Metacard support

[Wilhelm Sanke]

Richard,

thanks for the detailed comments and information.

I would also like to add a few details  to some points you have made.

First a minor point concerning the terminology:

I still tend to see the engine together with the Metacard IDE as a unity 
that deserves the label "Metacard". After all, when you start Metacard, 
that is what is shown by the home stack. The Metacard IDE cannot 
function without the  engine and - lets say - 98% of the basic engine 
was developed for and with the Metacard IDE.

That the engine is now owned by Runtime Revolution is a legal matter and 
as long as there is no infringement of rights - and I can't see why 
there should be - it doesn't hurt to use "Metacard" for the authoring 
system that includes the Metacard IDE. This would also acknowledge and 
honor the historical context.

This is for me however, I repeat, a matter of minor importance.

You wrote:

> I think it's most fair for Kevin, Scott, and most importantly the 
> community
> to note that neither Kevin nor Scott is obligated to provide technical
> support for the MC IDE.
>
> As an open source work, support now comes only from volunteers in this
> community.



My idea was, which I have expressed from the very moment when Runrev 
announced their new product and marketing scheme in July, to incorporate 
the Metacard IDE as an alternative part of the Revolution project - with 
labels like "slim" or "power edition" (although I think they would not 
favor the latter) instead of possibly seeing Metacard as an unavoidable 
annoyance.
That the Metacard IDE is now open source should not prevent them to do so.

You wrote:

> The most popular way of working with the engine is the Rev IDE, with about
> 90% of the Transcript audience using it daily.  But there's also the 
> MC IDE,
> and OpenGUI, all driven by the same powerful engine.


And quite a number of the Revolutionaries do not even know that an 
alternative Metacard IDE exists that they could put to good use 
especially when the Rev IDE fails or is less convenient.

Here is a quote from the use-revolution list (Nov 21):

> Because I didn't know it existed! Like (I suspect) the majority of
> people on this list, I joined the Revolution after RR came out and
> have never had any contact with MetaCard apart from one glance at a
> demo years ago.


You wrote (quoting me):

> > As a member of the "inner circles" of Revolution and Metacard he is in a
> > favorable position to communicate with the new owners of Metacard and
> > convey the potential of Metacard  even for the improvement of Revolution
> > and to also encourage the RR team to discuss openly current and urgent
> > problems of Revolution - about which they seem at present rather
> > reluctant to give feedback (like about the serious problems of the Rev
> > Distribution Builder and the very slow speed of the Revolution IDE when
> > working with stacks that contain greater number of controls- problems
> > that do not exist in the Metacard IDE.).
>
> That conversation is happening daily in the Bugzilla database.  
> Anytime you
> encounter errors in the engine or the Rev IDE you should definitely search
> there first and report them (errors in the MC IDE should be reported 
> here to
> this list). 



I know about Bugzilla (and Revzilla for that matter), but it still must 
be possible - and is of course natural behavior of list members - to ask 
about presumed bugs, asking if maybe there was just an error in the 
syntax of their scripts or hoping for a workaround others already have 
handy.

However, the questions I asked - and others have asked, you, Richard, 
among them - in the above indicated context do not address bugs, but 
rather *features* scripted with a certain intention by the Runrev team 
that produce difficulties they probably did not envision.

Your question about the necessity to password protect the Distribution 
Builder was not answered - as were the other questions and suggestions 
that were brought forward more than three weeks ago.

Maybe you yourself with your question about the encryption of the 
Distribution Builder got a response in the meantime - offlist in the 
circle of initiated  Revolutionaries. But as your question was asked on 
the list, it also deserves a response on the list.

I know that the reluctance of the RR team to give feedback this time is 
not standard behavior. I have profited from their feedback (and Scott 
Raney's) on - and offlist quite often. And maybe there are urgent 
reasons which at present prevent them to answer right away?

I hope you can persuade them to resume their standard behavior.

Best regards,

Wilhelm Sanke