As a long-time supporter of Metacard (MC), I, too, have lamented in previous posts about the directions that RR has taken. I won't repeat those either. I simply want to emphasise *one* point. *I* (and for all I know, only I) use MC as I used hypercard: stacks that used hypercard (hc) as the interpretative engine. To do that in hc (on old 68k machines), hc had to be wickedly *fast*, transparent, extensible, and efficient. And it was: stacks were a few k in size, and hc outran anything I ever encountered (especially once on the fly compilation was encorporated), and whole new language units were immediately at the user's command. MC apparently aimed for the same goals, with, as with hc, stand-alone capabilities as at best a clumsy afterthought for those who couldn't or wouldn't use IDEs better adapted to such (e.g., ZBasic, then FutureBasic to name the best, and the many Fortran, Pascal, C, and C++ IDE/compilers to name the worst in descending order). As with hc, the point was distributable *stacks*, with MC as the engine.
RR has evolved more and more to a different, if common, approach: stand-alones as the ultimate, distributed product. Yes, the IDE (like most of the same ilk, e.g., RealBasic) is slow and clumsy, but the stand-alone is fast so, what is the complaint? Just this: I want the modern equivalent of hypercard (as described earlier), not a 4th GL way to produce bloated 2.5 GL products.
*If* the debate were simply over IDEs to produce stand-alones, there would be no real issue. But, contrary to the spin, a simple change in IDE is not all that has happened; there has been a fundamental change in the underlying philosophy of the product, as evinced by the licensing and the recent ``closed'' aspects of the IDE. Yes, it is probably only me that gives a flying ``whatever''. But that doesn't make what has happened any less real. And disappointing, and sad. (And please don't respond with usual tiresome, trite mantras of ``well, they gotta make money'' or ``it's all about market share'' or ``the new IDE is so much easier for the novice''--all of which may be true-- or other such drivel, thank you---*those* are *not* the issue). It is the *philosophy* of MC that needs support, which included what used to be phenomenal user support, even for those that downloaded the 10-line version (which provided the engine for any and all MC stacks that were distributed).
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John R. Vokey
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