Mikey wrote:
Richard,
Obviously others have commented on the patent. If the patent hasn't
expired, it is about to, and the technique will be described in the
patent application.
Regardless, there is nothing that stops anyone from circumventing a
patent by reverse-engineering it, which is generally the favored
technique.
Of course, as noted in my post:
<http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-revolution/2008-January/106068.html>
I realize it got a bit long, but where I noted the patent I also noted
that it was the lesser of at least two reasons it would seem unlikely
that the folks at RunRev would pursue a data storage solution dependent
on a single representation of content.
Finally, the argument that "everyone else is doing" something would
have led to HC never being created in the first place. Paradigms are
made to be broken.
While I'm all for innovation, it's balancing act. Sometimes the entire
world isn't wrong.
The HC paradigm was fun and useful, but it was also unique and is now
extinct.
For all these years, it's noteworthy that while so many other products
have been inspired by HC's innovative visual programming approach (a
former Microsoft employee once told me that Visual Basic was prototyped
on a Mac with SuperCard <g>), none of them have seen it worthwhile to
also replicate its approach to data storage.
That said, there may still be merit to that approach, and perhaps
FileMaker's Bento offers the closest match among modern tools to
accommodate a similar set of needs.
My point is not whether it has any merit, but rather the likelihood of
Rev adopting it in a world where the remaining growth opportunities must
address an audience who's never seen HyperCard before, but probably has
at least some familiarity with any of the variety of systems which
separate layout from content.
In short, Rev may be different from HyperCard, but I don't think it's
fair to characterize that difference as "broken".
Case in point:
Many years ago I helped port a card-based system in HC to Rev. The
final product was at least semi-relational in parts, and those that were
saw a three-orders-of-magnitude performance gain; a process that once
ran all night in HC is now completed in just a few minutes in Rev.
It didn't use Valentina, or MySQL, or anything externals at all. Just
delimited data in custom properties, all in native Transcript.
Moreover, the user interface could be enhanced at any time without
affecting the client's data. No cumbersome export/import; just drop the
new UI stacks in and new features become available instantly.
This isn't all that novel; most apps do this. We didn't invent any new
paradigms, just used existing ones to the user's advantage. This morning
I updated my iTunes, and it didn't touch my data at all. Same with
upgrades to everything from Adobe GoLive to Microsoft Word.
Separating content from presentation is simply a paradigm that works,
and I can't fault the folks at RunRev for focusing on providing
solutions which favor it.
Sure, it's more work for the developer. Most things that make life
easier for the end-user are. So we just roll up our sleeves and make
magic, and all the user knows is that their world is a little bit
simpler than it was the day before.
--
Richard Gaskin
Managing Editor, revJournal
_______________________________________________________
Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com
_______________________________________________
use-revolution mailing list
[email protected]
Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription
preferences:
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
