Richmond Mathewson wrote:
I suppose Runtime Revolution would "jump all over"
anybody who produced a file-format converter? i.e. new
RR format -> legacy format.
Heather, Richard; would be grateful if you could give
feedback on this point.
"Richard"? If you mean me, I don't work for RunRev, am not an investor,
and haven't even done contract work for them in more than half a decade.
I have no influence with them any more than any other customer, and with
my persistence about BZ#623 and #624 sometimes less so. ;)
But as someone who spends a great deal of every workday with the Rev
engine I can offer at little technical background and my opinion on this:
There already is a format converter built into Rev 2.7 and later, the
only versions that understand the new format. This is supported in two
ways:
- GUI: The "Save As" feature allows the user to select the current
format or the older legacy format.
- API: There's a global property which determines the file format of any
stack being saved, the stackFileVersion, whose value is the version
number of the engine in which the file format was first supported.
Acceptable values are "2.7" (the current format) and "2.4" (the older
format). A plugin can be written which sets the stackFileVersion to
"2.4" at startup to all saves are in the legacy format, if desired.
Until recently I did this with one of my projects to maintain
compatibility with an older standalone we had in circulation.
Given how easy it is to save in the older legacy format, we have to
trust that if a developer chooses to use the current format it may be
for a reason.
Please keep in mind that the file format change was neither arbitrary
nor trivial. Anti-aliasing is but one of many new properties the new
file format can support, and the old file format was fast on its way to
having used up all available property slots. The new format paves a
fresh path to the future which better supports growth and flexibility in
the engine.
So in brief, working in v2,7 or later and saving in the older format can
mean losing features. At a minimum this means anti-aliasing, and with
each new version it will mean more.
With the general strength of the v2.8.1 release, most concerns which had
kept 2.6 users from upgrading to v2.7 have been addressed. So at this
point the number of customers still using the two-year-old 2.6 version
is relatively small, and dropping weekly.
I still share most of my tools in the older format, but even that will
change soon.
HyperCard 2.0 never offered any option for saving in its 1.0 format, so
that Rev has made a more graceful transition process than Apple provided
is laudible, but not to be expected to continue forever. Sometimes life
just moves forward....
--
Richard Gaskin
Managing Editor, revJournal
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