On Saturday, 24-Novenber-2007 at 17:27:12 Henrik Mikael Kristensen wrote, >On 24/11/2007, at 1.42, Carl Read wrote: > >> >> On Saturday, 24-Novenber-2007 at 1:08:04 Giuseppe Chillemi wrote, >> >>> I have read everywhere to have a personal opinion about the release = >>> date: >>> Rebol 3 won't be complete for another one and half year. Expect a = >>> alpha/beta >>> during the end of the winter/start of the spring; all protocols >>> will be >>> ready by the end of 2008/start of 2009 and then the new VID will >>> see the >>> light. In 2009 rebol will face the major debugging work and in >>> 2010/2011 >>> many external modules will be integrated into Rebol new open = >>> architecture. >> >> That's a very long three months... > >That seems about right for the 2008 part, but VID3 will be available >with the first alpha according to the current plan as approved by >Carl. Having monitored the progress closely (I helped testing the >prototypes), I think it took only a few days to build the first >prototype, about a week more to develop the second one and in about 4 >weeks, we got to where we are now with extending the second >prototype. But development has stopped right now, because Gabriele >has been busy elsewhere for about 2 months and it's not certain when >he will return, because he keeps being pulled back to work on >something unrelated to R3. He's crucial for moving VID3 forward. We >also need to develop at least one more prototype before the design >can be deemed good enough. It doesn't take long for Gabriele to do >it, but he is unfortunately busy. > >So why can't someone else, perhaps a lazy guy like me do that? > >All coders and contributors are specialists in their own area with me >working on VID3 GUI appearance, DevBase GUI, generic testing and the >Cookbook list for DocBase. This is the best I can do and if I were to >try to work on VID3, I'd be ruining Gabriele's work with inferior >code, because VID3 is a pretty good design so far and I can't carry >that torch, so to speak. My face turns white, every time I look at >the VID3 code. :-) Cyphre is the specialist in low level graphics, >GOBs and WinXP graphics integration. He knows how to bring the best >performance out of AGG. Brian Tiffin works on DocBase and knows >things about MediaWiki that we others don't. And so there are great >people working in each narrow field. > >The truth right now is that RT needs hard core expert coders, not PR. > From where I'm sitting, it looks to me that all the best coders are >strained very hard to make stuff for R3 right now. They are under >contract for doing unrelated work and that delays all the juicy parts >of R3 for a few months. That's unfortunate, but PR will not help >that.
Well it's not PR I was wanting, but more realistic timeframes like you (and Giuseppe) are providing here. But they should really be on rebol.com somewhere, so can be considered official. The problem for those already using REBOL (but outside of the inner circle) is we get comments on the mailing list here along the lines of "R2 is obsolete", yet we don't know how long it'll be before its replacement appears in a form that's good enough to actually be used as a replacement. Of course we continue using R2, but it's hard to imagine starting something with it that's supposed to have a long shelf-life. Many thanks for this response. -- Carl Read. >In fact it will make it worse I think, to attract curious >people to R3 at this time, people who are not qualified to work on >these crucial parts and will ask questions that aren't timely to ask >right now. People who are qualified to make critical design reviews, >who write great REBOL code and understand the inner workings of R2 to >be able to judge what would be good code for R3, are needed for R3. >Also people who are able to do a lot of boring tests are needed. Carl >is asking for tests to new code all the time and we are currently >underdelivering, because it's time consuming and boring work. :-) > >In order to get to do that, the best thing one can do, is to be a >proven R2 coder and try to get into the AltME world for R3 >development. R3 development only happens there, not on forums or >mailing lists or in blogs. It may take some time to get in, because >you need to be approved by Carl and he's busy all the time. > >Right now, DevBase is "easier", because it's "just" REBOL code and >more people can directly contribute to that and over 230 code >submissions have been made to its database already, some to R3, some >for DevBase improvements and some to improving REBOL/Services >(something that also benefits R/S under R2). > >But yes, REBOL development generally suffers from delays, because one >single coder can hold it all up, due to family or contractual >obligations elsewhere. Had Gabriele been available for the past 2 >months, VID3 would be in the late debugging phase now, rocking our >socks off even more than it does now. That's the price to pay, when >the contributions must be top notch. > >About the rest of the time table posted above, you are not taking >DevBase into account: As we move further towards completion, simpler, >upper level parts will be accessible to anyone through DevBase, so >the debugging work won't last that long. Combining DevBase with a bug >tracker and a discussion system like AltME works very well. At that >point, it's very much up to you, how fast development goes, so if I >were you, I'd free up some time in 2008 for testing, learning how to >use DevBase and begin some REBOL code scrutinizing. :-) I'm fairly >sure that by the end of 2008, R3's core with all advertized features >are largely done and ready for the really big expansions that will >require a large number of developers. > >-- >Regards, >Henrik Mikael Kristensen -- To unsubscribe from the list, just send an email to lists at rebol.com with unsubscribe as the subject.
