World: r4wp

Cool.

BrianH: I agree that we should avoid arbitrary syntax incompatibilities. 
For achieving that, the best way is first to have a complete formal 
description of the target syntax that we all agree on, then only 
we'll be able to flag deviations from that model as bugs. 


IIRC Chris has started working on such formal description, how complete 
is it?

Looks like we need to find some simple but efficient online collaboration 
tool to better keep track and organize all the common sub-tasks between 
R3 and Red that keep poping up these days.

I have that bookmarked, but haven't yet looked it over thoroughly. 
I noticed that the last time I tried to determine R3 syntax the effort 
generated a lot of bug tickets. The same would likely happen once 
I get a chance to go over Red syntax, and they may end up being a 
lot of the same bugs. Some syntax issues are an inevitible result 
of being in the same syntactic family, and not realy arbitrary when 
you consider the balance of the entire syntax.

For instance, there is at least one bug report for R3 related to 
increasing the number of delimiters that should be rejected because 
implementing it would drastically reduce the readability of code 
written in any Rebol family language. If Red implemented that proposal 
it would be a bad thing for Red as well for the same reasons.

And I was the one who filed the bug report :(

Boron may fail because people just don't seem to be interested in 
it and World already failed because it's closed soirce.

I don't think World failed, actually. I think it succeeded at what 
he needed it to succeed at. He just didn't need adoption by other 
people.

As Geomol doesn't list World in used tools for his iOS projects I 
guess it failed.

Sounds like Brian means Boron

Doc, the Brackets editor is using Trello for the online task tracking/collaboration. 
Looks pretty cool and doesn't cost.
https://trello.com/board/brackets/4f90a6d98f77505d7940ce88

World's value slot size is 256 bits, which only makes sense for big 
data, not for mobile platforms like iOS. Its semantic model is basically 
that of R3 (plus all of the changes that he had requested R3 make 
that were rejected), and that semantic model is not really compatible 
with the iOS App Store review process. So I'm not surprised to see 
him not use World for iOS - its target market is completely different.

Kaj, are you sure? "He just didn't need adoption by other people." 
sounds like closed source nature of World, not Boron's GPL.

He released documentation, not the actual interpreter. He needed 
advice, not adoption.

Boron is meant to be used by a lot of people, hence the copyleft 
license and actually being released.

I often have no idea what's in Brian's head :-)

I must confess that I have one very big and irrational problem with 
Boron. It has same name as one extremly stupid Czech heavy metal 
band. I just cannot work with it, even if it may be great language.

(I will file a bug report for Brian's head ;-)

I met them on one festival where we were playing together and from 
that day I just can't stand Boron.

John needs World to become popular, because his business model is 
to sell a book about it. Karl specifically didn't mean Thune to become 
popular, probably not even ORCA. Boron was meant for a wide audience 
again, but he does not depend on it, because he's simply developing 
it for his work

I was fine with Orca.

That's cool, Rebolek :-)

Having only been exposed (mentally, not physically) to the element 
Boron, I have no prejudice against it's name. And I have a coffee 
cup with an orca on it :)

I know it's pretty stupid but I can't help myself :) That's why I 
was very glad for Red(/System). That and BSD vs. GPL.

ONE MORE TIME: IT'S NOT GPL!

Ah, I didn't know about the book. He only mentioned wanting to use 
it for his projects, which I could only guess at because of its semantic 
model. I mostly knew about it because the World features he was promoting 
the most, beyond the 256-bit value slots, I recognized as being rejected 
R3 tickets.

That's why I said that incompatibility with R3 was part of the point 
to World. He went out of his way to talk about the deliberately incompatible 
features. The only thing left to distinguish it semantically from 
being something in the same category as R2, R3 and Boron was the 
256-bit value slots. Otherwise it was pretty much the same language 
model.

Red is a different language model, of course.

OK, I understand your point

The iOS theory is reversed, though. World is aimed at science, and 
then the iOS apps came just to make money for World development

That makes sense.

Kaj: LGPL? Sorry, I'm not expert at licensing.

Yes, very different

Unfortunately, we are forced to be experts at licensing

Boron is basically like R2, but with a Lua/R3-like library model 
with a different FFI from either, at least in terms of its major 
semantic model. Syntactically Boron has gone out of its way to adopt 
more C-like features here and there. The LGPL argument is more a 
personal and social thing as far as I am concerned, it's not the 
reason for the language design choices. You can tell the reason for 
the language design choices just be seeing which choices were made 
(assuming a reasonably intelligent person).

Still, there must be some factor at play that makes Boron unatractive 
to people. I just don't know what it is.

(people - most of current Rebol users)

Copyleft, even the minimal copyleft of LGPL, is a bit off-putting 
for a development tool of a Rebol-like semantic model. For reasons 
that only became apparent later, so I'm not knocking the choice in 
hindsight because of the results.

It's mostly a mystery to me too, but my best guess is the divide 
between free software culture and the old REBOL/Amiga culture of 
mostly American business

I liked the library idea though, it was cool. The C-like stuff was 
also off-putting for me, but I can see why you'd want it to appeal 
as a scripting language to a crowd of Posix users.

So you're also put off by REBOL?

One more personal experience - I never had the same fun playing with 
Boron that I have with R3 or Red/System (practically haven't use 
Red yet).

In general I'm not put off by Rebol-like languages, but the mix of 
Rebol-like and C-like stuff usually doesn't work. Even supporting 
C-like comments conflicts with Rebol syntax in ugly ways. C is better 
in C-like languages.

You have to develop R3 in C now

The only "C-like stuff" I can think of in Boron are 'c' for character 
syntax and comment delimiters. Not exactly earth shattering

Like I said, keep the C stuff in C-like languages. C isn't bad itself, 
necessarily, it has its place. But C syntax and Rebol syntax don't 
mix well. Putting C-like syntax, particularly their comments, in 
a Rebol-like language leads to ugly syntax conflicts.

Sure, but it's hardly used in Boron

It was enough for me to reevaluate using the language. It's implementation 
stuff was cool though.

You can easily define your own COMMENT function and not use /* */

It doesn't matter now. I'll use Boron when I have to though, it's 
still part of the family :)