AltME chat replacement in REBOL and Meta launched
Since very early on, the REBOL community had its own communication system, AltME, the Alternative Messaging Environment. It's a complete groupware system, but much lighter weight than others. It was much better than WhatsApp long before WhatsApp. It should have become WhatsApp, but it didn't target replacing text messaging for free on phones, so that never happened.
A small core group of the REBOL community still clings to it. A few weeks ago, we got a scare: it went down for almost a week. It turns out it had been hosted by the Red Language Foundation for the last few years, they announced they don't want to host it anymore, but there was no further announcement about a decision. Fortunately, it's back up now, but the long-time world master was deleted and the hosting situation is currently unclear.
For many years, people talked about writing a replacement, but nobody ever did. That week, I started creating an AltME replacement. I had planned to do that later when my Meta language is more capable, but it can't wait any longer. Currently, I am writing it in a combination of REBOL 3 and Meta. It is hosted by Meta. In the future, it will be written completely in Meta.
For now, it is almost as simple as possible, focusing on the chat functionality. Over time, more (AltME like) features will be added.
I opened these topics for the Meta language, Meta on Atari 8-bit, and the Syllable operating system project:
https://social.metaproject.frl/Meta/
https://social.metaproject.frl/Meta/platforms/Atari/8-bit/
https://social.metaproject.frl/Syllable/
There aren't many places to discuss REBOL anymore, so as a courtesy to the REBOL community, I also set up a REBOL channel:
https://social.metaproject.frl/REBOL/
posted by: Kaj de Vos 9-Jun-2022/15:52:44-7:00
Thanks.
posted by: Sam the Truck 24-Jun-2022/0:07:49-7:00
Kaj, you could have used the forum.rebol.info which is rebol dedicated instead of creating yet another rebol forum! Yes, it's https only but that's the new reality
posted by: Graham 18-Jul-2022/14:37:48-7:00
Hi Graham, long time no talk.
I am a groupware expert and evaluated many communication systems over the decades. There are a series of reasons not to use existing systems. Presumably, several of those reasons were also why you wrote OpenME.
forum.rebol.info was for REBOL and is now taken over by Ren-C. It is not suitable for Meta, Syllable and Atari.
REBOL and Meta are meant to create groupware systems. What good would they be if they would not even be used to run their own forums?
I need complete, very specific control over the infrastructure of my projects. For example, HTTPS is not a reality for older REBOL versions, and not for Syllable yet. Some past projects were seriously bogged down by lack of such control.
And then there are the general problems with the quality of modern software. My projects are meant to improve this, not go along with it. Please refer to the project goals:
language.metaproject.frl/#goals
posted by: Kaj 19-Jul-2022/13:41:46-7:00
I set up forum.rebol.info for rebol ... and that included Red, but no one else posted. So, it's ren-c just by default due to lack of participation from others.
posted by: Graham 21-Jul-2022/15:08:42-7:00
Well, the REBOL world on AltME has been down for a few weeks now, without an announcement. It seems it's gone. The web archive already stalled half a year ago:
rebol.info/altme
It seems I made my chat forum just in time:
social.metaproject.frl/REBOL/
posted by: Kaj 30-Aug-2022/5:59:17-7:00
That's sad to hear. There was a time when I spent lots of time in AltME.
posted by: Nick 2-Sep-2022/23:16:34-7:00
Wow, AltME is back. Still no idea who is hosting it now and for how long.
posted by: Kaj 14-Sep-2022/10:00:25-7:00
The AltME archive at http://rebol.info/altme is dependent on a headless AltME client that isn't always reliable. If I can figure out how to log back in with said client (Graham or John may know how) then the archive should sync up again.
posted by: Chris 23-Sep-2022/21:16:44-7:00
The REBOL world on AltME has been down again for many months now. It doesn't seem to be coming back this time.
posted by: Kaj 6-Mar-2024/8:09:46-8:00
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