Comments on: Ref Card for Beginners
Over the weekend, while I was out of town, I begin designing a web page that I've wanted to create for years: a REBOL quick reference card for beginners. This one links to the R3 documentation, but we could have one for R2 as well, if it's of interest to users. Also, it's just a draft, and there are more improvements to make in the layout and content.
The purpose is to list the most common features and functions of the language. That's useful to new programmers because browsing the function dictionary pages can often be a bit intimidating.
It's funny. Most experts don't really use a card like this, so building one ends up as a low priority wish-list task that never happens. It turns out that an old friend created one many years ago and gave me a copy, but I'm not exactly sure what happened to it (and by now it would be out-of-date.) Others have also popped up over the years, but I'm not sure where they are located or if they're still there.
Anyway, if you have a function that you use quite often, and it's not listed, click on the suggest link at the top and add your suggestion to the wiki page. Any other suggestions are welcome.
21 Comments Comments:
Leafy
1-Aug-2010 23:12:37 |
This is actually what I was looking for a few days ago, as I wanted to learn R3 but there is no clear reference guide. Thank you ^_^ | Endo
2-Aug-2010 2:01:39 |
Very nice, thanks.
Please use the same window instead of opening popups when a link clicked.
And we could also merge this page with the functions.html page. Add functions.html to end of this page (sorted list of all functions) just like the http://www.rebol.com/docs/dictionary.html
| Nick
2-Aug-2010 11:07:12 |
http://re-bol.com/examples.txt is probably useful for anyone who has an interest in the quick reference card (R2). | Carl Sassenrath
2-Aug-2010 11:55:12 |
Nick, good stuff... but that may overwhelm new users without something to show section breaks.
Perhaps add an examples.html that gives an nice index into that big file, with heading separators. (Maybe you already have it?)
Also, move the "compacted demo" (which will scare a lot of new users) to the end. Otherwise, they may not scroll past that! | Nick
2-Aug-2010 13:52:46 |
There's a free PDF at lulu.com with a bit more formatting, together with purchasable hard copies of both it and the re-bol.com tutorial. Searching "rebol" will bring them all up immediately. The PDFs are all free, and I added $0 commission to the printed editios, just to make a quick way for people to grab paper copies if they're interested. (The texts at re-bol.com are always the most current). | Gregg Irwin
2-Aug-2010 16:40:18 |
I don't see a Suggest link. Where is it? | Greg Schofield
2-Aug-2010 18:55:23 |
I am a perpetual newbie and this card is a very handy reminder -- just what was needed, many thanks. | Thomas T
2-Aug-2010 19:31:49 |
Nick does write excellent material. If I might suggest, the readability of the documents, which are published in the same fashion as rebol.com documentation, could be improved if shorter line lengths were used.
For example, the shorter line lengths of this comments page makes the material easier to read and digest than the documents with their long lines that span the entire width of the monitor's page.
... maybe I should I just get a smaller laptop?
| Nick
3-Aug-2010 6:46:18 |
Thanks Thomas :) I keep the line lengths in code examples limited to 79 characters. Any shorter then that, and lines tend to be harder to follow because there are too many unnecessary carriage returns. That forces a certain page width, given a readable sized font (about 3/5 of a screen with 1024 pixels across, using default fonts in most browsers). If I get more feedback to change the layout, I'd be happy to offer different formats. | David Cope
3-Aug-2010 9:16:59 |
Nice reference, thanks. But..any words ending with a question mark (exists?, size? etc) resolve to a 404 error.
Regards, David. | meijeru
4-Aug-2010 4:57:35 |
(at)David:
the files containing the explanations have names ending in -q, thus exists? should refer to .../exists-q.html.
Obviously Carl (the only one, I think, with editing privileges for that page) did not remember his own conventions :-) | David Cope
6-Aug-2010 11:54:34 |
(at)meljeru
Not sure what the error was, but Carl has fixed it now :-) | Shadwolf
7-Aug-2010 6:36:54 |
I like having an overview of rebol that way !!!
Brillant job carl ;)
For people like me who made the rebol 2 dictionary word translation and have a good idea of the overview of what were rebol words in R2 it apears already to be lighter a better organised.
| shadwolf
7-Aug-2010 6:40:11 |
hum ??? i'm having a deep doubt .... the LAYOUT word in VID in R3 ???? really ???? though it was all about the GOB now no?
| Shadwolf
7-Aug-2010 6:49:18 |
ok it was a joke ... pff people those days aren't fun at all...
A mini dictionnary of the most usefull rebol words is a very good idea it reminds me the **** in a nutshell series of books of the o'reilly editions.
| Some
23-Aug-2010 7:09:52 |
Is SOME a Rebol word? Found it in an example. Impossible to search for.
parse load/markup read to-url ask "url: " [
some [tag! | set x string! (prin x)]
]
| Henrik
23-Aug-2010 9:43:15 |
SOME is a parse dialect keyword. You can read about it in the PARSE documentation here:
http://www.rebol.com/r3/docs/concepts/parsing-dialects.html
But I agree that it should show up in help somehow and probably will in the future.
| non reboler
17-Sep-2010 5:14:35 |
"Carl Sassenrath
2-Aug-2010 11:55:12 Nick, good stuff... but ....
Also, move the "compacted demo" (which will scare a lot of new users) to the end. Otherwise, they may not scroll past that!
"
i Totally disagree with that kind of thinking, a new user comes across this new thing called rebol scripting with GUI ability's, they WANT to see a real working full application in real life just working , in fact id say make the very first thing they see is fancy a practical app as you can make for the cut/paste.
then and only then, do you start your 'this is how it was done' section by section breakdown, and then 'these are the most common mistakes others have have made' , and heres how you can make it do the right thing code etc...
simple yet informative in both text and graphic example as relates to the portability and possibility they may have forming of their non programmer mind as they progress.
one things clear, long time programmers and scientists alike, seem to forget the simple logic of the human mind and how data/information is retained best when you see natural visual cue's and relationships in the information being passed, not dry data.
see the many science journals/papers and magazines in the subject of human learning etc.
think differently, but not so different that you loose the plot, that being... YOU DO WANT PEOPLE TO ACTUALLY USE YOUR PRODUCT. | Marc
11-Apr-2011 14:45:15 |
Congratulations for implementing the intersect function in Rebol which is extremly easy to use compared to other programming languages. Unfortunately, I have problems with the comparison of two very long lists of numbers (about 40,000). Even short lists of numbers instead of text returns error messages.
Is there a way to use the intersect function for numbers instead of names?
Thanks a lot for your advice!
Marc | Marc
11-Apr-2011 15:05:45 |
My apologies for my ignorance. Obviously, it is possible to convert the integers to strings by using the form function. Very easy, indeed. Congratulations again!
Marc | Fred Booth
17-Mar-2021 18:49:40 |
Are there any more networking functions yet, a sthe internet has moved on to using 'https' url's instead of just 'http'.
Is it possible to implement a web browser, even a basic version, in Rebol?
Or is it possible to extend the functionality of an older web browser by using Rebol?
Has anyone tried? |
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