Rob Cozens wrote: > A generalized RunRev Player would make it unnecessary to design RR > mainStack "apps" differently from HyperCard stacks, and an extensible > Home stack would provide a framework for integrating multiple RR > "applications". > > Why hasn't anyone built a generalized RunRev Player?
The answer may be in the paragraph above the question, in the difference between applications and "stackware". I've spent almost a decade thinking about players, and even built and maintained one for SuperCard for three years before Allegiant decided to do a sanctioned one. But truth be told, neither my SCPlayer nor the official SuperCard Player were ever broadly used. The very small number of developers who would use a player for general distribution (it may be zero for all I know; I've never actually seen anyone promoting wares for distribution with general players, only as standalones) tells us a lot about what happens to audience demographics when you move from something pre-installed on every Mac (HyperCard) to something that has to be downloaded (everything since), and says a bit about the role the Web plays in all this. Back in HyperCard's heyday, there was no Web. Distributing HyperCard stacks, and creating interconnections between them, was the closest thing at the time. But once the Web was born, HTML took over the role previously occupied by HyperCard stacks for that sort of thing, leaving a subset of developers whose interests lie more in application development. Players can be useful for things that have a common focus, and a lot of developers make them for their own collections of related wares. But attempting to deploy general application designs in a player introduces other challenges, including menu management, name space considerations, and general design issues (this topic came up recently on the SC list: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SuperCard/message/11596>). So what would make good candidates for distribution in a player? What would be an example of "things that share a common focus"? One example is in heavy development here now, a useful thing that also provides a seductive framework for introducing the masses to the power of Rev. It's too early to spill all the beans quite yet, but I can say that a standalone variant of RevNet sits at its core.... -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation Developer of WebMerge 2.2: Publish any database on any site ___________________________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com Tel: 323-225-3717 AIM: FourthWorldInc _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
