What attracted me to Rebol was that you could just do so many things immediately, without a long learning curve. The fact that it's not limited in the same ways as other simple-to-use tools, is what makes it useful beyond the initial learning curve. We all appreciate that Rebol works easily with Internet protocols, so many data types, GUIs and graphics, etc. - all natively. Those things are neatly wrapped up in the language so that you don't have to work at a low level, or use an OO approach with lots of libraries and layers - "simple things are done simply". The main thing I'm hoping is for that trend to continue - for RT to continue to wrap up more things that _have_ to be done at a low level at this point, using the OS directly or some other development tool. Keep the language interface straightforward, consistent, and useful. Make the current version work across more modern platforms and keep the distribution as small as possible - that's what attracted us all to Rebol in the first place, and what keeps us devoted to it. It's powerful now. I don't think we need any new paradigms, just new native abililities. If something is _not possible_ in Rebol at this point _without accessing native OS calls_, then those are the things that I hope are added. Most of those things are related to hardware control: better multiplatform support for sound, CD music, maybe a simple native multiplatform interface to webcams, etc. Those are things I could really use, and which would make Rebol ultimately useful. Anything that can be implemented in Rebol - as it exists - doesn't need to be added by RT. Protocol extensions can be the responsibility of the community. Everyone has different needs and desires, and it's clear that Rebol can't stay small if everyone's wish is granted. Doc Kimbel's MySQL interface, Gabriele Santilli's PDF dialect, Christian Ensel's menu system, Andrew Hoadley's 3d engine, Oldes' flash dialect, etc. are so useful, but those things don't need to be part of the interpreter. Clearly, they were added as third party creations. If it's possible to implement common video codecs in Rebol as it exists, for example, then that can be the responsibility of the community. If it's not _possible_ to implement a video codec in Rebol, then we need native tools in Rebol to make it possible. Speed up the things that need to be sped up, provide access to the hardware in a way that makes it possible, etc. If RT wants to provide that sort of thing modularly, that's great, but not at the expense of a small minimum distribution (of course, those who are happy with 1.3 could just continue to use 1.3...).
Beyond that, I hope RT really works at marketing. A bigger community means a more productive and capable language via more third party tools. That's where Rebol's really lacking. No one uses it. Carl and many of the Rebol gurus are design geniuses - my sense is that they should devote more of their energy and vision to promoting the superior design of Rebol, and making it commercially acceptable to use it! Success in that area would be success for everyone involved :) We use language as an interface to the machine's hardware and OS. Rebol lets us control many of those things natively, with a language design that's brilliant. RT implemented GUI and graphics beautifully. They added things like serial I/O natively. We need more native abilities like those - anything that has to be done directly with the OS and/or some other tool. I don't see anything wrong with the language design - I only see a few capabilities missing - continuing the trend so that Rebol isn't incapable in certain areas will attract more people to use Rebol, and will continue to make it more productive for all of us. Quoting Giuseppe Chillemi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > >>> Simply put - all things we wished for in the last few years will >>> hopefully come. > > >> Unicode? > > Multitasking ? > 3D support ? > NiceUI ? > Good development enviromnent ? > > I have never had the needing for those features. I can still live with View > 1.3.2 ;-) > > Giuseppe Chillemi > > > > > -- > To unsubscribe from the list, just send an email to > lists at rebol.com with unsubscribe as the subject. > > -- To unsubscribe from the list, just send an email to lists at rebol.com with unsubscribe as the subject.
