MC IDE

[Richard Gaskin]

Monte Goulding wrote:

> I still haven't thought of a reason to maintain the MetaCard IDE let alone
> the documentation.

You may have missed the extensive thread on the subject some months ago.

Fortunately there is no requirement that MC users contribute to the
little-if-any effort needed to maintain it.  A few folks want to play around
with it and I see no harm in that; all I need is a convenient way to have
its fronscript optionally pass all messages, and I don't expect that to take
more than a few minutes.

I'm in this for the only thing my customers can experience, the engine.  I
want the IDE small, fast, and out of my way.  Fortunately we already have
it, and with RunRev's obligation to do nothing that breaks it then not going
out of the way to kill it costs nothing to anyone.

Conversely, I have a lot of projects affecting a few thousand end users
dependent on the nimble workflow already in place.  I'll change at my
leisure, and frankly with $1000 down and $500 every year it's easy money for
Rev to just let me continue.  It would take a great many costly-to-acquire
$79 licenses to get that much money elsewhere, compared to simply leaving us
free to work as we like and continue to keep testing the engine against a
different IDE to ensure its robustness.

The comparison to HyperCard is almost exactly backwards, esp. given that
most former HC users are using Rev. There is a higher ratio of pros to
hobbyists using MC, as one could infer from the pricing.

If you prefer Rev none of this affects you, other than the benefit for all
Transcript users in keeping the language pure and well-tested.  The engine
is the only critical asset.

What in FreeGUI has earned your recommendation to devote time to working on
it?  I haven't played with it much since last year, so I may well be missing
something.

> Don't get me wrong. Rev is not the be all and end all. But MetaCard's
> time is over. It's time to move on whether you realise it now or in
> 10 years time.

MetaCard is alive and well, serving as the foundation for RunRev. As
arguably the most flexible xTalk ever, it can support an unlimited variety
of IDEs to accomodate any preference.

As Scott Raney says, "Let a thousand flowers bloom."

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
 Developer of WebMerge: Publish any database on any Web site
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