Here's a quote from the second article from Jason's IOS post... "According to Sassenrath, another complaint he hears often is that REBOL isn't open source. The scripts are open source, but the system itself is not. Sassenrath says that the company plans to release the system one day, but that it needs to age a bit more. "While we control it, we can give 100 percent confidence that a script you write on one machine will run on any other machine. Once we open it, that will start to fade." Strangely enough, this hasn't proven to be a problem for the many other languages that have been released openly. "
I started using Rebol because it was just so darn easy to learn, and makes great AI. But I find myself referencing other languages more and more when trying to determine how to do something in .R. eg: Need to control some app via API? Let's see how they do it in Perl etc. Of late, I've being reading up on PHP again. Not bad, gots a compiler and everything. It's great if you need dynamic pages with MySQL access, of course, it can't do everything that .R can. But PHP and the other languages out there have something that Rebol doesn't... community, and plenty of it. As an experiment I did various google searches using "n tutorial" (with quotes), with the following page counts ... "Java tutorial" - 81,600 "PHP tutorial" - 9,940 "C++ tutorial" - 9,820 "Perl tutorial" - 13,600 "Rebol tutorial" - 42 42? Yes, 42. The problem is the Rebol community, although incredibly savvy and helpful, is just too small. No wonder there's a lack of documentation, simply no one around to create it. I belive this has been recognized by RT, so they've been concentrating on IOS rather than expending on Rebol itself for so few users. (Relatively speaking). Any one "killer app" idea is worth more than the language it is written in. So, if RT is going to just concentrate on apps, then why not offer Pro and command for free? Of course, if View/Pro/Command is making ANY decent money at all, then forget it, but if not, why not. I don't see Rebol growing too quickly given all the options out there that have 2000 times the community, and are free as well. Of course, if it was opened, then the community would grow as well. TB ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jason Cunliffe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, March 17, 2002 7:53 PM Subject: [REBOL] Re: IOS (was: Browser gripe) > Hi Gregg > > Thanks. Yes your description helps. > > I just went to check on rebol.com and delighted to discover they have a new > links to IOS articles > http://www.linuxfocus.org/English/March2002/article230.shtml > > and > > http://www.newarchitectmag.com/documents/s=2457/new1015630100801/index.html > > ..at last some new press coverage. Spring must be here :-) > > Funny RT didn't post an announce to the list, or did I miss something? > > > I can publish things via IOS to a server. I can then go anywhere in the > > world and fire up the IOS/Link client on a clean machine, and everything > > I've published (or that anyone else has published on the server) is > > automatically sync'd. Now, lots of people on this list will undoubtedly > > think "Yeah, so what. I know of n other systems that do that too." The > thing > > that makes IOS great, to me, is how simply, easily, and reliably it all > > works. > > ok: A. synchronize distributed data easily > > That something we all want the smallest possible headache to do? > > Please can you clarify what "firing up" IOS/Link client on a clean machine > involves. > What is the cost per link client? > How easy to customize the look of the client? > > > IOS doesn't provide everything you might ever want, but it's easy to > extend. > > For one project I'm working on, we're using a remote Rugby server along > with > > IOS to provide facilities that I don't yet know how to provide via IOS. > > aha.. > > > I built the original app under /View, we installed IOS, published the > > scripts, and it ran under IOS without any changes. IOS becomes a simple > > deployment mechanism. I can have the Conference reblet fired up, and have > > people looking at the app. As they make suggestions, I can tweak it on the > > fly, re-publish it, and they can run it again to see the changes. If I > need > > to roll back to a previous version, IOS maintains a history of published > > versions for me automatically. > > You mean you are tweaking your own /View scripts which are now distributed > and synchonrized [published] via IOS ? > The history function sounds nice, like the cool 'versions' thing in Zope. > > Is 'publish' on a demand-basis? > If clients are on-line 24/7 like DSL how quickly are updates propagated? > Is this architecture like DNS? > > Does IOS care what your Viewlets are? > Can non-Rebol/Link clients also access them [in non published mode] ? > > Where is this stuff explained? > Are there docs? > > cheers > ./Jason > > -- > To unsubscribe from this list, please send an email to > [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe" in the > subject, without the quotes. > -- To unsubscribe from this list, please send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe" in the subject, without the quotes.
