Re: Educational uses for Rev (was Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely)
Devin Asay wrote: At the same time Rev provided us a way to migrate our older HyperCard and Toolbook custom apps to a new, single-track code base. When Chipp and I were manning the Rev booth at WWDC we had a chance to do real-time HyperCard conversion: a fella came by the booth with questions about conversion, I told him how easy it was, he came back a few hours later and brought his stack (a really cool simulation of genetic mutations) and we were able to convert it on the spot in just a few minutes, handing him back the converted stack and an OS X standalone. :) -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Educational uses for Rev (was Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely)
Marian Petrides wrote: Not only in teaching programming but in designing custom educational courseware. Who wants the student to have ONLY simple multiple-guess questions to work with? Life doesn't come with a series of four exclusive-or questions tattooed across it, so why give student this unrealistic view of the real world, when a little work in Rev will permit far more challenging interactivity? Agreed wholeheartedly. Education-related work was the largest single set of tasks folks did with HyperCard, and for all the tools that have come out since there remains an unaddressed gap which may be an ideal focus for DreamCard. But moving beyond simple questions models like multiple choice is difficult. The AICC courseware interoperability standard describes almost a dozen question models, but most are variants of choose one, choose many, closest match, etc., sometimes enlived by using drag-and-drop as the mechanism for applying the answer but not substantially different from what gets tested with a simple multiple choice in terms of truer assessment of what's been learned. The challenge is to find more open-ended question models which can still be assessed by the computer. For example, the most open-ended question is an essay, but I sure don't want to write the routine that scores essays. :) What sorts of enhanced question models do you think would be ideal for computer-based learning? -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Educational uses for Rev (was Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely)
It would seem courseware in this context implies primarily evaluation, not teaching/learning. Students would need to have control of the reins in Revolution to create content that would show learning had occurred. But then you have the PowerPoint multimedia slide show model as a result, most likely. But on the testing end of things, perhaps the models provided by the AICC are the best easy models available. Expository writing, interviewing is the only real way I know of to test the depth of retention and comprehension of what a student has learned. Perhaps an answer is to create the tools by which the student must create the test themselves, rather than take it, using the models you cite. Then you will be assured they have at least known that material long enough to create it, and in contradiction to the wrong answers they provide, which should provide a context that would imply some real comprehension. How to evaluate this would pose another problem. Mark On Aug 11, 2004, at 9:53 AM, Richard Gaskin wrote: Marian Petrides wrote: Not only in teaching programming but in designing custom educational courseware. Who wants the student to have ONLY simple multiple-guess questions to work with? Life doesn't come with a series of four exclusive-or questions tattooed across it, so why give student this unrealistic view of the real world, when a little work in Rev will permit far more challenging interactivity? Agreed wholeheartedly. Education-related work was the largest single set of tasks folks did with HyperCard, and for all the tools that have come out since there remains an unaddressed gap which may be an ideal focus for DreamCard. But moving beyond simple questions models like multiple choice is difficult. The AICC courseware interoperability standard describes almost a dozen question models, but most are variants of choose one, choose many, closest match, etc., sometimes enlived by using drag-and-drop as the mechanism for applying the answer but not substantially different from what gets tested with a simple multiple choice in terms of truer assessment of what's been learned. The challenge is to find more open-ended question models which can still be assessed by the computer. For example, the most open-ended question is an essay, but I sure don't want to write the routine that scores essays. :) What sorts of enhanced question models do you think would be ideal for computer-based learning? -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Educational uses for Rev (was Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely)
Indeed! Perhaps another educational use of Rev-based products would be exploratory learning... then assessed, perhaps, by the dreaded m/c questions Judy On Wed, 11 Aug 2004, Richard Gaskin wrote: Marian Petrides wrote: Not only in teaching programming but in designing custom educational courseware. Who wants the student to have ONLY simple multiple-guess questions to work with? Life doesn't come with a series of four exclusive-or questions tattooed across it, so why give student this unrealistic view of the real world, when a little work in Rev will permit far more challenging interactivity? Agreed wholeheartedly. Education-related work was the largest single set of tasks folks did with HyperCard, and for all the tools that have come out since there remains an unaddressed gap which may be an ideal focus for DreamCard. But moving beyond simple questions models like multiple choice is difficult. The AICC courseware interoperability standard describes almost a dozen question models, but most are variants of choose one, choose many, closest match, etc., sometimes enlived by using drag-and-drop as the mechanism for applying the answer but not substantially different from what gets tested with a simple multiple choice in terms of truer assessment of what's been learned. The challenge is to find more open-ended question models which can still be assessed by the computer. For example, the most open-ended question is an essay, but I sure don't want to write the routine that scores essays. :) What sorts of enhanced question models do you think would be ideal for computer-based learning? -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Educational uses for Rev (was Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely)
One thing I make extensive use of is check boxes. This allows you to ask relatively open-ended fact questions. For example, present a clinical vignette and ask out of this list of 9 diagnoses which could cause this clinical picture (ie what is your differential diagnosis at this point); student needs to get all correct diagnoses and no incorrect diagnoses. If you are programming the parser yourself, you can even set up permissive rules. Using the above example, say 4 of the responses are the ones sought after, but there are 2 others that might be viewed as correct in certain circumstances. You could then allow all of the following to proceed to the card for correct answer: correct 4, (correct 4 + one other), (correct 4 + the other possibly correct), (correct 4 + both others). The answer card then tells the student what the sought after answer was and why, then explains the permissive answers. The other thing which can be done is to simulate real-world tasks. I've put together a module that simulates the way a bench tech goes about interpreting an antibody identification panel. The programming for this was actually quite easy. What was difficult was figuring out the graphical display--once I created the graphics for a hardcopy book I wrote, the programming solution made itself apparent. For those who are curious, I'll describe what I did (ignore if you like). If you envision a grid consisting of 10 rows and 25 columns, the first step the student needs to do is to highlight the correct rows (on-off toggle using unhighlighted graphic vs highlighted one (both created in Photoshop). Then the student needs to toggle one of the following 3 (no image, slash, or X) at the top of each column. Eventually, the parser needs to see whether the correct rows are highlighted and whether the correct mark appears at the top of each column. Again, there are permissive rules covering circumstances in which both a slash or an X could be correct. M On Aug 11, 2004, at 12:53 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote: What sorts of enhanced question models do you think would be ideal for computer-based learning? ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Educational uses for Rev (was Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely)
Not only in teaching programming but in designing custom educational courseware. Who wants the student to have ONLY simple multiple-guess questions to work with? Life doesn't come with a series of four exclusive-or questions tattooed across it, so why give student this unrealistic view of the real world, when a little work in Rev will permit far more challenging interactivity? Agreed wholeheartedly. Education-related work was the largest single set of tasks folks did with HyperCard, and for all the tools that have come out since there remains an unaddressed gap which may be an ideal focus for DreamCard. But moving beyond simple questions models like multiple choice is difficult. The AICC courseware interoperability standard describes almost a dozen question models, but most are variants of choose one, choose many, closest match, etc., sometimes enlived by using drag-and-drop as the mechanism for applying the answer but not substantially different from what gets tested with a simple multiple choice in terms of truer assessment of what's been learned. The challenge is to find more open-ended question models which can still be assessed by the computer. For example, the most open-ended question is an essay, but I sure don't want to write the routine that scores essays. :) What sorts of enhanced question models do you think would be ideal for computer-based learning? Richard, Marian, General information on computer-based assessment can be found on the CAA website (Computer assisted assessment centre, UK, University of Luton), http://www.caacentre.ac.uk/ or on the Pass-it Scotland website, http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/projects/passit/. The later considers a wide range of activities, from situations where candidates word process short answer responses or essays and submit these to markers by e-mail, to those where candidates take computer-delivered tests online and their responses are marked through automated marking systems. I have a (long) list of references that I am ready to share, if you are interested. Yes, I agree that Revolution could be the ideal tool to let teachers easily develop complex formative exercises with no requirement of technical skills. At least, it's what I argue in a grant I submitted recently. You can find the full description at : http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/mlange/Elearning/. Unfortunately, that project did not get funded (at this stage, Universities are more concerned about speeding up the exam process with automatized summative -- multiple choices -- assessment)... This means I will have to find other ways to get me a full license for revolution. Damn, I want it so badly, Revolution is the programming language of my dreams. It's ideal for persons like me who have zillions of (small) projects to realize, but do not have enough spare time to juggle with complex computer languages. So easy to use and program, and yet so powerful! I tried to convince my university to buy a site license, but no luck there (the person I contacted said that she did not find the time to try the product one month later after my request). If you have a selling portfolio, I would be more than happy to forward it to them. Otherwise, no chance to get an HE education price? Yes, I agree, revolution is worth more than its current price... but HE people often have no plan to sell the products they develop. Selling it to a lower price to HE individuals may have them ask their university to buy a site or university-wide license. Also, HE people are creative, productive, often happy to make their codes public and may contribute to the development of a gallery of small programs. Seriously, the product, Revolution, is great, but the shop-window is currently of little appeal. Do you know of konfabulator (http://www.konfabulator.com/)? They are highly succesfull despite the fact that they are exactly the opposite... limited potential but dramatic shop-window full of jaw dropping little time-savers or friendly desktop fillers (yes, most of them are useless, but Konfabulator lets you develop small applications, in one or two days and proudly show it on the net, which apparently appeals customers). I suspect that your decision to develop a less expensive player is a step in that direction. But its not a good option for a lecturer who cannot ask each one of his students to buy a player to benefit from the courseware material he has developed. I should maybe take this opportunity to add that the university lecturer I am is seriously considering moving to a career of developing tools for teachers (so many university teachers do not even know about HTML, believe me, there is a HUGE market for tools that let them easily develop courseware material and put it on the web, as encouraged more and more by Universities) and courseware for students (believe me, there is a HUGE market there too... even more when small tablets/ebooks will begin to appear). If
Re: Educational uses for Rev (was Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely)
Marielle wrote: I suspect that your decision to develop a less expensive player is a step in that direction. But its not a good option for a lecturer who cannot ask each one of his students to buy a player to benefit from the courseware material he has developed. I have not paid very close attention to this since the player does not interest me, but it is my understanding that the player (as in the executable file that plays your stacks) will be like HyperCard Player--free to distribute with your stacks. Or am I misspeaking? Yes, I agree, revolution is worth more than its current price... but HE people often have no plan to sell the products they develop. Selling it to a lower price to HE individuals may have them ask their university to buy a site or university-wide license. Again, I bought a Professional license (now Enterprise) when Rev first came out and have continued with same, so I have not kept up with the cost/features of other versions. However, if you are simply developing applications for your students to use, couldn't you simply get by with an Express license at $149 (makes standalones that exit with made with Revolution)? Or, if you need to create cross-platform apps but are OK with doing your creation on one platform, a Studio license at $299 (no made with Rev on exit)? Finally, it sounds like Dreamcard, which I think will cost $100 will be exactly what you need, assuming that you are permitted to distribute the player with your stacks at no extra charge. If anybody is interested in an association or has a job to propose, I would be delighted to hear from them. I don't have a job (not even for myself ;-) but would be glad to talk off list. I am in Vermont, USA. Marian ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Educational uses for Rev (was Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely)
Marielle Lange wrote: Do you know of konfabulator (http://www.konfabulator.com/)? They are highly succesfull despite the fact that they are exactly the opposite... limited potential but dramatic shop-window full of jaw dropping little time-savers or friendly desktop fillers (yes, most of them are useless, but Konfabulator lets you develop small applications, in one or two days and proudly show it on the net, which apparently appeals customers). While it generated a fair amount of buzz when it came out, it's worth noting that according to the Support page there the two folks who make Konfab never left their day jobs. In the dot-bomb era mindshare was more important than revenue, but now that we've had a roadside sobriety check on the information superhighway we've returned to more traditional definitions of success. :) But where Konfab's eye-candy-over-utility is an inherent part of their security model, Rev's greater flexibility has no such limitation. With user-definable security options, the Rev Player can be used for net-only apps with no file I/O or full applications. I suspect that your decision to develop a less expensive player is a step in that direction. But its not a good option for a lecturer who cannot ask each one of his students to buy a player to benefit from the courseware material he has developed. The Rev Player is free. And for more than a decade the engine has had the ability to create standalones that can run other stacks, so one can make their own learning tool to run any number and variety of courseware, royalty-free. I should maybe take this opportunity to add that the university lecturer I am is seriously considering moving to a career of developing tools for teachers (so many university teachers do not even know about HTML, believe me, there is a HUGE market for tools that let them easily develop courseware material and put it on the web, as encouraged more and more by Universities) and courseware for students (believe me, there is a HUGE market there too... even more when small tablets/ebooks will begin to appear). The Web can be fine for relatively simple presentations, but is limited for more sophisticated interactions. Send the lecturer to: http://www.fourthworld.com/embassy/articles/netapps.html There are links there to many other resources as well. This is not to suggest that using the Web for distance learning is necessarily a bad idea, but that most of its strengths are equally applicable to custom client software such as one can make in Revolution, Director, or REBOL, and many of the unique benefits are largely based on misconceptions (such as helper apps being somehow more trouble than dealing with the limitations of a browser plugin). -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation ___ Rev tools and more: http://www.fourthworld.com/rev -- ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Educational uses for Rev (was Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely)
At 4:31 PM -0400 11/8/04, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Perhaps another educational use of Rev-based products would be exploratory learning... then assessed, perhaps, by the dreaded m/c questions Judy Exactly! While assessment can drive learning, there is more to teaching and learning than tests ;-) I use simulations that I've written with Rev to first allow (university) students to conduct experiments and learn from the results, but then to design and conduct their own experiments to answer questions. The learning objectives of the two stages are different, but obviously synergistic. At the moment most of the use of the simulations is in supervised conditions, but I am planning a kit of simulations that students will use as part of self-directed projects. At the moment I toying with the idea that students will be required to make reports that can be distributed to the class as learning resources; having to teach something is a terrific incentive for learning it first! On Wed, 11 Aug 2004, Richard Gaskin wrote: Marian Petrides wrote: Not only in teaching programming but in designing custom educational courseware. Who wants the student to have ONLY simple multiple-guess questions to work with? Life doesn't come with a series of four exclusive-or questions tattooed across it, so why give student this unrealistic view of the real world, when a little work in Rev will permit far more challenging interactivity? Agreed wholeheartedly. Education-related work was the largest single set of tasks folks did with HyperCard, and for all the tools that have come out since there remains an unaddressed gap which may be an ideal focus for DreamCard. But moving beyond simple questions models like multiple choice is difficult. The AICC courseware interoperability standard describes almost a dozen question models, but most are variants of choose one, choose many, closest match, etc., sometimes enlived by using drag-and-drop as the mechanism for applying the answer but not substantially different from what gets tested with a simple multiple choice in terms of truer assessment of what's been learned. The challenge is to find more open-ended question models which can still be assessed by the computer. For example, the most open-ended question is an essay, but I sure don't want to write the routine that scores essays. :) What sorts of enhanced question models do you think would be ideal for computer-based learning? -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation -- Michael J. Lew Senior Lecturer Department of Pharmacology The University of Melbourne Parkville 3010 Victoria Australia Phone +613 8344 8304 ** New email address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ** ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
On 7/8/04 2:27 pm, Stephen King [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Speech capability seems to have vanished from the PC as far as I can see and media playing is still restricted if QT is not installed. It has been mentioned many times on the list that typical users of Rev products would be teachers/schools and that these sort of people cannot install QT as they have no admin rights, but this argument seems to hit stoney ground. Maybe a solution to this would be to embed QT into the Dreamcard player, so that all users have the full range of media facilities. Is this a possibility? On the contrary, I'm very much aware of these issues. We have addressed a fair number of them to date, such as Windows XP and now Linux theme support, and will be addressing more very actively over the next few versions, along with the relevant marketing support. Kind regards, Kevin Kevin Miller ~ [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~ http://www.runrev.com/ Runtime Revolution - User-Centric Development Tools ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
Dan Shafer wrote: I reiterate what I said earlier today in this very interesting discussion. I do not believe Rev has any serious chance of making significant inroads into the professional development community on ANY platform, and certainly not on Windows or (moreso?) on *nix. It will always be a product aimed at hobbyist and inventive user class developers who do not write code for a living but who have real problems to solve at work or at home. Depends on what you mean by 'significant inroads.' If it means making enough to provide a return to shareholders and keep the product alive and well, then I beg to disagree. If it means competing head to head with MS products then I agree. As you rightly pointed out earlier, even Borland can't compete w/ MS, but does that make them unsuccessful? One thing I do think should be made clear though: RR is a PROFESSIONAL LEVEL DEVELOPMENT TOOL. There are those of us (including you) who make a living writing professional code using RR. I only mention this so others (perhaps undecided) who read this thread will know that professional level products have been created with this product. best, Chipp ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
On Aug 8, 2004, at 2:10 AM, Chipp Walters wrote: One thing I do think should be made clear though: RR is a PROFESSIONAL LEVEL DEVELOPMENT TOOL. There are those of us (including you) who make a living writing professional code using RR. I only mention this so others (perhaps undecided) who read this thread will know that professional level products have been created with this product. I'm happy to agree with that too. RR in the hands of a professional developer who takes the time to learn its in-and-outs, strengths and weaknesses, can certainly make a VERY professional tool. I'd never dispute that... I'd be foolish to. I'm a professional developer, and I like to think the products I've produced with Rev are professional too. -- Troy RPSystems, Ltd. http://www.rpsystems.net ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
On Aug 7, 2004, at 11:10 PM, Chipp Walters wrote: One thing I do think should be made clear though: RR is a PROFESSIONAL LEVEL DEVELOPMENT TOOL. There are those of us (including you) who make a living writing professional code using RR. I only mention this so others (perhaps undecided) who read this thread will know that professional level products have been created with this product. Yes, yes and yes. When I say Rev won't make significant inroads into the professional programming market, I'm talking about the 99% of that audience who don't know about Rev and would dismiss it out of hand if they heard about it. The other 1% (including yours truly) just smile all the way to the bank as we out-bid Java-bound competitors. Heh heh ~~ Dan Shafer, Revolutionary Author of Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought http://www.revolutionpros.com for more info Available at Runtime Revolution Store (http://www.runrev.com/RevPress) ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
On 08.08.2004, at 05:16, Dan Shafer wrote: I reiterate what I said earlier today in this very interesting discussion. I do not believe Rev has any serious chance of making significant inroads into the professional development community on ANY platform, and certainly not on Windows or (moreso?) on *nix. It will always be a product aimed at hobbyist and inventive user class developers who do not write code for a living but who have real problems to solve at work or at home. That's a huge market, bigger, I believe, than the programmer market. But it has to be located and convinced. Thanks Dan couldnt agree more! regards Wolfgang M. Bereuter Trainingsmaps© -- speadlearning with Mindmaps! INTERNETTRAINER Wolfgang M. Bereuter Edelhofg. 17/11, A-1180 Wien, Austria ... http://www.internettrainer.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] ... Tel: ++43/1/ 961 0418 Fax: ++43/1/ 479 2539 ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
Dan wrote I reiterate what I said earlier today in this very interesting discussion. I do not believe Rev has any serious chance of making significant inroads into the professional development community on ANY platform, and certainly not on Windows or (moreso?) on *nix. It will always be a product aimed at hobbyist and inventive user class developers who do not write code for a living but who have real problems to solve at work or at home. That's a huge market, bigger, I believe, than the programmer market. But it has to be located and convinced. I couldn't agree more... I see the 'express' market as the big one, not the professional developer (but understand that Rev is a pro tool) As I see it there is a very large and intelligent older/retiree community rapidly building skills in this area. They have the time to invest in learing and not the need to sell the product. They programme for fun, providing tools for schools, clubs, freinds. Also, there are peolple like myself and those I work with who programme at home generating tools to help our work, be it engineering, research, schools - again not to sell. These people need a tool that developes code (script) rapidly, is easy to use, doesn't have to follow the old rules (they are not professionals so don't know the old rules) but they need the features to at least do everything reasonably but not perfectly. They provide very local one off custom solutions* These are windows based (UK) not xplat developers (except maybe Macs who develop for organisations using PCs) but that doesn't matter if the tool is usuable. The market is there but it needs to be tapped by good documentation and high profiling - back to an earlier point that Rev *never* appears in the windows mags. Rev is easy to use and could be easy to learn. It's powerful - it needs to address some weaknesses but most of all I think it needs to grab a bigger market! Cheers Steve PS - I have bopught Vol 1... waiting earnestly for vol 2 and 3 (not a dig ;-)) *As an example, I produced a specialised stroke analysis tool for a swimming club. This was specific to the coaches needs and no way would he get it commercially. There are thousands such clubs around who are now computer based and are computer literate. Most have a 'member' who can try their hand at this. ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
Chipp Walters wrote: Dan Shafer wrote: I reiterate what I said earlier today in this very interesting discussion. I do not believe Rev has any serious chance of making significant inroads into the professional development community on ANY platform, and certainly not on Windows or (moreso?) on *nix. It will always be a product aimed at hobbyist and inventive user class developers who do not write code for a living but who have real problems to solve at work or at home. Depends on what you mean by 'significant inroads.' If it means making enough to provide a return to shareholders and keep the product alive and well, then I beg to disagree. If it means competing head to head with MS products then I agree. As you rightly pointed out earlier, even Borland can't compete w/ MS, but does that make them unsuccessful? If Borland is a joke, with a sustained customer base at least an order of magnitude larger than Rev's it would make Rev the punchline. I prefer not to see it so dimly. There is evidently room for many players in the dev tools arena, on all platforms. The computing revolution has barely begun, and everything is still in flux: Windows marketshare is in decline, Linux is the fastest-growing OS, Mac OS is holding steady and there's always the chance Apple may one day take an interest in increasing marketshare. The good thing is that it seems RunRev is hearing all sides of this debate, and handling them all positively: Historically there has indeed been a Mac-centricity to the product because, as has been noted, that's where the low-hanging fruit was. In v2.2 XP native appearances took the product a huge leap forward for that OS, and in v2.5 it seems they're doing the same for Linux. While it may remain debatable whether a small business can adequately penetrate two very different markets simultaneously, to their credit RunRev has rebranded the hobbyist product to more clearly distinguish it from the current award-winning professional dev tool. There may be an argument for spinning the pro tools out into a separate business unit to avoid dillution of resources, putting day-to-day management of the pro product line in the hands of those who remain excited by the potential there. But that may not be necessary so long as the product managers for each are given reasonable budgets and sufficient autonomy to respond to the radically different challenges each market requires. So from where I sit, yes, there are many details to be decided, and of course the proof will be in the pudding: all the talk here about what's best will either be validated or invalidated when we see where the numbers fall this time next year. But overall, the general plan seems to be a reasonably healthy attempt to capture both ends of the market, and it is appears there is some effort toward providing a thoughtful balance of resources to address the needs of developers using each OS proportionate to sales. One thing I know about Kevin is that he's a bit of an info-junkie: if he sees a tilt in interest from users of non-Mac OSes I feel confident he'll push those platform-specific enhancements even more quickly than the current good clip. While MetaCard was born on UNIX, in v2.5 it finally looks pretty there. I'm sure there's more to come -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation ___ Rev tools and more: http://www.fourthworld.com/rev ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
Troy, Good points, all. But I also believe there is too much 'Mac' centric focus in RR. The GUI is completely Mac based, and so is much of the marketing focus. Though, this does represent the 'low-hanging fruit', RR won't ever truly make inroads onto other platforms w/out a concerted marketing effort by the company. Also, we can easily see where HyperCard, SuperCard and other 'Mac-centric' authoring environments have ended up. I think it's eventually in RR's best interest to focus on other platforms, else the find themselves in the same situation as the other lanquished Mac Xtalk authoring environments. And remember, both Flash and Director found some success on PC's, and originally shipped with an Xtalk language. Your point below is quite cogent. -Chipp Troy Rollins wrote: Marketing Revolution to Mac developers is easy. Marketing it to Windows developers (other than a certain segment) is swimming against the tide. It can be done, but it is certainly a harder road to travel. There is a lot more education to do, in order to get Windows developers to recognize the value... if in fact, it does have value to them over their current tools. ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
RE: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
Chipp, Troy, Good points, all. But I also believe there is too much 'Mac' centric focus in RR. The GUI is completely Mac based, and so is much of the marketing focus. Though, this does represent the 'low-hanging fruit', RR won't ever truly make inroads onto other platforms w/out a concerted marketing effort by the company. Maybe runrev is using the mac community as ginnea pigs ;) The recent cursor changes (ouch), XP appearance manager support (although it works nicely, parts of the RR GUI controls loose their features to support this sub-aqua wannabe), the externals support on PCs, and more make RR a better multiplatform tool. This is great... To win over PC users, it would be nice to have the features of flash and java... RunRev definitely has the quality look required. But performance and little things keep RR a step behind. Even compared to RealBasic, RR still has one feature above all the forementioned: the easiest and fastest way to make an application - Flash is not that easy to script! With 3D and bezier scripteable controls, RR may eat Flash for breakfast. With threading, it would have java and php for lunch! With a web player, web developpers would have no more reasons to avoid RR... And for dessert the polyphonic midi sampler/synth support ;) Anyway, if more of us make Mac AND PC (and linux of course) freewares or shareware executables, drop them into sites like gnome, downloads.com, tucows then we might get more referals or attention. We could, for example, put these tools as downloable in 2MB exe size or RR player required 50KB downloads. This might induce the advantages of using the player to offset app sizes made with RR. If the IDE could double as the player, we sure would not have as many stack distribution problems. Im not saying making exes is obsolete. However I'd like to point out that RR's limiting platform distributions per license types is not encouraging the crowds to deliver apps for all platforms - since most of us have a studio license, we are restricted - and the RR player would be a great solution here. But it's not in RR's licensing advantage to do so. I ask myself if RR could be painting themselves in a corner here? How much is Flash or Java which deliver on all platforms? What can RR not do that they do? Other than threading... There's always a sales volume/market's attention/profit trade-off in pricing. Just like there is a trade-off in performance/features/quality/delivery time. hope this helps our sales ;) X -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Chipp Walters Sent: Saturday, August 07, 2004 08:16 To: How to use Revolution Subject: Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
At 23:47 06/08/2004 -0400, Troy Rollins wrote: On Aug 6, 2004, at 5:54 PM, Alex Tweedly wrote: I did find the Mac-orientation of Revolution a bit off-putting at first. Hypercard (and Applescript, and QT and ...) are mentioned so often, and so much discussion includes Mac mentions, that I did wonder initially just how cross-platform Rev would be - or whether it was really 80% a Mac application, with a token ability to run on other platforms. The apparent focus on Mac/Apple (conferences, Macworld announcements, etc.) could easily scare Windows (or Unix/Linux) users. I think it would be a good idea for some balancing if possible. I think that this isn't an issue of Windows versus Mac, but one of Windows developers versus Mac developers. One of Rev's greatest strengths and marketable features is its inherently multi-platform nature. A feature that Windows developers generally don't give a whit about. Windows developers (typically) are not Mac savvy, and don't even consider developing anything for Mac. In fact, your initial reaction would be typical, I think. Why mess up an IDE and scripting language with all that Mac oriented rubbish? What's with this plain English programming? Troy - you present a very persuasive argument for why Mac developers are a better (or easier) target for Rev. than Windows developers. I'm worried that the Mac universe isn't big enough for a small portion of it to sustain Revolution - whereas a (much smaller) portion of the Windows users / developers would be. And to be honest I'm not so much worried about what a Windows developer / user thinks of the details (such as plain English) as that they don't get that far. Look at the main page on www.runrev.com - Windows is mentioned once - a single word (admittedly in a prominent place). About a fifth of the screen is taken up by a row of icons of Mac awards, and another fifth of the screen is a Max OSX screenshot. Simply changing the screenshot to W-XP would help. Adding a quote (or logo/award) from a PC or Linux mag or site would help even more. Mac developers, on the other hand, know well that they generally *must* develop for Windows in order for their products to be seriously marketable to the general public. Virtually all Mac developers that I know (Hypercarders excepted) develop multi-platform, and look for multi-platform tools to develop with. Windows users are not specifically looking for multi-platform tools, they are looking for the tools with the most advanced Windows features they can find. True - though there may be an opening with the extra press given to Unix/Linux to convince more Windows developers to consider other platforms. There is an argument to be had that Rev is somewhat limited in advanced Windows features because of its well-balanced multi-platform feature set. Presumably, the same argument applies: There is an argument to be had that Rev is somewhat limited in advanced Macintosh features because of its well-balanced multi-platform feature set. Would you agree with that ? Which Mac features are missing ? Are they missing because of the multi-platform nature ? Marketing Revolution to Mac developers is easy. Marketing it to Windows developers (other than a certain segment) is swimming against the tide. It can be done, but it is certainly a harder road to travel. There is a lot more education to do, in order to get Windows developers to recognize the value... if in fact, it does have value to them over their current tools. [ Occasionally, I still think there's too much Mac focus - but I'll keep that argument for another day when my skin is feeling thicker :- ] Ah, OK. Standing-by. ;-) No, I'm not going to be tempted into that topic until I'm ready for it -- Alex. ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
RE: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
Richard, As you point out, performance is not a problem in most practical cases. In terms of graphics, Im even quite surprised at the throughput of MoireX but given its simplicity, well, i dont think bezier moires are coming soon at least on my little portable ;) But what about the 100% cpu hogging so characteristic of Windowns seen when running a loop? This is not so savvy Im afraid to report even though it doesn't seem like RR hogs the computer - only the ... But for the most part, you're absolutely right to say that RR is a performer. I know nothing faster to develop with this level of complexity and expected output... But graphicsand hogging are the smoothest. But I'll add an FPSmeter to my next moire version ;) -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Richard Gaskin Sent: Saturday, August 07, 2004 15:37 To: How to use Revolution Subject: Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely MisterX wrote: To win over PC users, it would be nice to have the features of flash and java... RunRev definitely has the quality look required. But performance and little things keep RR a step behind. Even compared to RealBasic, RR still has one feature above all the forementioned: the easiest and fastest way to make an application - Flash is not that easy to script! Indeed the productivity benefits are hard to match, and I've seen no reasoned argument describing something more productive. But on performance, I think you must have missed a few posts here over the last year: Everytime someone who who doesn't use Rev comes trolling in here looking to pick a fight on performance, ultimately it is the troll who goes away embarassed when Rev is demonstrated to outperform their fave, and often in fewer lines. I'm sure a more clever troll could work hard enough to identify the subset of cases where that's not true, but do date the discussions have been ostensibly about real-world needs, and the argument wasn't worth pursuing further to them at all once total development productivity is reintroduced into the discussion. This is not to suggest that Rev will beat everything all the way down to Assembler, but it's much faster than most 4GLs and some 3GLs and I don't think anyone who actually measures it considers performance to be a critical issue. In the relatively narrow subset of cases where performance of computationally-intensive routines is beyond what Rev does gracefully, as with the many-times-more-expensive Director or Toolbook products you can always just drop in an external for such specialized needs. -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
RE: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
Maybe we've written a new chapter for Dan's book here regarding marketing your RunRev apps ;) -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Jim Carwardine Sent: Saturday, August 07, 2004 16:11 To: Revolution Listserve Subject: Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely Ahhh... The 2 dimensional world looking for the first time at the 3 dimensional world that has existed for 20 years... Welcome. on 8/7/04 3:15 AM, Chipp Walters wrote: Troy, Good points, all. But I also believe there is too much 'Mac' centric focus in RR. The GUI is completely Mac based, and so is much of the marketing focus. Though, this does represent the 'low-hanging fruit', RR won't ever truly make inroads onto other platforms w/out a concerted marketing effort by the company. Also, we can easily see where HyperCard, SuperCard and other 'Mac-centric' authoring environments have ended up. I think it's eventually in RR's best interest to focus on other platforms, else the find themselves in the same situation as the other lanquished Mac Xtalk authoring environments. And remember, both Flash and Director found some success on PC's, and originally shipped with an Xtalk language. Your point below is quite cogent. -Chipp Troy Rollins wrote: Marketing Revolution to Mac developers is easy. Marketing it to Windows developers (other than a certain segment) is swimming against the tide. It can be done, but it is certainly a harder road to travel. There is a lot more education to do, in order to get Windows developers to recognize the value... if in fact, it does have value to them over their current tools. ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution -- OYF is... Highly resourceful people working together. http://www.OwnYourFuture-net.com Own Your Future Consulting Services Limited, 1959 Upper Water Street, Suite 407, Halifax, Nova Scotia. B3J 3N2 Info Line: 902-823-2477, Phone: 902-823-2339. Fax: 902-823-2139 ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
At 09:37 07/08/2004 -0400, Richard Gaskin wrote: Indeed the productivity benefits are hard to match, and I've seen no reasoned argument describing something more productive. Agreed - though I would guess that, for me, Revolution is less than half as productive than it *should* be. It's held back by - documentation (somewhat improved in 2.5B) - flaky behaviour of keyboard shortcuts (improved in 2.5B, but still quirky compared to the platform standards) - poor error reporting (getting to be less of an issue as I get used to ignoring the message itself and just inspect the code in the area) - poor script colorizer (improved but still disappointing in 2.5B) - lack of navigation features (raise/focus next window, edit indicated handler, etc.) - non-intuitive (and poorly documented) distinctions between keywords, arguments, evaluated strings, variable names, etc. - and lack of diagnostic when you get it wrong This is aggravated by lack of a good, well-organized collection of user-contributed scripts and libraries. (I can't decide whether RevOnline is going to be a step forward or a step backward here - won't be able to tell until we see it in operation). But on performance, I think you must have missed a few posts here over the last year: Everytime someone who who doesn't use Rev comes trolling in here looking to pick a fight on performance, ultimately it is the troll who goes away embarassed when Rev is demonstrated to outperform their fave, and often in fewer lines. I've raised a number of performance related issues. I didn't come here deliberately trolling to find them :-) What I've found is that if I do something the *obvious* way in Rev, the performance can be appallingly poor. There is usually (maybe always) a different way to do it that is adequately fast (at least within 10 or 20% of the performance of other scripting languages), but requires a far less natural or convenient way to do it. examples ? 1. draw moderate number of rectangles: Other language - you draw a number of rectangles Revolution - you draw a single large polygon with invisible edges and rectangular markers at each vertex. (!?) The Rev way works quite nicely, only 10 or 20% slower than in the other language, but I'd never have found it without the help of this group. And I didn't find it without wasting hours (days ?) pursuing other more obvious ideas which all failed through performance. 2. Modify the size, colour or position of some of those rectangles you just drew in example 1. Other - you change the colour (shape, position) of the rectangle, and re-draw the set Revolution - you maintain a number of polygons (as lists of vertices in variables, not in the graphics themselves), representing the different combinations of colour and size needed,and then remove the required line from one polygon and add it to another, then re-draw (i.e. put the variable into the graphic) the two polygons. Oh - and if you need to deal with layering, then you need mulitple polygons per color/size/layer ... Again, it works - but it is about as self-documenting as Fortran :-) 3. Read a CSV file The simple natural way (of course) doesn't work - CSV isn't like that :-) The proper way works OK in Rev, though performance is an issue. The quick way (thanks again Richard !) works well, and has pretty decent performance; but it is 20-30 lines including a couple of non-obvious techniques - which as a beginner in the language I wouldn't have considered. And to change to a different dialect of CSV (e.g. read csv from Access rather than from Excel) would be another 20-30 lines, with a couple of subtle differences. The Python equivalent is to use a standard library - so a couple very obvious and well-documented lines instead of those 20-30; to use a different dialect is one extra phrase (dialect=Access) 4. Displaying a CSV file (re-formatted into a scrollable set of columns). I did this using a number of list-fields, and scrolling the group - I might have used the altFieldHeader had I known about it at the time). This worked kind of OK - did what I wanted, but was a bit slow. Didn't take long to think about it, move all the workings into variables, and finally write the variables to the fields. |mproved the performance from iffy up to just fine. So again - Rev can do it with adequate performance - but I find myself having to consider performance in a way I haven't had to do for years. And there's a trade-off between performance and natural data structuring that I haven't had to deal with elsewhere. -- Alex. ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
The support of multiple sound channels, I've been told... Judy On Sat, 7 Aug 2004, Alex Tweedly wrote: Would you agree with that ? Which Mac features are missing ? Are they missing because of the multi-platform nature ? ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
Indeed, why hasn't speech on Windows been fixed yet? Hasn't it been a year or more? Judy On Sat, 7 Aug 2004, Stephen King wrote: Speech capability seems to have vanished from the PC as far as I can see and media playing is still restricted if QT is not installed. ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
RE: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
I've heard it work but never tried. I think directx is required and as usual those who use it for example in games prefer samples... Anyway, making Fruityloops talk is too much fun, you can twist the sound so much it can sound like your Mac is talking! It actually reminds me of macintalk! Did speech recognition continue on the mac btw? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Judy Perry Sent: Saturday, August 07, 2004 19:42 To: How to use Revolution Subject: Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely Indeed, why hasn't speech on Windows been fixed yet? Hasn't it been a year or more? Judy On Sat, 7 Aug 2004, Stephen King wrote: Speech capability seems to have vanished from the PC as far as I can see and media playing is still restricted if QT is not installed. ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
Dear List members, I have just posted the following to Kevin: What some people are saying on the List at this moment confirms what I pointed out in my notes: Windows programmers (about 90% of the market?) can easily be scared away by the MAC dominance of RunRev and its community/ lieutenants. All my notes really called for (technically) was what I have been used to in VB for many years, a standard which is different (and higher in some respects) than the MAC-oriented one emanating from RunRev. One such standard in comparison with VB was the availability of a Programmer's Transcript/IDE Reference Manual (1) and a Programmer's RunRev Guide (2), supplied at no extra cost with the IDE in order to form a complete product (implying that anything less represents an incomplete product). Now what I see on the List is a discussion of what can be done with Dan and his books! These are my suggestions (bearing in mind of course that I know absolutely nothing of RunRev's finances, but you do not seem to be doing too badly): 1) This obviously very able author should not be frustrated or (heaven forbid) be allowed to slip through RunRev's fingers! 2) Pay the man generously to do the crucial job of completing the RunRev product with the Guide (2 above) in 3 volumes. I would also like to see this Guide (a) available first in HTML form on the Internet; (b) available in CHM form (another Windows standard) for free download, not only by Rev clients but also by Rev PROSPECTIVE clients. For notes on how to Make the CHM format available to MAC and Unix/Linux users, please go to http://xchm.sourceforge.net/index.html . It's not perfectly straightforward, but I am sure your programmers could work it out. None of this precludes the practice (later) of making the hard copies available at extra cost. ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
Bob Thanks for the vote of support! There is not much chance I will slip through RunRevs fingers although I will admit to *some* small degree of frustration at the very low numbers of people who have bought my first volume in any form. I don't think this says anything other than the community may be smaller overall than I suspected. (Of course, I refuse to think it's because my book isn't good. Though that remains a possibility.) I reiterate what I said earlier today in this very interesting discussion. I do not believe Rev has any serious chance of making significant inroads into the professional development community on ANY platform, and certainly not on Windows or (moreso?) on *nix. It will always be a product aimed at hobbyist and inventive user class developers who do not write code for a living but who have real problems to solve at work or at home. That's a huge market, bigger, I believe, than the programmer market. But it has to be located and convinced. Now what I see on the List is a discussion of what can be done with Dan and his books! These are my suggestions (bearing in mind of course that I know absolutely nothing of RunRev's finances, but you do not seem to be doing too badly): 1) This obviously very able author should not be frustrated or (heaven forbid) be allowed to slip through RunRev's fingers! 2) Pay the man generously to do the crucial job of completing the RunRev product with the Guide (2 above) in 3 volumes. ~~ Dan Shafer, Revolutionary Author of Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought http://www.revolutionpros.com for more info Available at Runtime Revolution Store (http://www.runrev.com/RevPress) ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
I agree, Dan... Unfortuantely, for the win market, it seems to be a chicken and the egg sort of thing: universities will only teach the MS stuff they are given because (a) it's free (or all but) and (b) 'it's what everybody uses in industry'. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I remember when Code Warrior offered their stuff to my CS department for FREE ... ZIP... NADA... NICHTS... NUTTIN'... and we didn't take it. Instead, we paid for Borland and Microsoft stuff. And still do. And when all our students graduate and find themselves in positions where they'll do the hiring, what do you think they will be looking for? Rev has accolades from the Mac side of things because, well, they have them. If you've got it, flaunt it. PC magazine could give them an award if they so chose... I'd like not to see the case of the list advocating that the company bite the hand that feeds it. With the exception of speech on Windows not working, most calls to 'improve' Rev (with the respect of being overly Mac-ish) seem to be along the lines of 'make it like every Windows and traditional systems programming language'. But there already are plenty of those, existing and in the ash heap. I suspect Dan's right that Rev will never replace Java, C++, anything .NETish... but why does that need to be the goal? Judy On Sat, 7 Aug 2004, Dan Shafer wrote: I reiterate what I said earlier today in this very interesting discussion. I do not believe Rev has any serious chance of making significant inroads into the professional development community on ANY platform, and certainly not on Windows or (moreso?) on *nix. It will always be a product aimed at hobbyist and inventive user class developers who do not write code for a living but who have real problems to solve at work or at home. That's a huge market, bigger, I believe, than the programmer market. But it has to be located and convinced. ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
Dan - I have given training in the computer field since the 1960s (even in Scotland!), and from what I can see and judge, the difficulty with your book sales probably has nothing to do with their quality. Leaving diagnoses aside, there is no doubt in my mind that since a Programmer's Guide is urgently needed to accompany the RunRev product, your book would serve very well. Being distributed as a normal part of the product would help to make it better known and would also express Rev's confidence in it. Thus, being forced to become familiar with it and consequently like it, there would be a greater number of users who would then be prepared to make an investment in buying the hard-cover form, particularly those who are not comfortable with electronic documents (quite a lot of people). Of course, all of this is in Rev's handsWe can but hope. Regards, Bob W. Bob Thanks for the vote of support! There is not much chance I will slip through RunRevs fingers although I will admit to *some* small degree of frustration at the very low numbers of people who have bought my first volume in any form. I don't think this says anything other than the community may be smaller overall than I suspected. (Of course, I refuse to think it's because my book isn't good. Though that remains a possibility.) I reiterate what I said earlier today in this very interesting discussion. I do not believe Rev has any serious chance of making significant inroads into the professional development community on ANY platform, and certainly not on Windows or (moreso?) on *nix. It will always be a product aimed at hobbyist and inventive user class developers who do not write code for a living but who have real problems to solve at work or at home. That's a huge market, bigger, I believe, than the programmer market. But it has to be located and convinced. Now what I see on the List is a discussion of what can be done with Dan and his books! These are my suggestions (bearing in mind of course that I know absolutely nothing of RunRev's finances, but you do not seem to be doing too badly): 1) This obviously very able author should not be frustrated or (heaven forbid) be allowed to slip through RunRev's fingers! 2) Pay the man generously to do the crucial job of completing the RunRev product with the Guide (2 above) in 3 volumes. ~~ Dan Shafer, Revolutionary Author of Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought http://www.revolutionpros.com for more info Available at Runtime Revolution Store (http://www.runrev.com/RevPress) ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
On 07.08.2004, at 08:15, Chipp Walters wrote: Also, we can easily see where HyperCard, SuperCard and other 'Mac-centric' authoring environments have ended up. I think it's eventually in RR's best interest to focus on other platforms, else the find themselves in the same situation as the other lanquished Mac Xtalk authoring environments. And remember, both Flash and Director found some success on PC's, and originally shipped with an Xtalk language. And the Mouse father said to his son. Paint yourself as a Lion, kill his kids than you will become the next prince of Africa!! There are at least 10 Mac centric authoring environments. If the mAc has 5% and WIN 95% marketshare, than there must be about 200 WIN centric authoring environments i the market, which have survived the dominance of M$´s VB and .net. Give me only 30... regards Wolfgang M. Bereuter Trainingsmaps© -- speadlearning with Mindmaps! INTERNETTRAINER Wolfgang M. Bereuter Edelhofg. 17/11, A-1180 Wien, Austria ... http://www.internettrainer.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] ... Tel: ++43/1/ 961 0418 Fax: ++43/1/ 479 2539 ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
On Thursday, August 5, 2004, at 09:33 PM, Troy Rollins wrote: Convincing a book distributor that Revolution has as much appeal to the unwashed masses as iTunes? Good luck with that one. -- Troy Amazon.com has a small publisher section that would allow Dan / Revolution to sell his book from the Amazon website. His book would pop up for any requests for books on Runtime Revolution. Of course Dan would need to take a 50% reduction in earnings to ask for that level of exposure and the percentage of loss to him might even be greater. It might be better to advertise the existence of his book and keep selling it direct. What you are really saying is that more Revolution exposure would be nice. Advertising could handle both issues and earn enough from it to pay for the print runs. mtml my two=cents name=Mark 2 /my /mtml ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
RE: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
Is his book self-published?, if so I can help save some costs because I am a partner in a Printing On Demand publisher. We do ISBN and everything including a listing in Books in Print. I'm sure that I'm cheaper than anyone else. PLUS we are on demand meaning that he doesn't have to buy any up front inventory. BTW how far has he progresses on the three vol. set? I purchased the Pre-pub deal (option C) and haven't heard a thing since the pre-pub of vol. one. Dave -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Brownell Sent: Friday, August 06, 2004 10:11 AM To: How to use Revolution Subject: Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely On Thursday, August 5, 2004, at 09:33 PM, Troy Rollins wrote: Convincing a book distributor that Revolution has as much appeal to the unwashed masses as iTunes? Good luck with that one. -- Troy Amazon.com has a small publisher section that would allow Dan / Revolution to sell his book from the Amazon website. His book would pop up for any requests for books on Runtime Revolution. Of course Dan would need to take a 50% reduction in earnings to ask for that level of exposure and the percentage of loss to him might even be greater. It might be better to advertise the existence of his book and keep selling it direct. What you are really saying is that more Revolution exposure would be nice. Advertising could handle both issues and earn enough from it to pay for the print runs. mtml my two=cents name=Mark 2 /my /mtml ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
RE: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
Why not put an announcement in DDJ.com slashdot.org ? Both put in articles for books about programming and have a wide audience of ahem, geeks... Little is known or mentioned of RR or MC or hypercard anymore but Wired.com has run articles on it in the past. Surely a small article in each will draw hords to both RR and the book. Then, there is the reference to the old HC handbook... Why not use that? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Mark Brownell Sent: Friday, August 06, 2004 16:11 To: How to use Revolution Subject: Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely On Thursday, August 5, 2004, at 09:33 PM, Troy Rollins wrote: Convincing a book distributor that Revolution has as much appeal to the unwashed masses as iTunes? Good luck with that one. -- Troy Amazon.com has a small publisher section that would allow Dan / Revolution to sell his book from the Amazon website. His book would pop up for any requests for books on Runtime Revolution. Of course Dan would need to take a 50% reduction in earnings to ask for that level of exposure and the percentage of loss to him might even be greater. It might be better to advertise the existence of his book and keep selling it direct. What you are really saying is that more Revolution exposure would be nice. Advertising could handle both issues and earn enough from it to pay for the print runs. mtml my two=cents name=Mark 2 /my /mtml ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
On Friday, August 6, 2004, at 07:19 AM, Dave LeYanna wrote: answerI don't Know Is his book self-published? /I don't Know, advertisement if so I can help save some costs because I am a partner in a Printing On Demand publisher. We do ISBN and everything including a listing in Books in Print. I'm sure that I'm cheaper than anyone else. PLUS we are on demand meaning that he doesn't have to buy any up front inventory. /advertisement I don't Know BTW how far has he progresses on the three vol. set? /I don't Know gee, that's not good I purchased the Pre-pub deal (option C) and haven't heard a thing since the pre-pub of vol. one. /gee, that's not good Dave /answer I do ISBN too. Mark ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
RE: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
I guess I got carried away... Before I get flamed, I withdraw any hint of profit making. Didn't mean to step on any toes here. Withdraw, withdraw, withdraw, sorry, sorry, sorry. Dave -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Brownell Sent: Friday, August 06, 2004 10:39 AM To: How to use Revolution Subject: Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely On Friday, August 6, 2004, at 07:19 AM, Dave LeYanna wrote: answerI don't Know Is his book self-published? /I don't Know, advertisement if so I can help save some costs because I am a partner in a Printing On Demand publisher. We do ISBN and everything including a listing in Books in Print. I'm sure that I'm cheaper than anyone else. PLUS we are on demand meaning that he doesn't have to buy any up front inventory. /advertisement I don't Know BTW how far has he progresses on the three vol. set? /I don't Know gee, that's not good I purchased the Pre-pub deal (option C) and haven't heard a thing since the pre-pub of vol. one. /gee, that's not good Dave /answer I do ISBN too. Mark ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
RE: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
Why not put an announcement in DDJ.com slashdot.org ? Both put in articles for books about programming and have a wide audience of ahem, geeks... Little is known or mentioned of RR or MC or hypercard anymore but Wired.com has run articles on it in the past. Surely a small article in each will draw hords to both RR and the book. One of the benefits of pushing the EuroRevCon has been just what you are referring to...exposure of Rev to people who may have not heard about it. Marketing a product or event is not easy and is usually expensive. The Apple Developer Connection Newsletter has carried a notice about the EuroRevCon for quite a few issues. The ADC newsletter goes out to approx. 200,000 people according to Rod McCall. For several issues the ADC has carried this announcement: At 2:39 -0700 7/19/04, Apple Developer Connection wrote: European Revolution Conference November 14-16 in Malta http://www.techietours.com/Rev/ Having the EuroRevCon be a success is also important, we need a few more people to sign on. If you are considering it please get in touch with me, just as Dan SHafer did this week when he told me wants to come and will be available to speak or otherwise do what he can to promote Rev. atb sims ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
I'm afraid the bookstore route is closed to us for the moment. When Dreamcard gets enough traction and the software is available in stores, we may be able to convince some specialty places like Fry's to carry it, but mainstream bookstores aren't likely to touch it unless it comes from a major publisher or through an established distributor. Which is why Kevin and I have been working on trying to set up a publishing relationship on the series rather than cranking out more books for a handful of people to buy. We're still at it. Dan On Aug 5, 2004, at 9:33 PM, Troy Rollins wrote: On Aug 6, 2004, at 12:24 AM, Bill Vlahos wrote: For crying out loud, I just saw that someone has published a book on iTunes for Windows and is selling it in bookstores. Isn't there some way to get Dan's excellent book on Revolution in stores too? Convincing a book distributor that Revolution has as much appeal to the unwashed masses as iTunes? Good luck with that one. -- Troy RPSystems, Ltd. http://www.rpsystems.net ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
On Aug 6, 2004, at 7:19 AM, Dave LeYanna wrote: Is his book self-published?, Nope. RunREv set up a publishing group to handle it. In a sense, RunRev has self-published it. I own the rights to the eBook version and Kevin and I have discussed doing a POD deal but such a relationship can confuse the issue when you're trying to line up a real publisher. if so I can help save some costs because I am a partner in a Printing On Demand publisher. We do ISBN and everything including a listing in Books in Print. I'm sure that I'm cheaper than anyone else. PLUS we are on demand meaning that he doesn't have to buy any up front inventory. I publish another self-published book with CafePress and although I'm delighted with their service, promotion and marketing remains my problem, of course. BTW how far has he progresses on the three vol. set? I purchased the Pre-pub deal (option C) and haven't heard a thing since the pre-pub of vol. one. There have been a few posts on the list about this. Kevin Miller and I decided some time ago to turn our efforts to finding a real publisher to handle Vol. 1 and to put together a publishing plan for Vols. 2 and 3. Meanwhile, I release occasional individual chapters (only two so far with a third in draft mode now) free to those who joined my RevPros community at the Leader level and $5 each to everyone else who is in a hurry for a particular chapter and doesn't want to wait for the other volumes to be finished en masse. I will communicate with you offlist about your membership. Dave -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Brownell Sent: Friday, August 06, 2004 10:11 AM To: How to use Revolution Subject: Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely On Thursday, August 5, 2004, at 09:33 PM, Troy Rollins wrote: Convincing a book distributor that Revolution has as much appeal to the unwashed masses as iTunes? Good luck with that one. -- Troy Amazon.com has a small publisher section that would allow Dan / Revolution to sell his book from the Amazon website. His book would pop up for any requests for books on Runtime Revolution. Of course Dan would need to take a 50% reduction in earnings to ask for that level of exposure and the percentage of loss to him might even be greater. It might be better to advertise the existence of his book and keep selling it direct. What you are really saying is that more Revolution exposure would be nice. Advertising could handle both issues and earn enough from it to pay for the print runs. mtml my two=cents name=Mark 2 /my /mtml ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ~~ Dan Shafer, Revolutionary Author of Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought http://www.revolutionpros.com for more info Available at Runtime Revolution Store (http://www.runrev.com/RevPress) ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
On Aug 6, 2004, at 7:10 AM, Mark Brownell wrote: On Thursday, August 5, 2004, at 09:33 PM, Troy Rollins wrote: Convincing a book distributor that Revolution has as much appeal to the unwashed masses as iTunes? Good luck with that one. -- Troy Amazon.com has a small publisher section that would allow Dan / Revolution to sell his book from the Amazon website. His book would pop up for any requests for books on Runtime Revolution. Of course Dan would need to take a 50% reduction in earnings to ask for that level of exposure and the percentage of loss to him might even be greater. It might be better to advertise the existence of his book and keep selling it direct. What you are really saying is that more Revolution exposure would be nice. Advertising could handle both issues and earn enough from it to pay for the print runs. I don't have any problem with cutting deals like this as a rule and I certainly don't have an issue with this book, which has sold remarkably few copies. There are two problems with going to amazon.com with this book. First, fulfillment is still out of Edinburgh, which drives the cost of the book very high. Second, to the extent that we enter into new contractual distribution deals we cloud the possibility of success with a traditional publisher, who is already going to be quite reluctant to work with us just based on the minuscule size of the potential audience. If it were up to me, we'd use amazon.com and a bunch of other places to try to get the word out. But it's more complicated than it seems on the surface, at least until Kevin and I have either cut a deal or given up on the idea. Dan mtml my two=cents name=Mark 2 /my /mtml ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
On Friday, August 6, 2004, at 08:30 AM, Dan Shafer wrote: First, fulfillment is still out of Edinburgh, which drives the cost of the book very high. International shipping costs are almost a deal killer. Second, to the extent that we enter into new contractual distribution deals we cloud the possibility of success with a traditional publisher, who is already going to be quite reluctant to work with us just based on the minuscule size of the potential audience. Now I see why you went the e-Book way. Geeks already have their faces screen-burned so what's the diff. The e-book business has pretty much tanked. People want to have something to hold in their hands that is not screen related. Still these books of yours are part of the reason that some would consider using Revolution in the first place. Keep up the great work, and thanks. Mark ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
RE: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
Sims, No doubt, the EuroRevCon is a great way for us to get together, and buy discounted autographed books from our favority author. ;) No kidding, I still pride my HC handbook 2.0! I got 3 HC books and Dan's the one that got the most leafing! ;) However, spending dire marketing money on the ADC is IMOHO a big waste. What is 20 users when you can have double that with a single post in Slashdot.org (/.) alone! Oh, I almost forgot, it's free and revisitable... However RunRev has not made much talk there and there's a catchup to do if you want the book to find even more success... Separately, in RunRev's case, I dont know how much /. banner ads cost but surely their success have to worth the money more than anywhere else... Question is how does RR want to market itself and to whom... I started with Macs, dont get me wrong, but PC's are not to be undermined - at 9x% of the market... Consider that unix, linux, mac and PC users will visit /. while the ADC will get the usual 10% attention, 5% response you get from printed marketing... And /. is free... ;) If Kevin and Dan talked to /. ed. im sure they could get a sweet deal... Dan and Kevin would get an audience interested in RR and the ball start rolling not just in the Mac audience which seems still to be the mainstream RR client. Please correct me if Im wrong! my 2 eurocents Xavier -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of sims Sent: Friday, August 06, 2004 17:15 To: How to use Revolution Subject: RE: Plea to sell Dan's book widely Why not put an announcement in DDJ.com slashdot.org ? Both put in articles for books about programming and have a wide audience of ahem, geeks... Little is known or mentioned of RR or MC or hypercard anymore but Wired.com has run articles on it in the past. Surely a small article in each will draw hords to both RR and the book. One of the benefits of pushing the EuroRevCon has been just what you are referring to...exposure of Rev to people who may have not heard about it. Marketing a product or event is not easy and is usually expensive. The Apple Developer Connection Newsletter has carried a notice about the EuroRevCon for quite a few issues. The ADC newsletter goes out to approx. 200,000 people according to Rod McCall. For several issues the ADC has carried this announcement: At 2:39 -0700 7/19/04, Apple Developer Connection wrote: European Revolution Conference November 14-16 in Malta http://www.techietours.com/Rev/ Having the EuroRevCon be a success is also important, we need a few more people to sign on. If you are considering it please get in touch with me, just as Dan SHafer did this week when he told me wants to come and will be available to speak or otherwise do what he can to promote Rev. atb sims ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
On Aug 6, 2004, at 1:02 PM, MisterX wrote: However, spending dire marketing money on the ADC is IMOHO a big waste. What is 20 users when you can have double that with a single post in Slashdot.org (/.) alone! Oh, I almost forgot, it's free and revisitable... However RunRev has not made much talk there and there's a catchup to do if you want the book to find even more success... Xavier, can they handle being slashdoted... the page can go down... :D Andre -- Andre Alves Garzia 2004 BRAZIL http://studio.soapdog.org ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
RE: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
Sims, No doubt, the EuroRevCon is a great way for us to get together, and buy discounted autographed books from our favority author. ;) No kidding, I still pride my HC handbook 2.0! I got 3 HC books and Dan's the one that got the most leafing! ;) However, spending dire marketing money on the ADC is IMOHO a big waste. What is 20 users when you can have double that with a single post in Slashdot.org (/.) alone! Oh, I almost forgot, it's free and revisitable... However RunRev has not made much talk there and there's a catchup to do if you want the book to find even more success... Ummm...it cost nothing, zilch, nada for the ad in the ADC Neswletter. A marketing budget for the EuroRevCon would be an interesting concept ;-) So far it has been mostly my time effort...I must have missed that 'marketing budget' meeting (joke there folks) ;-) Look forward to seeing you at EuroRevCon Mr X. Ciao, sims ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
On Aug 6, 2004, at 1:02 PM, MisterX wrote: However, spending dire marketing money on the ADC is IMOHO a big waste. What is 20 users when you can have double that with a single post in Slashdot.org (/.) alone! Oh, I almost forgot, it's free and revisitable... However RunRev has not made much talk there and there's a catchup to do if you want the book to find even more success... Xavier, can they handle being slashdoted... the page can go down... :D Bandwidth costs might put Rev out of biz. Actually, if the EuroRevCon web page did get slashdoted I hope it goes down immediately as the server fees would bankrupt me. No joke there. atb sims ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
Well, based on an n of 1, if it weren't for the sidebar ad on macnn (or was it macintouch?), I never would have heard of Rev. On Aug 6, 2004, at 12:02 PM, MisterX wrote: Separately, in RunRev's case, I dont know how much /. banner ads cost but surely their success have to worth the money more than anywhere else... ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
OT (Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely)
On Aug 6, 2004, at 1:45 PM, sims wrote: Actually, if the EuroRevCon web page did get slashdoted I hope it goes down immediately as the server fees would bankrupt me. No joke there. So I must ask CmdrTaco not to publish the note I sent ten minutes ago? *grin* :D Andre -- Andre Alves Garzia 2004 Soap Dog Studios - BRAZIL http://studio.soapdog.org ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
RE: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
hu... being slashdotted is not fun... but it's a sign of power marketing... ;) besides, with a clear description, this could be avoided. I dont click on all the website links I see in slashdot. being slashdoted usually comes with having big downloads. uh... RR has them dont they ;)) Ready when you are Kevin ;) -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of sims Sent: Friday, August 06, 2004 18:46 To: How to use Revolution Subject: Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely On Aug 6, 2004, at 1:02 PM, MisterX wrote: However, spending dire marketing money on the ADC is IMOHO a big waste. What is 20 users when you can have double that with a single post in Slashdot.org (/.) alone! Oh, I almost forgot, it's free and revisitable... However RunRev has not made much talk there and there's a catchup to do if you want the book to find even more success... Xavier, can they handle being slashdoted... the page can go down... :D Bandwidth costs might put Rev out of biz. Actually, if the EuroRevCon web page did get slashdoted I hope it goes down immediately as the server fees would bankrupt me. No joke there. atb sims ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
RE: OT (Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely)
ROTFL ;) what is Cryptome.org or lecanardenchaine.fr going to say now ;) want more market but cant market it? ;)) Look at le canardenchained.fr... they want to sell news but I wont buy newspapers (save the trees) so they wont publish on the net, and I wont read it anymore... ;( Catch 22? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Andre Garzia Sent: Friday, August 06, 2004 18:55 To: How to use Revolution Subject: OT (Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely) On Aug 6, 2004, at 1:45 PM, sims wrote: Actually, if the EuroRevCon web page did get slashdoted I hope it goes down immediately as the server fees would bankrupt me. No joke there. So I must ask CmdrTaco not to publish the note I sent ten minutes ago? *grin* :D Andre -- Andre Alves Garzia ð 2004 Soap Dog Studios - BRAZIL http://studio.soapdog.org ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
Dan Shafer wrote: I'm afraid the bookstore route is closed to us for the moment. When Dreamcard gets enough traction and the software is available in stores, we may be able to convince some specialty places like Fry's to carry it, but mainstream bookstores aren't likely to touch it unless it comes from a major publisher or through an established distributor. Why is this necessarily limited to DreamCard? There are books on many professional development tools, including Director, RealBASIC, and others, at a great many mainstream bookstores. Wouldn't the award-winning pro Rev product be worth marketing? With the higher margins I would think it would be even more so -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
My suspicion is that the key phrase in all this is [w]hen...the software is available in stores. I wonder whether any thought has been given to marketing Rev through mail order/online shops as well as brick and mortar shops On Aug 6, 2004, at 3:41 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote: Dan Shafer wrote: I'm afraid the bookstore route is closed to us for the moment. When Dreamcard gets enough traction and the software is available in stores, we may be able to convince some specialty places like Fry's to carry it, but mainstream bookstores aren't likely to touch it unless it comes from a major publisher or through an established distributor. Why is this necessarily limited to DreamCard? There are books on many professional development tools, including Director, RealBASIC, and others, at a great many mainstream bookstores. Wouldn't the award-winning pro Rev product be worth marketing? With the higher margins I would think it would be even more so ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
RE: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
At 18:02 06/08/2004 +0200, MisterX wrote: However, spending dire marketing money on the ADC is IMOHO a big waste. What is 20 users when you can have double that with a single post in Slashdot.org (/.) alone! Oh, I almost forgot, it's free and revisitable... However RunRev has not made much talk there and there's a catchup to do if you want the book to find even more success... Well, I found RunRev through a link from /. (it might have been indirect - a /. link to someone's weblog talking about different scripting languages, and it mentioned Revolution - don't remember now). Separately, in RunRev's case, I dont know how much /. banner ads cost but surely their success have to worth the money more than anywhere else... Question is how does RR want to market itself and to whom... I started with Macs, dont get me wrong, but PC's are not to be undermined - at 9x% of the market... I did find the Mac-orientation of Revolution a bit off-putting at first. Hypercard (and Applescript, and QT and ...) are mentioned so often, and so much discussion includes Mac mentions, that I did wonder initially just how cross-platform Rev would be - or whether it was really 80% a Mac application, with a token ability to run on other platforms. The apparent focus on Mac/Apple (conferences, Macworld announcements, etc.) could easily scare Windows (or Unix/Linux) users. I think it would be a good idea for some balancing if possible. [ Occasionally, I still think there's too much Mac focus - but I'll keep that argument for another day when my skin is feeling thicker :- ] -- Alex. ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
Richard Of course if RevPro gets enough market traction (i.e., a large enough installed base) then a publisher would be interested. As of now, it seems to me that it is far more likely that Dreamcard will achieve that level of market penetration sooner because it is going to be sold in a more mainstream way rather than through narrower dev channels. Dan On Aug 6, 2004, at 12:41 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote: Dan Shafer wrote: I'm afraid the bookstore route is closed to us for the moment. When Dreamcard gets enough traction and the software is available in stores, we may be able to convince some specialty places like Fry's to carry it, but mainstream bookstores aren't likely to touch it unless it comes from a major publisher or through an established distributor. Why is this necessarily limited to DreamCard? There are books on many professional development tools, including Director, RealBASIC, and others, at a great many mainstream bookstores. Wouldn't the award-winning pro Rev product be worth marketing? With the higher margins I would think it would be even more so -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
On Aug 6, 2004, at 5:54 PM, Alex Tweedly wrote: I did find the Mac-orientation of Revolution a bit off-putting at first. Hypercard (and Applescript, and QT and ...) are mentioned so often, and so much discussion includes Mac mentions, that I did wonder initially just how cross-platform Rev would be - or whether it was really 80% a Mac application, with a token ability to run on other platforms. The apparent focus on Mac/Apple (conferences, Macworld announcements, etc.) could easily scare Windows (or Unix/Linux) users. I think it would be a good idea for some balancing if possible. I think that this isn't an issue of Windows versus Mac, but one of Windows developers versus Mac developers. One of Rev's greatest strengths and marketable features is its inherently multi-platform nature. A feature that Windows developers generally don't give a whit about. Windows developers (typically) are not Mac savvy, and don't even consider developing anything for Mac. In fact, your initial reaction would be typical, I think. Why mess up an IDE and scripting language with all that Mac oriented rubbish? What's with this plain English programming? Mac developers, on the other hand, know well that they generally *must* develop for Windows in order for their products to be seriously marketable to the general public. Virtually all Mac developers that I know (Hypercarders excepted) develop multi-platform, and look for multi-platform tools to develop with. Windows users are not specifically looking for multi-platform tools, they are looking for the tools with the most advanced Windows features they can find. There is an argument to be had that Rev is somewhat limited in advanced Windows features because of its well-balanced multi-platform feature set. I'm not saying one approach is better or worse, each developer needs to choose that for themselves. I'm just making the point that *if* Rev's focus has any bias to Mac at all, it is because the Mac developers are very receptive to their offerings, needing such tools perhaps more than Windows developers. Windows developers are certainly not scrambling to find a HyperCard replacement, for instance. Which is a long way of saying that I assess that RunRev is trying to appeal, at least initially, to those most receptive to what they have to offer. Hypercard and Applescript are often mentioned because the languages are virtually identical to Transcript... and all three are a lng way from VB Script. QuickTime is mentioned because it is the primary media engine on both platforms for Revolution, as it is the only truly cross-platform media solution. Marketing Revolution to Mac developers is easy. Marketing it to Windows developers (other than a certain segment) is swimming against the tide. It can be done, but it is certainly a harder road to travel. There is a lot more education to do, in order to get Windows developers to recognize the value... if in fact, it does have value to them over their current tools. [ Occasionally, I still think there's too much Mac focus - but I'll keep that argument for another day when my skin is feeling thicker :- ] Ah, OK. Standing-by. ;-) -- Troy RPSystems, Ltd. http://www.rpsystems.net ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Plea to sell Dan's book widely
Troy That is one of the best, most cogent, clear pieces of explanation of this phenomenon that I've seen. I've been saying this for a lot of years. It seems quite clear to me that you're right, but there are still people who don't see it our way! Dan ___ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
