AWESOME work!!! And good explanation. Sad but the reality is that your right. I have seen other tools in Windows, but multi-platform? Nope not one that is worth looking at.
If you add Word Document support, you would get an immediate client in us/me. Giovanni Brendan Murphy wrote: > Joshua Coventry wrote: > >> This looks interesting but at $450 per license, that's rather steep. >> Can you expand on what justifies the price? (obviously a lot of work >> and time has gone into this, but apart from those factors). >> > > To sum it up, unique value! > > First lets not over look the time and effort put into the FTC. I > have said this several times before on this list that many people > have started projects like the FTC, but have ultimately failed > because they underestimated the difficulty and size of the project > and/or over estimated their skill level to handle the project. So > ask yourself what it would cost you to write the FTC? How much is > your time worth to you? Let's say it took you one man year to > design, code, test, and document it, what would your boss had to > pay in your salary for you to do it? If you think about it that > way, $450 is dirt cheap! > > Look at the alternatives, what are they? You have the built in > EditField, the WordGuise plugin, RbEdit (from Excel Software), and > a handful of small specialized EditField like controls. A while > back I saw another project that was trying to create an EditField > replacement, but nothing came of it. The FTC is modeled after > Apple's Pages word processor, so it is going for the high end. > Given that, the FTC literally opens the door for you to write a > cross-platform word processor. I am not saying that is the > intended target for the FTC, but that such a possibility is now > feasible. The more likely scenario is to use the FTC to build in > word processing capabilities and report display capabilities into > your application. If you use the other alternatives, you get what > you pay for and it will show in your application. I once heard a > college professor say about writing software, "Beg, borrow, or > steal before you invent brand new." I am sure he was > being facetious about stealing, but his point was save yourself a > lot of grief and trouble and use existing solutions if they exist. > Given that, there exists no solution out there that filled my > requirements, thus was born the FTC. Out of my need you can now > have access to something you don't have to create yourself! > > The FTC has many unique features and especially with beta 10 and > the introduction of custom objects, you can do things in the FTC > that simply can't be done otherwise. In the next beta of the FTC I > will be adding a capability which will make the FTC broader in its > appeal (so stay tuned). Also note, the greatest feature of the FTC > is that you get the full source code! This gives you maximum > flexibility. > > On the negative perception side, I tend to find many > who congregate around the RB environment have a skewed perception > of what a lot of development tools out there cost. I think a lot > of RB users don't truly understand the gem they have in RB! In my > many years of development on projects with millions of lines of > code and hundreds of programmers down to one man projects, RB > can't be beat for the market it addresses. So you see the $300 > subscription price for RB and think, oh my that is expensive. Try > paying $1000, $4000, or $8000 a crack for some of the specialized > development tools out there and you will begin to see the value of > RB and what it can do. Likewise, the same argument can be said > about the FTC. The value you are getting from the FTC is great. > > I am now nearing the end of the development of version 1.0 of the > FTC. In my opinion the best distribution option for the FTC would > to make it completely free and open source, but obviously I can't > just do that. To that end last Monday, I send email to Geoff > asking if he would want to buy the rights to the FTC and make it > free and open sourced for the entire RB community. So far I have > heard nothing and I have no idea why he has not responded. To this > end, I have two suggestions for the RB community. First, open a > feedback report asking for RS to buy the rights to the FTC and > then get everyone to sign on to it. Second, if you really want to > see the FTC be free for everybody, write Geoff and state your > support for this idea. I won't personally create the feedback > report myself since this would be self-serving on my part. If you > want it to free, you have to ask for it, but there is no guarantee > RS will do it, but it is more likely to happen if the community is > asking for it. > > There is a lot more I could say about the value of the FTC like it > has an full fledged RTF parsing engine that far exceeds RS's > recent efforts, but I have to get back to developing the FTC and > make it more valuable. The proof is in the pudding, so check out > the demo. > > > _______________________________________________ > Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: > <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> > > Search the archives: > <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html> > > _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
