metacard IDE devotees

[J. Landman Gay]

Richard Gaskin wrote:

> What can we do with the MC IDE to make Rev an unnecessary step in your 
> workflow?
> 

Nothing. I have to answer questions about it every day in the tech 
support queue. I have to know it. ;)

However, I still like their standalone builder far better than MC's (and 
I know you don't use MC's SB either for many of the same reasons.) The 
way it omits IDE stacks until build time is really a good idea, and so 
is the build-time password protection which is so handy I can't imagine 
not using it any more. The auto plist is good too, though I sometimes 
end up tweaking it later, and the way it will add your app icons on any 
platform without any effort is a big plus. There's a lot of stuff in the 
SB that I find superior to MetaCard's. But again, I don't see any reason 
not to use both IDEs. They each have advantages and I don't feel like I 
have to choose. I run both IDEs all the time in tandem. I open stacks in 
whichever one is either not currently in use, or which is more suitable 
for what I'm doing at the moment.

I'm finding that some of their libraries are pretty good too, and I like 
their default field settings and general overall appearance better. 
(Face it, as much as we like using it, MC is ugly.) The auto-scripted 
menu skeletons are nice (actually, their menu builder is superior in 
other ways too, as it provides a GUI editor for existing menus.) The 
menu-based import of images, movies, and other files is far easier than 
MC's stack-based import, especially once you learn the keyboard 
shortcuts -- tap, tap and there's an imported image. If I need to do a 
lot of image importing, I do it in Rev. You can also import a whole 
folder of images at once if you need to. Again, that's probably not 
generally useful enough to add to MC, but the one time I needed that, I 
just opened the stack in Rev. I think of Rev as an extra toolbox in some 
ways.

MC's property inspectors are better for how I work and much faster than 
Rev's (Rev's drives me absolutely nuts, I can hardly use it.) I do all 
layout in MC because it is easier. I do most scripting and debugging in 
MC (but Rev's debugger is better for tricky problem scripts. When MC's 
debugger hangs, I move over to Rev.) I do all tinkering and one-off 
stuff in MC. I run all my personal stacks and utilities in MC. I vastly 
prefer the MC control browser over Rev's -- I would almost always rather 
see the simpler card-based view than plow through all the stuff in Rev's 
App Browser, which I find top-heavy, slow, and cumbersome.

But my Rev usage has crept up over the last year, partly because of the 
support queue but also partly because I find things here and there that 
are easier to do in Rev. But that's okay. It's like being bilingual. Why 
not have both?

I've said this before (and I suppose people think I'm nuts) but it is so 
very simple to open a stack in either IDE, even while you are currently 
working on it in the other. You just have to remember which one you last 
saved it in --  and I did get bitten by that once so my methods probably 
aren't for everyone. But, if I'm working in MC and find I want to do 
something that's easier in Rev, I can open the stack in Rev, edit it, 
save the stack, then pop back to MC and do a "revert" from the message 
box. I realize this isn't for everyone, but I'm so used to it now that 
it's second nature. I'm just using the "other" toolbox.

I guess if you really want to add stuff to MC, there's some ideas up 
there. But I've got a system that works for me, so don't change things 
on my account. ;)

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com