Second, the problem with the MC licensing scheme is that it was too easy to abuse...
Here, I fully understand RR's way. You build a chain of buttons never breaking the limit of the 10 script lines but despite that, I dont know anyone who would in their right mind want to use such an IDE. Also, to Scott's demise, allowing compilation of an executable is a nice feature for a demo but it's part of the problem with runaway licenses...
Actually, this was an acceptable way to earn your wings and test the MC environment. Chaining 10-lines was not breaking any licenses AFAIK. I believe the reasoning was that any serious developer would pay rather than struggle all the time, but people who were not serious wouldn't pay anyway. Some post in this thread seem to confirm that this worked. (But then some complained that they can't truly evaluate the product with 10-line limit.)
No many IDE's have this feature on the other hand!
Also, note that other than optimizing the IDE to improve your workflow, I dont see why anyone would want to go through the pain of creating an IDE.
Most RR and MC users create applications for their clients. None of them want their clients to develop more themselves!
It was not about competing GUI as far as I know. MC allowed for alt GUIs (it is Rev that had this restriction). However, if not for the script limiting, one unscrupulous programmer could produce a standalone that gave full access to the engine in developer mode for anyone. Indeed not a desirable situation for anyone seriously interested in this product. This is why standalones have always been running in the demo mode so do speak. Full features of the engine were only available in the development (paid) environment. As a result, we had a severly limited or full environment but nothing in between. As Scott explained to me at some point, there were some markets that he left out for that reason. Now Rev is changing the equation by further restricting the 'limited' end, crippling capabilities for our products even further. My reading on that is that Rev is focusing more on people who work only within dev environment rather than producing standalones distributed to others. In other words, while MC was meant as a tool for professional developers, Rev is mostly after the hobbyst market.
Following Robert's comments earlier, the removal of a feature or limiting a feature like dynamic scripting (the DO script), is IMOHO a terrible mistake and a SEVERE limit to the IDE's possibilities. Of which this one is almost unique among other IDEs.
Since using 'do' one can relatively easily work around the 'set script to' restriction (performance issues aside), we can only expect further elimination of 'do' in standalones (do limit set to 0) in a near future. It would be a logical followup to fully close that loophole. This line of product development really scares me, particularly as it is a rather expensive product (I paid for full MC license plus renewal) comparing to either RB or CWP. I have my doubts about cutting off multiplatform features from cheaper licenses but I see this as Rev trying to maximize their income. I have no problems if the demo is restricted in terms of dynamic scripting. But the engine embedded when producing a standalone from a licensed environment could retain current limits. Since the limits are clearly kept as parameters, there must be ways to control them accordingly, including setting arbitrary values for specific projects (as I suggested). I had big and long-term plans for a number of MC-based projects, but the recent developments really make me wonder whether I bet on the right horse.
Robert Brenstein _______________________________________________ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
