Tebibyte Media's August in Review

This month, Tebibyte Media welcomed two new Network members and a consistent amount of activity surrounding the Project. The consistency of the community and the new Network membership applications are exciting and promising for us, and we hope to maintain the same kind of excitement for the Network and its potential members.

Project Updates

The main site has been updated to include a page regarding the Network, elaborating on some questions and concerns relating to the structure and nature of the Network.

In addition, throughout the month, our Gitea instance's theming recieved constant refinement thanks to our team; we put out our first republished article, Reflections on Trusting Trust by Ken Thompson; and we added a lot of new features to our multi-purpose bot.

Network Updates

In August, the Network recieved two new applications, one for ARF, and one for Nexus.

ARF is an experimental, low-level programming language that aims to increase code clarity and modularization through the use of cleverly designed syntax and file structure. It will have an advanced type system based around the concept of inheritance, with support for features such as Go-style interfaces and eventually even generics. Its application to become a Tebibyte Media Network member was accepted just a few days ago.

The project is still in its infancy, and the initial compiler is still being worked on. Development is currently centered around the ARF parser, which is the part of the compiler responsible for converting tokenized source files into an abstract syntax tree. Prior to this month, there was a previous attempt at creating a compiler for this language that stalled due to poor design choices.

During the past month, a complete rewrite was initiated with a more solid and robust structure. The parser portion of the compiler is nearing completion. All of the features that have been implemented so far are working correctly and passing all unit tests. There has also been significant progress in documenting the language itself, in order to create a reference from which to build the rest of the compiler.

By sometime in early September, the parser will be fully complete and work on the semantic analyzer will commence. After that is finished, the compiler will be able to easily generate C code which can in turn be compiled into executable binaries.

Recent overhauls to real-time rendering engine Cyborg's core libraries have enabled work to begin on the engine's shader editor, Ramen. The system will enable users to design complex visual effects using a node-based GUI, making Cyborg a more intuitive and powerful toolkit for designing 3D graphics. This month, the team has implemented the underlying data structures and functions needed to translate graph structures into executable GPU instructions. With that working, the project's current priority is to integrate that logic into the Cyborg editor so that testing can begin on Ramen's interface and code generation.

Help Wanted

We are continuing to look for individuals who are passionate about free software and open-access who are willing to accept applications for Network membership and to help edit and write update articles and editorials to publish and republish on the blog. Anyone interested in doing any or all of this may send an e-mail to apply@tebibyte.media including a statement of interest; details such as availability, the reason for interest in the Project, and any other important information regarding the position being applied to.

Next Month

We would like to thank both the Tebibyte Media Network and its community in general for its activity, scintillation, and work for the last few months. Tebibyte Media owes its existence to them. These are important times for the Network, and with this support, there are some promising changes on their way.