On 3/29/11 11:24 AM, Wilhelm Sanke wrote:
Could you possibly point out where we could find this "necessary info" from Oliver Canyon, if it was available it surely escaped me?. This and the difficulties of Klaus - there are other reasons as I understand and deplore on the side of Klaus - led me to assume that there unfortunately had *not* been sufficient information from the RunRev side to build a new MC-compatible standalone builder
In all fairness to RunRev, it's not an easy change. And I would even go so far as to say it was a useful change, actually necessary as far as RevWeb is concerned and also UAC, and also helpful for both RunRev's license protection and for the MC IDE, since now the engine does all the bit-level stuff (binding the engine, embedding icons, embedding UAC info, etc.).
It took a few back-and-forth emails with Oliver to get this down, and a fair bit of trial-and-error on my part. Actually, a lot of trial and error since any error messages that come back from the engine are rather sparse.
It's not a task I'd wish on anyone who has other things to do, but I do feel it's fair to say that RunRev, and particularly Kevin, Mark Waddingham and Oliver, made themselves available to help with my understanding of the initial example that Oliver had sent to Klaus and I, and ultimately it was their willingness to help that made the new SB possible.
I know that the rate of change in engine features sometimes makes it seems like RunRev is going out of their way to break the MC IDE, but having had more than a few discussions with Kevin about this I can confidently say that the opposite is true. I think Kevin now feels good enough about the RR IDE that he's no longer at all concerned about potential bifurcation of his user base, and has gone from being merely comfortable with MC to actively helping us improve it.
In addition to the team's effort to bring our SB up to date, RR has helped with at least two other significant improvements that make our MC work easier:
- MessageBoxRedirect: this property was added specifically to address a problem that used to occur if you tried to swap out the Rev IDE for MC within the Rev session. I had at one time explored making a tool for this I called "FlipsIDE" (long since abandoned because it's just easier to make a fresh install), and Kevin gave this issue priority and had the team address it as soon as it was brought to his attention.
- Engine-based licensing: in versions prior to v2.7, the Rev license handling was done outside the engine, which meant that we had to have separate license keys for MC and they had to maintain them; extra work for everyone. With v2.7 the engine now handles registration itself, so any stack at all can be used as a Home stack, which can in turn launch any stacks for any IDE, as long as you first have a working licensed Rev install. Easy to comply with, it's also much easier for us (or anyone else wishing to make an IDE) since the Home stack is now just effectively a launcher, no longer saddled with license enforcement. When launched the engine will first sort out its license stuff, then look for a stack named "mchome.mc" at the same level as the engine. If not found, it will then proceed to look for home.rev, but if found it will open the file, where you can use any scripts you want to open any tools you want.
True, both of these moves also have benefits for RunRev. But that's a good thing: mutually supportive goals that maximize flexibility for all.
-- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation ___________________________________________________________ ambassa...@fourthworld.com http://www.FourthWorld.com _______________________________________________ metacard mailing list metacard@lists.runrev.com http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
