why metacard?

[Geoff Canyon]

At 6:02 PM +0900 1/9/02, cowhead wrote:
>?I think I'm stupid.  Check that.  I know I'm stupid, but I think I've
>displayed blatantly once again.  I just bought Rev.  Why?  Because I've
>been a long time hyper/super/meta card user and they had such a good
>cross-grade deal.  I saved 800 bucks. Also, I kinda thought meta and rev
>were the same company or something.  I was under the impression that
>Meta was being phased out and would soon be replaced by Rev.  I once
>asked on this list what the relationship was, but no one replied or
>explained. So does Metacard have the same cross-grade deal?  If they do,
>and I had known, I would've gone for meta, because it's tried and true.
>And as someone mentioned...on all platforms and computers I have tried,
>it is stable as a rock.  I love metacard.  When I beta tested Rev, it
>was of course, very buggy.  But I have to say, they did a dynamite job
>on the interface and cleaining up most of the bugs.  It looks beautiful
>now and for the most part, behaves beautifully.  But when it doesn't
>behave, there is a sly work-around.  You can develop in Rev and then
>open the stack in Metacard (starter kit).  Now save.  Presto!  You have
>a metacard stack.  No need for a standalone.  So if you are worried
>about the stability of your Rev (non-standalone) stacks, I would suggest
>simply converting them to metacard.
>
>mark mitchell
>Japan

MC and Rev are two separate companies. One's in the U.S., one's in Scotland. They are closely associated by the fact that Rev licenses the MC engine. MC isn't being phased out -- it's just that Rev is getting a lot of attention right now, especially in the Mac universe. The cross-grade offer was/is available for both, although MC isn't making such a big deal of it as Rev. At some point it was stated that there would be cross-grades available from MC to Rev and from Rev to MC. I don't know the status of that now. There are plans for a Rev "player" that would allow you to run Rev stacks without the development environment. Everything I create (other than development utilities) is delivered as a standalone, so the player doesn't do much for me. It sounds like you would appreciate the player. 

regards,

Geoff