Dan,
  With all due respect, I think you've misjudged me.  I haven't dismissed
REBOL.  I haven't made *any* decision about it other than that I feel no need
to explore it *at this time*.  There are myriads of languages in the world and
I have a finite amount of time in my day.  I was struck by the fact that the
same discussion had come up on another mailing list not that long ago.  I found
the comments interesting and thought that others might as well.  Whether they
are accurate or not seems to be a point of some disagreement.  That's an
argument I do not intend to join.
  But my decision was not based any more than slightly on the discussion in
which those comments came up.  I have not tried REBOL any more than I've tried
Ada or Lisp.  There may come a time in my future when I need to.
  I did go to its homesite and read up on it, but saw no reason to spend any
time on it now.  REBOL may be worth much.  Then again, it may not.  But nothing
in my reading gave me reason to believe that it would address any of my needs.
Neither did it do much for me aesthetically.
  Furthermore, the examples given here were not that exciting *to me*.  I
almost never have any need to save a web page to a file or to mail one to
somebody and when I do, I really don't need to write a program to do it.  If
that's REBOL's claim to fame, it will have to find it's adherents elsewhere.

Ted

P.S.  Just to be fair, the example given of saving a web page to a file is
almost definitely shorter in REBOL than in Perl.  In Perl it would probably
take 2 lines instead of 1 ;-).  On some machines, the other example could be
done in two lines as well--I don't know if that holds true on all machines.
P.P.S.  I've been back to the homesite, checking to see if the rewrite made
REBOL any more interesting to me.  The site looks nice.  The language appears
to be well documented.  As I said before, I think it's really cool that Curtis
has found a language which excites him.  I know what its like to really love a
language and wish him all the best.
--
Ted Ashton ([log in to unmask]), Info Serv, Southern Adventist University
          ==========================================================
We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make
the work as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worry
about the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea first, and so
on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you
actually did in order to get to do the work.
                                      -- Feynman, Richard Philips (1918 - 1988)