Richmond,
by poking around the IDE source you'll find lots of little gems,
specially functions and code that can teach you how to do many things
but having access to the inner bowels of the RunRev IDE does not
means that this is something you can rely on. The executionContexts
is one example, there are others. They are a part of the private
interface of Rev, functions to be used by them, meaning they can and
probably will change in future releases. It's like you're building
your code for a customer, a nice little application full of functions
for it to work and when you deliver to the guy, he disassemble it and
start asking around why you didn't document that private handler used
by your own code. You could say to him: "hey, this are inner
functions of the software, you're not supposed to be here, and in the
following releases this might change." which is the case of Runtime
Revolution.
If RunRev IDE was coded in C/C++ then you would have ZERO of this
undocumented features you talk about, they are not features, they are
not hidden, they are not undocumented. They are just a side effect of
coding the IDE in the same language as the one being distributed.
What you see as new properties to tap and handlers to call are
nothing but how RunRev team worked to build their own IDE, they are
not for public comsumption.
Dar Scott was very wise in the words that he didn't bought
executionContexts. Thats true, the thing he bought (damn, I can't
spell that word in english) is Runtime Revolution with it's
Transcript Language, executionContexts is just a side effect of how
the RunRev team implemented such language and IDE.
To give you an example where I acted like you till I realized what
was really happening.
I once, in Release 1.1 (I think) was coding a little database app and
was using the Database Query Builder for it. The DQB appeared to me
to be very inflexible since the SQL statements were hard coded during
the development periods till it was revealled to me some functions
that would allow me to update the SQL statement in a given query. I
was like in the computer developer equivalent of samadhi or some less
important bliss state. Such power, hidden!!! I asked for
documentation too till I realized that the function I was calling was
an inner function of runtime revolution, it was in fact (In my
guessing) the actual function used by the Database Query Builder to
create those SQL statements in the first case. I was not tapping into
some hidden function to be used by the initiates of the order of the
sacred xtalk or something, I was actually using the side effect of
Database Query Builder being done in the same transcript language I
was coding and leeching on some of its function for my profit and fun.
I came to realize that I was using some function of the RunRev IDE, I
was only able to use such function due to the message path nature of
Revolution. Rev having no namespace or protection allows anyone to
use anything that is put into use. Those things can change as RunRev
team finds new ways of doing stuff, and again in each release as they
change their codebase, as long as we're allowed to explore the
source, we'll keep finding little side-effect-gems but trusting them
to be present in every release or asking for documentation is not the
right path here.
I think what we're discussing here is not undocumented functions but
in fact clever side effects of the message path mixed with having
access to IDE sources. A much more colorful discussion would be "What
cool thing did you learned by looking into the IDE sources?" where
people could say how looking into the IDE scripts they learned things
and styles of coding that made them a better coder. There are people
here that are coding xTalk for decades, by looking into their scripts
a newbie such as me and the others can learn much about proven
practices that work.
Andre
_______________________________________________
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
