Some doubts 'bout Revolution

Richard Gaskin ambassador at fourthworld.com
Sat Oct 4 17:12:01 EDT 2003


Júlio César Ködel wrote:

> 1) Nowadays, more and more applications (especially those developed in RAD
> tools) are using HTML, for display data, forms, or whatever. In my case, I use
> HTML for custom relats (my program parses tags in HTML file and then replace
> them with some data. It's a easy way to make relats customizable for the final
> user). Revolution doesn't have a control that show HTML pages (I know there is
> a DLL, which I assume that use IE engine, but work only for Windows). There is
> some way to display full HTML pages within cards, in all plataforms (or, at
> least, Windows and *nix)? Or, if not, at least a "standard" way to "execute" a
> HTML file (some kind of shell that would open the default Web Browser of OS
> and display a local file).

What's a "relat"?

Rev's native support for HTML is limited to tags that have a meaningful
representation in Rev field objects:  links, images, and text styling
attributes like bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, superscript, and
subscript.

Expanding the field objects to handle more of the HTML DOM is on the request
list.   But the full HTML spec is big, and I don't know if we'll ever see
everything supported, from form elements to CSS; I'm not sure how they would
match th object models up.

In the meantime, opening a page in the user's preferred browser is a
one-liner, and its  text parsing fast enough that there's a lot you can do
with custom tags.  Check out the XML external that ships with Rev for ideas
on sectioning displayable HTML in more complex custom structures.


> 2) Someone know a site where there is some Rev. applications to download (to
> study, of course, open source)?

Already on your hard drive: see the menu item
Development->Plugins->Go_RevNet

That launches an online service for downloading dozens of third-party
examples stacks and tools.

 
> 3) Since Windows 95, both Mac and *nix plataforms are using controls like the
> Windows TreeView and ListItems controls. There is something like this for
> Revolution (TV and LI objects are used, for example, in a Windows Explorer
> window, wich TreeView is the object that shows a "tree" of folders and
> ListItems is the object that show items with icons, tabs and subitems)

A native tree view object is on the request list.  In the meantime a
scripted solution is available from the Contributions page at RunRev.com's
Developer Central.

 
> 4) Is there a IDE for Revolution other than the current?

There are two others:

The MetaCard IDE was written by the inventor of the engine.  Much more
spartan than Rev's, it's also a little more nimble.  You can get it at
metacard.com.

There's also FreeGUI, an open source project that aims to provide the
simplicity of the HyperCard experience to Transcript developers.  It has a
group on Yahoo Groups.

 
> 5) Revolution IDE is capable of showing the "look and feel" of other
> plataforms (for example, MacOS and Motif). In a distributed application, there
> is some way to make it look like a Mac, for example, by default (in other
> words: Can I make a Revolution application in Windows that mantain the "look"
> of Mac?)

Classic, but not OS X.  That's the only one you can't at this time.  While
the other OS appearances are emulated it would be way too much work to
emulate Apple's Aqua Appearance Manager.

 
> 6) When making a compiled application from Revolution, I noticed that it would
> NOT support Microsoft icons other than 16 colors... There's no way to use 256
> colors icons? (the best would be if Rev. could use TrueColor or RGBA icons,
> but 256 colors are the minimal to nowadays Windows stardards).

256 color icons in a hotly requested item these days.  At the moment it's
just the 16 colors, but I'm told that with the interest in 256-color Win
icons it's definitely on the list.

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
 Developer of WebMerge: Publish any database on any Web site
 ___________________________________________________________
 Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com
 Tel: 323-225-3717                       AIM: FourthWorldInc




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