Marl Swindell wrote: "Yes, and the documentation was so bad I couldn't make heads or tails of how to script anything, even though I knew HyperTalk. It was functionally a rich multimedia PowerPoint for kids... and well before PowerPoint. They missed a great opportunity."
And I really want to "unpack" that:- 1. "a rich multimedia PowerPoint for kids" Why, Oh Why, does it seem that when people conceive of something that does not involve direct programming by the end-user we always end up with a glorified slideshow? WHAT is needed is something with nearly all the capabilities of Runtime Revolution with a FRONT-END that is fully automated in such a way that a Professor of Anatomy (for example) can sit down in front of their computer and rapidly, and with no need to learn xTalk, Logo, "Bogo" or what-have-you, put together a slick and efficient program that does what ever the Prof. requires without silly restraints imposed by people who think that computers are only used by "real" programmers and slide-show freaks: the usual problem of the excluded middle. 2. "the documentation was so bad I couldn't make heads or tails of how to script anything" Well that's an enormous problem should you want to script anything (and one could stop for a moment of b*tchiness here about the state of the RunRev documentation' with, of course, the caveat that is is still lightyears ahead of the documentation on my HyperStudio demo CD) BUT . . . There is a crying need for a RAD that offers a GUI that will allow our hypothetical Professor of Anatomy "go the whole hog" without any reference to scripting whatsoever. 3."They missed a great opportunity." Yup, and so is everybody else,including the developers of HyperNext, Supercard (which, increasingly, looks less and less super) and Runtime Revolution. 4. {admittedly not an quote from Mark Swindell} "Richmond is a pain in the ***." Yes, I am a pain in the ***, and aim to continue to be until this HUGE problem is resolved. When I was a child, way back in 1976, the British government was pumping schools full of propaganda that stated that in the great and glorious future we could order up anything we wanted from computers without an additional cognitive load (well, they didn't go as far as using fancy pseudo-psychological terms as 'cognitive load') caused by having to learn to navigate our way round increasingly complex GUIs both of operating systems, and of RADs; and learning programming languages. Runtime Revolution has a lot of good "buried under the hood"; and non-experts have to spend such a long time learning how to see and interpret what is under the hood that it is hardly worth the bother. Runtime Revolution with a fully automated interface based on a vast decision tree should blow the pants of every other RAD (or silly PowerPoint thingy) out there. Sorry to keep plugging; but I did develop an extremely primitive "seed" of what could be done as my MSc project; it is enormous, clunky and incredibly inefficient - but it proves its point: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/RRRThesis/ (all the code is there) my recent 'Splash Screen Designer' (revOnline) uses exactly the same principle; which, I believe, is the principle, the whole RR GUI is based around. sincerely, Richmond Mathewson ____________________________________________________________ A Thorn in the flesh is better than a failed Systems Development Life Cycle. ____________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ Sent from Yahoo! Mail - a smarter inbox http://uk.mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution