Hi.. Interesting the twists and turns this has taken so far..

Although I am PRO a new REBOL percentage datatype, I don't buy into this
argument that it's so essential to VID.

VID needs documentation and example. But above all it needs a stronger set of
useful modern interfaces for resizing, nesting tables, spacers, sizers, split
views etc..
They need a friendly dialect/syntax suitable for reading and writing GUI
layouts.

percent% as datatype is surely the smallest part of that problem.
Yes it might be nice, but the description of relative/absolute widths etc, could
equally well be handled by a block syntax.

Anyway, 'OF' seems like a valid addition and is very readable.
Perhaps a new operator is more important than the datatype, and thus may be also
easier to explore.

>> 50% x 20%

bothers me.. I argue don't mix pair values and percent.

>> 50% of 20% of something

ok now does make sense.

Whatever happens with implementing % percent datatype, thinking about 'OF' has
interesting consequences.. For example consider this:

>> position: 400x20

>> table: 120x30
== 120x30
>> type? table
== pair!
>> 0.4 * table
** Script Error: Cannot use multiply on decimal! value
** Near: 0.4 * table

>> 50% of xy   ;<< wishful thinking
== 60x15

...or if percent is not available, we can just use

>> 0.5 of table
== 60x15
>> 0.5 of table/x
== 60

>> half: 0.5
>> half of my-profit all of my-love
>> position image-box half height of screen

In layout dialect we want to be smarter add more readable [x y width height area
margin indent]

What y'all think??

./Jason


> Joel, Carl, et al
>
> The argument for percent! being useful in VID makes me think......ouch! :)
>
> Quick thoughts:
>
> 1) VID is a dialect, so adding support for ##% syntax isn't the same as
> adding a percent! datatype. I don't have a problem extending VID's syntax in
> that way except that...
>
> 2) Adding that ability opens up a whole can of worms related to pair! values
> which don't support even decimal components at this time, only integers.
>
> --Gregg


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