M Young wrote:
Richard Gaskin Tue, 28 Jun 2005 21:53:49 -0700: A lot of people from a
wide range of programming backgrounds have learned Rev easily with the
help of the folks here.
MY: Very true, however I find that the old x-talk hands on this list
expect all new Rev users to be programming neophytes. "Dan [Shafer]
coined the term "Inventive User" to describe people who use programs
like Revolution to create solutions to their own problems without
necessarily becoming professional programmers in the process." (
http://www.altuit.com/webs/altuit/RevConWest/Sponsors.htm )
Those are someone else's words, not mine. The "low-hanging fruit" of
refugees from other xTalks has pretty much been picked long ago. If Rev
is to grow it will come from two categories:
- The "inventive users" Dan talks about, tinkerers by nature who want to
experience the joy of building useful things for themselves and others.
- Professional developers, who by virtue of being developers already
have a current favorite language.
This makes for a difficult challenge in documenting Rev: it must appeal
to those with no previous programming experience at all, and must also
appeal to those for whom Rev is a second (or third or fourth) language.
Every language has its indiosynchracies, but since Transcript is a
proprietary language this multiplies the above documentation challenges
by an order of magnitude. There's a team at RunRev working on the docs
year 'round, and they tend to get better with each release. Dropping a
note into Bugzilla about errors and ommissions helps guide that process,
and the folks at RR definitely read this list.
There are some orientation materials for programmers familiar with
languages like C++ and Java -- worth at least a skim:
<http://support.runrev.com/resources/c_java.php>
For everything else there's experimentation and this list. You'll never
hear me hold experienced programmers in disdain; on the contrary I feel
their input is valuable in helping the language grow and the product's
marketing expend its reach.
Richard Gaskin Wed, 29 Jun 2005 00:44:22 -0700: In its most basic form,
a Rev script editor is just a field in a stack. The field is loaded with
the script in response to the editScript message (trappable in a
frontScript if you want to get the message before the Rev editor does),
and the script is just a property saved to the object with the save
command ("set the script of <obj> to <script>"). It's not all that hard
to make a place to type if that's all you need. Or you can use
Constellation. Or BBEdit. Or the MC IDE. Or.....
MY: Is the information on how to swap out editors, capture editScript
message, and etc. obvious to someone new to programming or coming from
another programming environment? I could not find how to swap out the
editor in the Revolution application documentation by using "Search
for:" in Topics, Dictionary or Objects.
All true, but try to be a bit forgiving: as another reader pointed out,
for all the activity on this list it's hard to find posts that regard
Rev's auto-formatting as a bad thing.
Yes, there are ways to write your own editor, and even your own IDE, but
those usually aren't topics newcomers start with. :)
Patience, grasshopper. :)
Other points:
1. All Runtime Revolution owners, investors, contractors,
subcontractors, etc., i.e. anyone who financially benefits from the sale
of Runtime Revolution products, should somehow acknowledge it in their
list signature line, since not all new users to the list know who is
making money on the deal. For example, one unnamed poster does not
acknowledge in their signature line a Runtime Revolution affiliation
that is really quite important for others to know.
In external forums where advocacy may be an issue, I would agree in
principle. And as an individual I like sig lines that tell me a bit
about where a person's coming from (though I prefer those that adhere to
the six-lines-or-less convention).
But here in this Revolution list I don't think it's critical. You can
pretty much assume everyone here is some form of stakeholder, just as
you would on any other product's list: casual users, professional
developers, contractors and employees alike all benefit from Rev's
growth, and just about all of them will play an advocacy role at one
time or another. That's just what fans do.
--
Richard Gaskin
Managing Editor, revJournal
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