As a new user to rev and in spite of the fact that I like it very much, I could see how potential users might be deterred by the lack of a clear roadmap for getting started with Transcript and the whole Hypercard thing. The manuals are well written and replete with detail but it's hard to see the wood for the trees in terms of finding out what you need to know to build good applications with rev. I had to stumble across an article by Richard Gaskin before I understood what the message path is and how it works and somebody else on the mailing list explained to me the advantages of building rev apps from a single standalone splash screen and then dynamically loading the other stacks. The mailing list is a superb resource and the rev community is incredibly helpful, but the information a new user needs is so spread around that finding what you need to know is like panning for gold. Dan's book certainly goes some way to addressing these needs but I think we need more of that kind of pedagogical approach to rev for new users (BTW Dan - I have a fistful of grubby dollars with your name on them for when volumes II and III appear :D)
Also, for a development environment that is very GUI centric, there could be better tools for the use of externals. I really like Python because virtually any kind of activity I might need code libraries for, is already catered for and I don't have to reinvent the wheel (e.g. math, cryptography, 3D graphics, data visualization, bioinformatics, COM, email etc. etc.) If the rev community isn't currently large enough to create this, making it easier to use other people's libraries would go some way to addressing this problem. Somebody on this list expressed the fear that critical posts might give newbies to the list a negative or over-critical view of rev, to which I would reply - I think rev is great and my gripes (if you can call them that) are based upon the fact that I like rev so much that I'd like to be able to use it for EVERYTHING! Best Gordon _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
