Re: rev and RB I like both languages, but I would wager that any rev user that ever attempted to write a math/science based applications in rev, quickly noticed certain significant shortfalls in it. The lack of a real array type or the lack of any decent support for drawing your own graphics, to name but a couple.
Rev of course wins hands down if you're building a multimedia or network based application or designing a really wizzy user interface. Transcript is great for high level manipulations of fairly complex objects and if the task/subtask you need is already "pre-cooked" in the Transcript recipe book, you're miles ahead of the competition who are crawling on their hands and knees by comparison. With regard to Rev externals though, I think Runtime are really making a significant marketing gaff by not improving the ability of rev apps to speak to the wider world of code libraries. Consider this - rev is by comparison to other development platforms, a niche market that needs to grow and gain in popularity to really establish itself as a serious alternative. Yet as a rev user, I either have to write tedious wrappers to external libraries or reinvent the wheel. For example, if I want to render objects in 3D, I am effectively cut off from all the wonderful tools (such as OpenGL) that people have already developed for this purpose and might seriously consider looking elsewhere for a platform that plugs me in to this world without me having to write a bunch of C code. Seriously - rev makes it difficult for me to capitalize on the huge collective effort of the software community at large and any gains I might make in writing fewer lines of Transcript compared to say Basic, must be weighed against the purgatory of having to write wrappers for externals in C - which rather defeats the object of using a high level language like Transcript in the first place! So come on Runtime, how about something like: start using external "fabulousexternal.dll" No C, no damn wrappers, just the Transcript we love to speak - just look at the Python "ctypes" for an example of how it could be done. Best Gordon _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
