> function. There is much more to using it than meets the eye. And I believe > not yet enough examples or use of dialects for most people to understand yet > the long-term implication of the idea or how well this works in reality.
I was not trolling. And I am certainly not against dialects. Simply stating the situation as I see it - rebol dialects really have not been tested and used my large numbers of people in complex apps, so we donlt know yet the deeper implications of using them. One issue of dialects has come up here, is that while they can lead to sweet short code, dialects are only as good as their documentation. Since one is possibly creating a specialistssub- language within the parent language, there has to be excllent way for people to know what it contains, whether it behaves differently or if its sytnax is consistent or not with their expectations and the parent language. VID for example is one dialect for view. But already in places it is fuses a slightly different syntactic set of conventions than regular rebol. That is good or bad depending on your POV. In general I am in favor of as much syntax consistency as possible. But its early days, so experimentation and diversity are required. When a solo developer to creates a dialect , they are 100% free to do whatever works best for their need and style. But if that work is to be really helpful to a wide community, then subtle variations and idiosyncrasies can soon become an obstacle to adoption. > Panel [ > Button/System "Cancel" 'Cancel > Button/System "OK 'OK > ] > > Which one would you prefer? :) Yes no contest. But I think its a rather misleading comparison you offer. In standard OO languages like Python you typically package up any verbose complexity to create an class/object which is as easy and concise to use as your Rebol example. Rebol is lovely and clean partly because it removes extra punctuation. I think rebol is much easier to write than read. Python is perhaps the most balanced language where write-ability = read-ability. Python's named function arguments have much to do with this. Programmers in Rebol and Python both have to be very aware of namespace. I think this is what Max's SLiM is addressing and so I imagine could greatly help dialect use in Rebol. In rebol if you see 'button' in some code how do you know if that's a default button or dialected word also named "button" which may have overlapping behavior. Beyond namespace there is the social aspect of how customized developments can be elegant but harder to use/maintain because they have smaller population. In fact its the same problem in real life - lawyer politicians scientists, rap artists, poets all have their own dialects and often cannot communicate well. And there are traditional regional dialects too where its quite possible to sit at dinner a family and find they share only some words. I have experienced this first hand with people from southern China. The guy's wife could not speak to her mother-in-law. ouch. The solution is almost always for people to know several languages so they have at least one in common. With rebol dialects, success is a tradeoff between readability, write-ability, documentation, name-space and learning curve. They're a great idea, but not been around long enough to know how to use them best, grasp the trade-offs. Brody wrote brilliantly in his two classic books "Starting Forth" and "Thinking Forth" about the art and science of naming words carefully in Forth. Charles Moore has also spoken about this. And I think it applies deeply to Rebol also, perhaps because Rebol is like 'reverse' Forth -- it goes forwards] ;-) Designing Rebol dialects is not easy. And there are few guidelines yet. The minimal introductory presentation the Rebol documentation implies that god dialect share an emergent representation of a problem domain. banking, gui, etc When you understand the problem well and then want to simplify and focus the cod so it is more readable, then you write a dialect. Make-swf source is good reading to see how David Oldes' has been learning and improving his own dialect. I think make-swf is one of the most advanced uses thus far of rebol dialect. I look forwards to seeing copies of O'Reilly latest: "Rebol Dialects in a Nutshell". Then we'll know they really arrived! - Jason -- To unsubscribe from this list, just send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe as the subject.
