[REBOL] Re: facts we will have to face ...
From: holger:rebol at: 24-Oct-2001 6:26
On Wed, Oct 24, 2001 at 08:26:51AM +0200, Petr Krenzelok wrote:
> Well, Rebol is nice collection of functionality. You can do many usefull
> apps using Rebol, and I hope it will even become better. We can of course
> link to native libraries, but then we lose multiplatform advantage.
Yes, but for Quicktime, RealAudio/Video and a lot of other standards
that is the only solution, because these formats require codecs that
implement the patented image/sound compression schemes.
That also means that it is unlikely that there will ever (within the
next 17 years anyway) be truly cross-platform support for these
standards, whether in REBOL or in any other environment.
The best possible solution is to work within the APIs and dev kits
that companies like Apple or RealMedia provide, and implement support
in REBOL by accessing their libraries. Of course this means that not
all platforms can be supported. We have looked into that, and
it seems possible, but at the moment other things have higher
priorities. Would be an interesting third-party project though:
all you need is View/Pro, the dev kit and a lot of time :-).
> The
> only solution here would be Tao-like virtual processor. But that's not
> likely to happen anytime soon.
It would not make any difference because of the legal situation.
For most of the codecs even a complete white-room reimplementation
from scratch in VM would still be illegal.
--
Holger Kruse
[holger--rebol--com]