Metacard support

[Richard Gaskin]

Wilhelm Sanke wrote:

> Recently, on Mon, 17 Nov, Richard Gaskin wrote (replying to Eric Engle
> in thread "MetaCard/Revolution Evangelism"):
> 
>> I don't think it steps on anyone's toes so long as you mke it clear
>> that the MC IDE is unsupported.
>> 
>> Richard Gaskin 
> 
> This statement contains some truth, but needs to be qualified in order
> not to be misunderstood.

Thank you for the clarification.

Yes, the press release for the acquisition expresses a mutual desire for
Scott and Kevin to see MetaCard users happily coding in the IDE of their
choice going forward.

And of course when you upgrade with RunRev you can request a MetaCard
license which will let you use the latest engine with that IDE.

The only thing I would like to clarify is what is meant by "MetaCard" in the
current context:

> Kevin Miller, Thu, 14 Aug 2003:
> 
>>> it's the *same engine*, just given a new name. When they add
>>> features to it for the benefit of Rev users, MC users who wish to
>>> continue with the MC IDE can just drop in the new engine and go.
>> 
>> Right.  So this acquisition means we can, over a period of time, gradually
>> integrate the various language extensions that Revolution has got, and
>> make that available to people who are still using MetaCard.  Thus, you
>> can look forward to database access, text to speech, XML, and all the
>> other stuff getting integrated neatly into the language.
> 
> 6. From the above quote you see that RR intends to enhance Metacard with
> these features.
> 
> 7. Metacard will be still  supported - as I read it - maybe indirectly
> by Scott Raney.

Once upon a time there was an product named MetaCard, an engine that came
with an IDE.  The core technology was tranferred to RunRev, where Scott is
under contract to continue to work his magic on the engine along with
progamming powerhouse Tuviah and others.

For clarity, since the acquistion I refer to the engine as "Revolution" and
the scripting language as "Transcript".  Those are what 90% of our community
now calls them, and it seems optimal to use common terms.

When I use the term "MetaCard" these days I'm referring to the only thing
that hasn't been acquired by RunRev, the MC IDE (although more often I call
it "MC IDE" specifically to avoid any ambiguity).

In the context above, what is called "MetaCard" is the engine owned and
maintained by RunRev, and yes, RunRev has added some nifty new features with
way cool plans for many more.

And as long as we're talking about the engine, yes, Scott continues to have
a role.

But the MC IDE is supported only by the volunteers here.  While Scott
retains copyright (allowable under the X11 license chosen), his efforts are
now exclusively focused where they have been for years, in the engine.

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.


> It is indeed a happy coincidence that Richard Gaskin, the foreman of our
> Metacard user group, has been promoted to the rank of an "illustrious
> Revolutionary" (see Heather William's post of Nov 27th, subject "Seminar").

Not sure how I went from opinionated blabbermouth to that, but I'll take it.
:)  It should be a useful conference for all Transcript programmers; if you
folks can make it to SF MacWorld it'd be good to meet you in person.


> As it were, Richard "epitomizes" the new modern Metacard user that
> wishes Metacard to continue for various reasons and at the same time is
> interested in and contributes to the necessary further development of
> Revolution.

If I epitomize anything it's merely someone who's passionate about the
benefits of the language.  To be honest, I don't really care much about IDEs
at all; in my head they're all just property setters, shortcuts to the
engine's power.

For myself, the only thing that matters is what I can provide to my
customers.  IDEs are useful to me only to the degree that they stay out of
the way between what my customers want me to make and the engine that can
deliver it to them.

As much as I appreciate the "dual enrollment" analogy, in my head the world
is already well unified:  there's one engine, a virtual machine so powerful
that in addition to building cool stuff for customers you can also build
handy conveniences for yourself along the way.

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.

Viva la difference, 'cause under the hood where it counts they're all the
same.


> 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). If there's already a report and you have additional data that
would be useful you can append existing reports in Bugzilla.  It's a lively
discussion, highly interactive, and Tuviah, Jeanne, and others have been
almost obsessive about addressing new issues as they come in.  You can noe
even vote for enhancement requests.  A great system supporting a progressive
process with strong measureable results.

As quasi-elected-and-always-impeachable poohbah, I've had the opportunity to
share some forward-thinking conversation with Scott, Kevin, and others.
Kevin seems to understand why there's a handful of us who use MC more
frequently than Rev.  But like you say, conversations are best when
communication is bi-directional:  What I've been learning is just how many
people are using Rev, and with the solid marketing performance of RunRev we
can only expect the percentage to increase as the overall number of
Transcript programmers increases.

For this reason I ran for poohbah on a platform of development conservatism,
interested in making only a few changes to the MC IDE to take care of some
minor annoyances and add a Rev-compatible plug-in system.  The plug-in stuff
is really where it's at:  folks can add what they need without encumbering
others whose needs may differ.  And for developers interested in seriously
applying the power of Transcript to authoring tasks, making Rev-compatible
plug-ins lets you share your efforts with 100% of the Transcript community.

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
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