on Mon Jan 24 2005 Dan Shafer wrote: > Speaking as the only author who has produced a > book specifically about Rev (at least as far as I > know) and who began his project with the idea > of simply converting my HyperTalk Programming > best-seller to Transcript, I have a couple of > observations on this topic.
Nice to read you on this topic, ;-) > First, a simple port or conversion is not possible. > There are not only subtle differences between > Transcript and HyperTalk, but such a book > would end up: (a) recommending poor Transcript > coding practices and techniques; and > (b) be horribly incomplete. Did you know what i think? You, alone, try to make "The complete Runtime Revolution & Transcript Guide", but as you already noticed this is an superhuman effort for one author. The full scope of your book only could be reached after many months (or years?) working in every corner and bumping with all the limitations of this platform, but even then you could start programming externals dlls or xcmds ;-) It's difficult to become a master of every topic for this software. In fact i suspect that only few of the participants in this mail list are fully aware of all the real capabilities and limitations of this platform. CGI, Chat, FTP, http, email, (to name a few) are a whole new game in stackware development that HyperCard autors barely touch in their previous work. > So I converted about 1/2 of my original HyperTalk > book into volume 1 of "Software at the Speed of > Thought." It took about four times as much > time and energy as I'd originally anticipated. You must not work alone in this book. In fact, if i were you, you must work as editor of contents produced by long time users of this platform. In this way, the book will be finished in months, not years. > So Kevin and I decided -- and announced some time ago > -- that we would seek a traditional publisher to > undertake production of the books. > I am absolutely open to any great ideas for how to > turn Rev books into some potentially meaningful > business, but so far nothing we've tried > has had even a semblance of success. The first book is cleary aimed at beginners. I've read here great reviews of your books from people that is just starting to learn this software. But how many beginners, not ex-hypercard users, are aware of your book??? A great idea is: ask to participants of this mail list to write chapters or topics in your book and work as editor for their work. Ah!!! An keep the book updated in your website... Don't worry, money will come when all job is done. al ===== Visit my site: http://www.geocities.com/capellan2000/ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today! http://my.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
