Re: Metacard support
On Dec 3, 2003, at 6:05 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote: I don't think it's fair to ascribe a less-than-Raney level of responsivness to reluctance. There may be any number of factors involved, not the least that they may simply be busy. I agree with that conclusion, but I have similar concerns as Wilhelm on this point. Although the thread is about the metacard project, here my observations about the use-revolution list. I guess it is NOT an ambivalence about the metacard project, rather support problems in general. IMHO there are lots of threads on the use-revolution list that need feedback from runrev staff, but they often go untouched. Looking at my use-revolution mail folder there are 4061 messages. There are only 82 messages from runrev.com. After removing broadcast announcements from runrev.com (multiple copies because I'm subscribed to multiple lists) then the number is down to 67 messages from runrev.com. 42 of those are from Tuviah. This amounts to only ~ 1% of the messages are from Runrev staff! As with most user-to-user discussion forums, while it's always appreciated when Heather, Goeff, Jeanne, Kevin, or others posts there I don't believe they have an obligation to do so. In the recent past I've been on mailing lists hosted by apple, omnigroup, and realsoftware. I haven't counted, but I estimate that posts by staff members on those lists ranged about 5-10% of total traffic. That makes a big difference in the feel of the list. The apple and omnigroup lists were not even product-related, just general programming-on-mac-os lists. Just the fact the lists are hosted @ runrev.com - I would expect more activity from the staff. Recently people complained on the use-rev mailing list about getting no response from [EMAIL PROTECTED] These are people with, presumably, current Runrev licenses. Maybe Scott Raney exhibited great tech support, but no matter how I look at the current support situation, it doesn't look good, even for a small company that's having growing pains. OTOH a surprisingly high number of posts to use-rev were from yours truly. So I guess I should zip it now :-/ Alex Rice [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Mindlube Software | http://mindlube.com what a waste of thumbs that are opposable to make machines that are disposable -Ani DiFranco ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Metacard support
To use the current version of the engine with the MC IDE you need to go to runrev.com and download a package named Revolution. You can rename it to anything you like, but for communicating with the community as a whole it may be less confusing to just use its current name. I guess this would seem logical due to the new ownership (if not out of respect for Revolution - it's their right). But I have to wonder about all the people out there that have used HyperCard and SuperCard or XTalk and never heard of MetaCard. I switched from HyperCard to SuperCard v1.5 when I saw the name (plus SC supported colour, BONUS!). Then I moved to MetaCard v1 because I was working on an SGI (and I saw an engineer at the company using it, that's how I saw the name MetaCard and nearly died of joy), now I program in Flash because I need full browser support (and it has an exe and works on Linux and SGI so I'm covered). I still use MetaCard 2.5 to build my custom XML creation tool which feeds Flash it's data, but will move that to PHP in the near future. I'm sure I'll be using MC 2.5 for some time to come. RIP MetaCard, you and I had a good ~11 year run together... Sincerely, Simon ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Metacard support
Simon Lord wrote: I have to wonder about all the people out there that have used HyperCard and SuperCard or XTalk and never heard of MetaCard. Precisely. Scott is an excellent engineer, but has no illusions about being a marketer. The buzz is all about Revolution. I switched from HyperCard to SuperCard v1.5 when I saw the name Another plus for Revolution: While HyperCarders and SuperCarders have very positive associations with names ending in Card, we are a minority. Apple's crippling of HyperCard gave the majority of the computing world the mistaken impression that xTalks are toys. By eschewing Card, Revolution has a chance to be perceived on its own terms, unencumbered by any unpleasant associations with Apple's single-window monochrome architecture. RIP MetaCard, you and I had a good ~11 year run together... The queen is dead! Long live the queen! While MetaCard as a product is gone the engine lives on under the name Revolution, with a larger and faster-growing audience than it's ever known before. -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation Developer of WebMerge: Publish any database on any Web site ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com Tel: 323-225-3717 AIM: FourthWorldInc ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Metacard support
Alex Rice wrote: Although the thread is about the metacard project, here my observations about the use-revolution list. I guess it is NOT an ambivalence about the metacard project, rather support problems in general. IMHO there are lots of threads on the use-revolution list that need feedback from runrev staff, but they often go untouched. Looking at my use-revolution mail folder there are 4061 messages. There are only 82 messages from runrev.com. After removing broadcast announcements from runrev.com (multiple copies because I'm subscribed to multiple lists) then the number is down to 67 messages from runrev.com. 42 of those are from Tuviah. This amounts to only ~ 1% of the messages are from Runrev staff! At the risk of sounding like an apologist, they've only recently begun to expand staffing to match the rather appreciable growth they've been experiencing. I suspect that by the time staffing is brought up to match the growth, the standard behavior Wilhelm observed will resume being the standard. I've seen this pattern before with many companies in early stages of growth. In many ways, managing growth in any company is a more complex problem than even the startup phase. It'll either pass or the company dies. Either way it will resolve itself. :) In RunRev's case I expect the former. As with most user-to-user discussion forums, while it's always appreciated when Heather, Goeff, Jeanne, Kevin, or others posts there I don't believe they have an obligation to do so. In the recent past I've been on mailing lists hosted by apple, omnigroup, and realsoftware. I haven't counted, but I estimate that posts by staff members on those lists ranged about 5-10% of total traffic. That makes a big difference in the feel of the list. The apple and omnigroup lists were not even product-related, just general programming-on-mac-os lists. Just the fact the lists are hosted @ runrev.com - I would expect more activity from the staff. Recently people complained on the use-rev mailing list about getting no response from [EMAIL PROTECTED] These are people with, presumably, current Runrev licenses. Not getting timely support that has been paid for is an issue, but not one likely to be corrected on the MC list. I would encourage you to write Jeanne on that. FWIW, the Adobe, Macromedia, and at least one Apple list (the HI-Dev list, before it was shut down for disturbing political reasons) have a policy of being user-to-user; the vendor may chime in, but there is no obligation to provide support through those forums. But it is certainly a very good idea for everyone, perhaps for the vendor more than anyone else: every single question answered in a public forum saves ten private communications on the same topic. I opened a user-to-user forum for WebMerge several months ago and my support costs relative to sales have dropped appreciably. Part of that is attributed to the smart, helpful people who post there, and part of it is that I can address support issues for everyone at one time by posting there. Maybe Scott Raney exhibited great tech support, but no matter how I look at the current support situation, it doesn't look good, even for a small company that's having growing pains. Scott was a god with responsiveness. Never seen anything like it before, doubt I ever will again. It takes a certain almost OCD-like quality that on my most obsessive day I only meet halfway. Yet even in my merely-halfway-to-Scott-level obsessiveness, I get strong feedback that tells me its worth the effort, like this email that came in today: Thank you very much for your help. It's a shame some of the software companies larger than yourselves don't model their customer service, support and product quality on FourthWorld - I'm not even a customer quite yet, and I feel completely secure about your company and software. Scott inspired a new level of support commitment here, and it has tangible benefits. Hopefully as RunRev increases staff size they'll catch the obsession with similar results. OTOH a surprisingly high number of posts to use-rev were from yours truly. So I guess I should zip it now :-/ Why do we need Rev folks when we have you? :) -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com Tel: 323-225-3717 AIM: FourthWorldInc ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Touchy selection business
At 6:50 am +0100 4/12/03, MisterX wrote: hi everyone, Im making a long overdue tool that's just too fruity! But i came across a limitation... on mouseenter put the selection into s1 -- bla bla bla put the selectedchunk into s2 -- char x to y of field 1 put the selectedfield into s3 -- field 1 put the target into s4 -- the control receiving the mouseenter put s1,s2,s3,s4 into lselection put lselection end mouseenter if your selection is in the message, you dont know it is in the message box or your top stack for example. There is no long selectanything... The problem is that there is no way of knowing what stack (given palettes exist) contains the current selection. How about put the long id of the selectedfield into s3 Does that give you what you need? Dave ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Metacard support
Richard Gaskin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: While MetaCard as a product is gone the engine lives on under the name Revolution, with a larger and faster-growing audience than it's ever known before. Take a look on the data with a text editor, you will see something as : #!/bin/sh # MetaCard 2.4 stack # The following is not ASCII text, # so now would be a good time to q out of more exec mc $0 $ PS: wonder what means a good time to q out of more? -- Digital photos (nature, garden) : http://cooldomi.free.fr/ Scripting : http://domiscript.free.fr/ ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Multiple sounds playing at once - how?
I'm looking for suggestions on how to get multiple sounds to play at once using MetaCard 2.4.3. I currently use the play command (play audioClip, specifically) to play AIFF sounds. I had used the play videoClip command in many past projects, letting my file size be smaller by using QuickTime compression codecs to compress my sounds, but I just found out when developing my golf game that playing a video clip introduces a significant stutter of the MetaCard engine both when I start and finish a play videoClip command. I would love to just have a few player objects and have them play for different things (one for the bounce of my ball, another player for crowd noise, another for the line judge, etc.), but whenever I have even one player object in my stack, my stack seems to degrade pretty bad over time, eating up more and more and more processor. That's just with even one player. Even with one player right away, it just seems to eat up a huge amount of processor - and this is on a relatively speedy 800 MHz G4. Anyone have any ideas for me? Any way to reproduce (easily) the soundchannels of HyperCard? (apologies for bringing up HyperCard ;-) ) Thanks, Karl ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Metacard support
Dom wrote: Richard Gaskin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: While MetaCard as a product is gone the engine lives on under the name Revolution, with a larger and faster-growing audience than it's ever known before. Take a look on the data with a text editor, you will see something as : #!/bin/sh # MetaCard 2.4 stack # The following is not ASCII text, # so now would be a good time to q out of more exec mc $0 $ The file format was last changed prior to the acquisition. I imagine the header will be updated with a future file format change. Adobe has a legacy issue like this: having purchased CyberStudio from GoLive Inc., although they've renamed the product to Adobe GoLive they're still saddled with JavaScript libraries labelled with CS before all the function names. PS: wonder what means a good time to q out of more? More is a UNIX command to read files. -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com Tel: 323-225-3717 AIM: FourthWorldInc ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Multiple sounds playing at once - how?
On 12/4/03 1:08 PM, Karl Becker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm looking for suggestions on how to get multiple sounds to play at once using MetaCard 2.4.3. There is no native option other than player objects (which you claim eat up processor time but if you're making a game, I'm not sure why that's a problem). It's a sad state of affairs. One thing you might try is using a combination of one player and imported sounds. If you want a sound to loop seamlessly (often difficult if not impossible in MC/Rev), you must use an imported sound for this since players will not loop seamlessly. If you can accommodate a pause between loops, then players should be fine. You might also try using WAV formatted sounds instead of AIFF. If you are developing for Mac OS only and for systems lower than OSX, you could use SndChannel, a HyperCard external that was developed in the 90's and should still work in MC through OS9. This will play as many channels as can be accommodated by memory. Unfortunately, there's no modern day equivalent. Regarding players and processor issues, have you tried setting the fileName of player objects to empty in between playing sounds? Also, are you using the latest version of QT? Regards, Scott Rossi Creative Director Tactile Media, Multimedia Design - E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] W: http://www.tactilemedia.com ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Multiple sounds playing at once - how?
On Dec 4, 2003, at 2:23 PM, Scott Rossi wrote: This will play as many channels as can be accommodated by memory. Unfortunately, there's no modern day equivalent. There is also this new, potentially xplatform external. I haven't used it but it looks interesting http://www.fmod.org/ http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-revolution/2003-October/ 025122.html Alex Rice [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Mindlube Software | http://mindlube.com what a waste of thumbs that are opposable to make machines that are disposable -Ani DiFranco ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Multiple sounds playing at once - how?
On 12/4/03 1:36 PM, Alex Rice [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This will play as many channels as can be accommodated by memory. Unfortunately, there's no modern day equivalent. There is also this new, potentially xplatform external. I haven't used it but it looks interesting http://www.fmod.org/ http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-revolution/2003-October/ 025122.html I may be mistaken but I don't believe the FMOD external inherently provides multi-channel audio support. The benefit of the external (as explained to me by the author) is support for various file types that would otherwise require QT for playback. Regards, Scott Rossi Creative Director Tactile Media, Multimedia Design - E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] W: http://www.tactilemedia.com ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Multiple sounds playing at once - how?
On Dec 4, 2003, at 2:43 PM, Scott Rossi wrote: I may be mistaken but I don't believe the FMOD external inherently provides multi-channel audio support. The benefit of the external (as explained to me by the author) is support for various file types that would otherwise require QT for playback. Maybe the fmod4rev author just hasn't implmented very much of the FMOD API yet. Take a look at this http://fmod.org/ifmodfeatures.html Tons of features including: multiple channels, all kinds of mixing, 3D sound. Alex Rice [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Mindlube Software | http://mindlube.com what a waste of thumbs that are opposable to make machines that are disposable -Ani DiFranco ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Metacard support
As I will be offline for the next five days, two remarks: First, I will follow Richard's advice to ask my questions again next week when I am back and Rev may have rounded up their new troops by then. I have done some more benchmarking, which I will report about, concerning the relative speeds of the MC and Rev IDEs both for using the IDEs during the development and for building standalones. I think I have found sort of a critical mass of controls where the Rev IDE absolutely bogs down (and the MC IDE does not). A sober analysis of the causes for these differences - about which I have some private and possibly educated guesses - could maybe be instrumental and helpful for the improvement of both IDEs. Secondly, list members have sometimes used the adjective spartan as a general characteristic of the Metacard IDE. Richard alluded to that when he wrote yesterday: While you and I are enamored of MC's simplicity, for others that same simplicity can be seen as hellishly spartan (to use the words of one of my clients who prefers Rev). I have looked up spartan in the Britannica World Language Dictionary (part of the Encyclopedia Britannica). Here is the entry: Spartan: Pertaining to Sparta or the Spartians; heroically brave and enduring. A native or citizen of Sparta; hence, one of exceptional valor and fortitude. Adding what has been reported about the Spartans elsewhere one could summarize: Spartans were disciplined, enduring, efficient, and powerful. Another aspect is equally interesting. When the Romans conquered Sparta and other states on the Greek pensinsula in 146 B.C., Sparta remained an autonomous region inside the occupied area. So I retract my proposal to speak of Metacard as a slim or power edition of Revolution. Spartan - spelled with a capital S to indicate the extended meaning - would be a much better choice. Translating the attributes to characterize the Metacard IDE could look like this: disciplined: concise and relatively short scripts; fewer parts of the IDE that are interrelated and interact, organized surface enduring: can handle a substantial amount of objects, e.g. controls efficient: despite the material load the Metacard IDE maintains its speed etc. powerful: can be relatively easily customized to one's own needs; quicker development because of fewer bugs etc. autonomous: deserves to be preserved as an alternative IDE.--- See you next week. Regards, Wilhelm Sanke ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
[OT] Sparta (was Re: Metacard support)
Wilhelm Sanke wrote: I have done some more benchmarking, which I will report about, concerning the relative speeds of the MC and Rev IDEs both for using the IDEs during the development and for building standalones. I think I have found sort of a critical mass of controls where the Rev IDE absolutely bogs down (and the MC IDE does not). A sober analysis of the causes for these differences - about which I have some private and possibly educated guesses - could maybe be instrumental and helpful for the improvement of both IDEs. Another great thing about plug-ins: Geoff Canyon's Navigator can be used in any IDE, as can my Stack Browser and Property Sheet, so there are lean options available for those tasks. Taking it a step further, one could write a plug-in that pulls out Rev's front- and backscripts and inserts leaner versions that do only the bare essentials. You'd lose the Geometry Manager, Profile Manager, etc., but folks so inclined probably aren't using those anyway. I had to write one that removes even MC's lean frontscript in order to get certain messages with the pointer tool active (mouseDoubleUp and a couple others are not passed). Which brings us back to spartan -- the definition you found reflects my own personal feelings: I have looked up spartan in the Britannica World Language Dictionary (part of the Encyclopedia Britannica). Here is the entry: Spartan: Pertaining to Sparta or the Spartians; heroically brave and enduring. A native or citizen of Sparta; hence, one of exceptional valor and fortitude. While noted for their valor, Sparta is also a good argument against the macroeconomics of militaristic societies. Sparta was an expansive military culture, and I'm told that in outlying areas it required roughly one soldier/policeman for every twelve citizens to maintain stability. Under the burden of such overhead, Spartan society never enjoyed the luxuries Athenians once took for granted. Most of the contributions to modern culture attributed to the ancient Greeks (theatre, literature, philosophy) were specifically from Athens; Sparta gave us only a cautionary tale of a society burdened by a large military-industrial complex (or as Bucky Fuller might describe it, the classic difference between investing in what he called livingry as opposed to weaponry). The Peloponnesian Wars were expensive to both societies and ultimately benefitted neither: Athens had the Acropolis and the Lyceum; Sparta had an armory. :) Hence this definition from Dictionary.com, which is probably what my client was referring to: # Simple, frugal, or austere: a Spartan diet; a spartan lifestyle. # Marked by brevity of speech; laconic. # Courageous in the face of pain, danger, or adversity. For my client, using MC meant using the Message Box a lot (which it used to for me also until I made my Property Sheet tool). All that typing amounted to pain, danger, and adversity for him. So as the Athenian Artistotle would remind us, ultimately every metaphor fails to fully describe that which it is supposed to illuminate. Encountering a bug or limitation in any IDE requires the courage to face pain, danger, and adversity. :) -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com Tel: 323-225-3717 AIM: FourthWorldInc ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Player messages
I am playing a series of QT sound-only movies by changing the filename of a player. A playstopped handler is supposed to trigger when the player is done and then loads the next sound file. I am not getting a playstopped message if the stack containing the player is frontmost. As soon as I click on the message box or the script editor or otherwise suspend the stack, the playstopped is immediately sent and the next sound loads and plays. I have checked to make sure that messages are not locked. I tried running the stack in Revolution and it works fine in the IDE; I do get a playstopped message there. However if I suspend the IDE or build a standalone, I no longer get the playstopped message and it acts just as it does in MC. Can anyone think of anything that would cause this? Below is a simple script that reproduces the problem on my machine. If someone can verify it I will post a bug report. I'm testing in OS X but I would like to know if the same thing happens in Windows. You'll need a stack with a player set to an audio file; type playloop into the message box to kick it off. Then try clicking on both the stack and the message box as the sound plays. If the message box is frontmost, it loops. If the stack is frontmost, it doesn't. on playLoop global gPlay if the shiftkey is down then -- stop loop put false into gPlay else put true into gPlay start player 1 end if end playLoop on playStopped global gPlay if gPlay = true then playLoop end playStopped I also tried setting a callback message at the duration of the player, but that doesn't get called either. It is like the player is in limbo when the sounds ends if the stack is frontmost. Am I overlooking something? -- Jacqueline Landman Gay | [EMAIL PROTECTED] HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Player messages
I've used the playPaused handler as a part of the player script. It works pretty well - wanted to use playStopped but it never worked. Hope this helps! Jack Rarick Braintree Athletic Systems On Thursday, December 4, 2003, at 08:41 PM, J. Landman Gay wrote: I am playing a series of QT sound-only movies by changing the filename of a player. A playstopped handler is supposed to trigger when the player is done and then loads the next sound file. I am not getting a playstopped message if the stack containing the player is frontmost. As soon as I click on the message box or the script editor or otherwise suspend the stack, the playstopped is immediately sent and the next sound loads and plays. I have checked to make sure that messages are not locked. I tried running the stack in Revolution and it works fine in the IDE; I do get a playstopped message there. However if I suspend the IDE or build a standalone, I no longer get the playstopped message and it acts just as it does in MC. Can anyone think of anything that would cause this? Below is a simple script that reproduces the problem on my machine. If someone can verify it I will post a bug report. I'm testing in OS X but I would like to know if the same thing happens in Windows. You'll need a stack with a player set to an audio file; type playloop into the message box to kick it off. Then try clicking on both the stack and the message box as the sound plays. If the message box is frontmost, it loops. If the stack is frontmost, it doesn't. on playLoop global gPlay if the shiftkey is down then -- stop loop put false into gPlay else put true into gPlay start player 1 end if end playLoop on playStopped global gPlay if gPlay = true then playLoop end playStopped I also tried setting a callback message at the duration of the player, but that doesn't get called either. It is like the player is in limbo when the sounds ends if the stack is frontmost. Am I overlooking something? -- Jacqueline Landman Gay | [EMAIL PROTECTED] HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
RE: Touchy selection business
That's it! Thanks very much Dave!!! The problem is that there is no way of knowing what stack (given palettes exist) contains the current selection. How about put the long id of the selectedfield into s3 Does that give you what you need? Dave ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
