The sky is falling... [was Re: Is Rev too "Mac focused"?]

[Frank Leahy]

On Aug 7, 2004, at 11:04 PM, use-revolution-request at lists.runrev.com 
wrote:

> From: Dan Shafer <revdan at danshafer.com>
> Subject: Re: Is Rev too "Mac focused"?
> To: How to use Revolution <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
> Message-ID: <2E9DC2B0-E8C9-11D8-B198-000A95AE42E6 at danshafer.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
>
> And therein lies the rub.
>
> I believe it is literally impossible to create an xplat dev tool that
> lets the developer call native system APIs. As an OS X guy, I would
> much rather find xplat ways of accomplishing things that would
> otherwise cause me to have to learn and deal with an underlying OS.
>

I'm on a 56K modem and haven't caught up with all of the previous 
discussion, but I couldn't pass up responding to this one:

1. It is not only possible, but actually not all that hard, to create 
hooks to native platform APIs on a cross-platform tool.  Java does it 
with JNI.  Microsoft did it with their version of JNI  (RNI?) that Sun 
had such a stink about and sued them over.  RealBasic does it.  What's 
to stop RunRev doing it?  Once you decide how to pass parameters, the 
rest is easy.

2. Neither adding hooks for native platform APIs,  nor adding an 
alternate C-like syntax (as Director did) would cause the sky to fall.  
In fact both of these things would both make RunRev vastly more 
accessible and to, and usable by, the overwhelming majority of 
developers writing software today.

-- Frank Leahy

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