Reports DataPro and Rev

[Bruce Lewis]

Alan Gayne wrote:

>Of course it might pay to recall that Reports DataPro was a fairly
>successful commercial endeavor by 3rd parties who who saw and addressed a
>critical need that was NOT addressed by Apple/Claris in respect to
>Hypercard.

I would doubt that it had much commercial success. I used it through
various versions from the beginning (and still use it --wonderful tool).

As I remember, the original developers wrote it to use in connection with
their own business and then expanded it and tried to sell it more
generally. They discontinued it once, perhaps twice, before finally selling
it to the present owners, who have done nothing with it.

On each discontinuance or threat of discontinuance, there were moans and
groans from HyperCard user groups, such as on MAUG on Compuserve, and they
then did an update. I don't think there were many new features after the
early years--just compatibility with the latest version of HyperCard. The
charges became progressively higher for the updates, but they had something
of a captive market. I can't believe they ever really made very much money
on it.

>Maybe that's the answer.  A LOT of special features were done by third
>parties, mostly in the for of XFCNs and XCMDs, which greatly enhanced the
>USABILITY of Hypercard. Most of these were freeware or shareware but some,
>like Reports DataPro were commerially successful.  These "goodies" were
>createdby people who loved Hypercard and their work product helped other
>people, such as myself, to love WORKING with Hypercard.
>
>So there it is.  If the people who love Revolution DO THEIR JOB, people like
>me will love to USE Revolution to DO OUR JOBS - which means the things that
>we actually do for a living.  For most of us, that is not programming
>computers.  In my particular case, I am an insurance underwriter.
>

I agree.

Regards,

Bruce