Please consider helping this little fellow who has cerebral palsy...
(C) 2012 Brett Handley
16 March 2012
It has been a year since I've seen official activity on REBOL. Unfortunately, I am left to conclude that REBOL and the community surrounding it has been abandoned by REBOL Technologies.
Things change, people have to move on - those things are accepted. But no announcement of wind-down, release to other developers, or whatever being made over the year is pretty poor.
I expect that I will take down this site in the months to come. So if you want to keep this info, look it up on archive.org or save it now.
REBOL can be a very productive language but like all languages you will find it useful for some things but not others. Learning REBOL is a very worthwhile experience, the benefits of REBOL can not be counted only by what is produced, but also in how you think after you have learnt it.
Information on this site has been useful to me at various points in time so hopefully it will be useful to others as well. Better to have it available and imperfect than not available at all.
Along with these REBOL pages there is a "rebsite" for REBOL/View users which contains other REBOL scripts, demonstrations and documentation. In REBOL/View find it in the sites folder under the name "Code C.".
Be warned. REBOL can be addictive.
REBOL's creator, Carl Sassenrath, writes a blog which focusses on REBOL. Carl's Blog is the best source of information on the status and development priorities of REBOL.
Here are some "must read" blog entries that focus on the REBOL language:
Start with the REBOL /Core documentation and try writing some simple scripts. The trick to getting most from the documentation is taking it at face value. The reference documentation is written in a succinct style, like REBOL itself. Make sure you look into the tutorials and examples on the REBOL Developer Network (see link below) - especially the cookbook. Also, check out the tips and techniques part of this site while learning.
For /View try out the demos from the desktop - note that it downloads on demand (first time). Have a peek at the code for the demos - you will find the scripts are pretty small.
With learning any new language expect a learning curve. Same for REBOL, but you can do some useful things in REBOL without needing to learn a lot. Getting a nuanced view of REBOL takes more time - unlearning some assumptions!
With the release of REBOL/View 1.3 a large number bugfixes were made and a couple of small changes to the language were included. For example, FTP has been made far more reliable. As I write many other REBOL products will be brought into line with these changes.
The significance of this is that there are likely to be bits of information on this site which may not longer be true in the context of REBOL/View 1.3.
If you have doubts, test before using. Also check out the searchable RAMBO bug database on REBOL.net to see if your issue is covered there.
When learning any language you might have a question that has been answered already. I've gathered a number of posts from the REBOL mailing list, edited them and placed them on these pages. The result is a grab bag of useful tidbits, insights and information.
If you want to get into the details of REBOL/View you'll need to poke around "under the hood" a bit. I've done a bit of this in the past and I'll need to update some of my notes in the light of the View 1.3 release so don't be suprised to find stuff that is now wrong but for those who want some info it still could be handy. Interactive version of these are available on my rebsite - the location of which is in the square brackets:
There's also some other old REBOL/View Tips.
Scripts I've posted to REBOL.org
These are newer scripts that I've contributed to the library. Be sure to check their documentation.
These scripts are the same as that found in my "rebsite" which can be accessed using REBOL/View. Open REBOL/View (which is free for personal use), click on the Rebol.com folder, click on the "Sites" icon and then finally the "Code C." icon which represents my rebsite.
Here are some more REBOL scripts. These tend to be older than those my rebsite library. There may be overlaps too.
The NoteTab editor is a great text editor. I've created some files here that allow you to get NoteTab to call REBOL for editing tasks. My favourite is using REBOL to tidy my REBOL scripts!
REBOL is growing, so there are lots of good sites not listed here. The links below are just some that caught my eye.
Rebol Technologies (http://www.rebol.com)
The home of REBOL. Check it out. If you have a corporate interest be sure to look into REBOL/IOS.
REBOL Forces (http://www.rebolforces.com)
REBOL Forces contains lots of useful articles on REBOL, and much more.
From the editor's note:
"We aim to cover the full gamut of REBOL topics, with articles for all skill levels. Quite a task, but we are strapped in and prepared for the long and eventful REBOL journey. Take a seat, enjoy the scenery or share the driving, it's up to you. Just make sure someone has brought a camera."
The REBOL Developer Network (http://www.rebol.net/)
REBOL Developer Network. An invaluable resource for developers.
Contains a growing and functional script library and mailing list message archive.
Oldes has created a REBOL dialect for SWF. Generate SWF files, including compiled Flash action script from REBOL script code. Impressive!
The author is having trouble updating his original site so the information is spread across two sites.
Gabriele has created a dialect to emit PDF documents. The files are available on his rebsite "Rebol.it". Use REBOL/View to access the rebsite.
Gavin a beefed up customisable XML parser for REBOL. Then he went on to create a tool that produces an object model to represent the XML. The nice thing is you can use REBOL paths to access the elements and content. Gavin's original site is down, but the scripts can be found on REBOL.org here:
Dobeash Investments Pty Ltd creates products based upon REBOL.
Quick Plot Dialect (q-plot.r) is an easy to use dialect to simplify displaying 2D plots within REBOL/View. Along with q-plot Matt had included a great interactive tutorial for the dialect called ez-plot.r
Both these REBOL scripts can be found in the REBOL.org library.
Phil Bevan has a REBOL based email client.
In REBOL/View Goto http://www.upnaway.com/~philb/philip/index.r
Ladislav investigates and demonstrates REBOL concepts and capabilities, providing useful scripts along the way. Much of the content is advanced.
Konka is meant to be a universal 3D front end for specialized applications and services, written in various programming languages that require support for 3D visualization. Konka also provides a capability for standalone 3D rendering and animation.
As part of the Konka pagkage, Jan has included some useful REBOL scripts for use separately from Konka - see "Reusable components".
Konka can be used in Engineering, Science and could be very useful as an educational tool.
Using REBOL's excellent internet support, Konka can be used as an engine to generate 3D visualizations for Web services, for lightweight peer-to-peer services, on-line business catalogues, etc.
See REBOL.org for a searchable archive of the REBOL mailing list.
REBOL promotes the use of Dialects. Another name for them is "Mini-Languages". Yet another is "Domain Specific Languages". Multiple dialects are used in REBOL. You'll be using them before you realise it and you can create your own. This page contains links to dialects that people have created to solve certain problems in a flexible way.