren't compatible with the EU or US, so they had to make it 
visually different, even though the circuitry is exactly the same.

@DocKimbel, I keep going to red-lang.org to download Red and Red/System, 
but then I remember it isn't there.  Is there any way you could put 
a link on red-lang.org to the binaries?

Maybe along the top, have a "Download" tab where the other tabs are, 
and everything needed to know about downloading it could be there.

Bo: there's no "binaries" (yet) for Red and Red/System, you need 
to go on github and download the sources (using the method that suits 
you the most).

All instructions are on the Red page on github, that's just a click 
away from the red-lang home page (the "Fork me on Github" red banner).