David Phillips wrote: > > Hi, I'm a complete newbie to Revolution...and I have dozens > of questions that I was hoping the list might help me answer. > I'll try not to overwhelm you kind folks by asking them all > at once...;) > > I work in a corporate media division with 34 full-time developers. > We primarily use a proprietary cross-platform (and code-intensive) > tool for authoring, although if we have a WIN-only project we > frequently use GLPRO. We also have a few token Director and > Apple Media Tool users. We have zero experience with SuperCard, > Hypercard, *Card, etc. We are interested in purchasing all of > our developers another tool to ease developing chores. Just > a little background to tell you where I'm coming from... > > The Questions, Part I: > > 1. How are animations implemented in Revolution? I read that > it doesn't have a sprite engine, yet uses sprites? Also, what > - if any - 3D capabilities does Revolution offer?
No direct suport for 3D but externals can be used. Sprites I believe are supported via QT. The experts will probably tell you more on animation. > > 2. I'm not entirely clear on the concept of "externals" in regards > to Revolution...Is an "external" a DLL- type architecture (bolt-on) Yes and XCMDs and XFCNs on mac. > or an integrated, plug-in type architecture? Maintaining a single, > double-clickable distribution file is very important to us. > Is it possible to add a database to Rev (as an "external") and > still maintain the single, double-clickable executable for distribution? Yes, check out Valentina (www.paradigmasoft.com). > > 3. Is it possible to have embedded, anti-aliased fonts using > platform-specific compilations (so that you don't have to guess > what fonts are on the end-user's computer and worry about font > spacing?) Only if you import them as images made by other program. > > 4. What image and sound formats are utilized natively by Revolution? Jpeg,gif,png,bmp,pict,xwd,xbm,xpm for images, sound I only know .au and there is support for QT. > > 5. I saw a couple of people mention iShell, which we are also > examining. Can anyone offer insights as to how iShell and Revolution > compare on different features, stability, speed of development, > etc.? (I realize that some of the best functionality with iShell > requires 3rd party plug-ins. We are limited in budget to around > US$2K/year per developer, and are aware of the companies pricing > structures.) Revolution is a front end to the Metacard engines. Though the development environment is not an example of stability since it's very young and very complex one, the engines are to my experience very stable. I don't know much about iShell but Revolution for sure will allow you to build almost any type of application with or without internet integration, almost 100% platform (Mac, Windows and several flavors of UNIX) independent. I would also recommend you check out Metacard's development environment for a more basic but more mature interface. In any case what counts is under the hood and that, I highly recommend. > > Many, many thanks for your input. > > - David Andu
