Rebol Tutorial

The lazy way to generate Rebol’s header

Rebol’s header is mandatory for a script file to be interpreted directly by Rebol Engine (though you can also execute a file without header in your own script or from Rebol’s Console with “do load” instruction) from Windows or Linux Shell. It can be as simple as:


Rebol[]

But if you want to document your script, you can add some meta-information like this one for the Thumbnail WebService Script:


Rebol [
    Title: "Thumbnail Web Service"
    Author-Url: <a href=http://reboltutorial.com/blog/rebol-rest-webservices/>http://reboltutorial.com/blog/rebol-rest-webservices/</a>
    Script-Url:  <a href=http://reboltutorial.com/source/thumbnail.r>http://reboltutorial.com/source/thumbnail.r</a>
    Date:  23-Aug-2009
    Purpose: {
            Request Thumbnail through Web Service
    }
]

As I am lazy, I have automated the creation of this type of repetitive header with this script. You can download and customize it at will. This is how it works in my example:

Launch Rebol Console, execute


do http://reboltutorial.com/source/header.r

Answer the few questions:
generate-rebol-header
and get your header copied to the clipboard:
generate-header-result

This is the source of header script:


Rebol [
    Title: "header template"
    Author-Url: http://reboltutorial.com/blog/header-template
    Script-Url:  http://reboltutorial.com/source/header.r
    Date:  19-Aug-2009
    Purpose: "Create a Header Template for a Rebol Program"
]

header-template: {
Rebol [
    Title: "<%title%>"
    Author-Url: <%Author-html-link%>
    Script-Url:  <%Script-html-link%>
    Date:  <%date%>
    Purpose: {
            <%purpose%>
    }
]
}

title: ask "title: "
Author-Url: ask "Author Url: "
Author-html-link: rejoin ["<a href=" Author-Url ">" Author-Url "</a>"]
Script-Url: ask "Script-Url: "
Script-html-link: rejoin ["<a href=" Script-Url ">" Script-Url "</a>"]
date: now/date
purpose: ask "purpose: "

write clipboard:// build-markup header-template
print "copied to clipboard ..."
input