Rev player

[Peter Reid]

>>On Jul 27, 2004, at 12:18 PM, Dan Shafer wrote:
>>
>>>The HC player was needed because there was no authorized way to 
>>>compile stacks into applications, leaving anyone without the 
>>>HyperCard program itself no way to use stacks. That is not the 
>>>case with Rev.
>>>
>>>So what am I not understanding?
>>
>>Only that it is available to you, but not really meant for you.
>>
>OK, but *in general*, who aside from the Dreamcard developer would 
>really want to use this approach to delivery? I am sure there must 
>be some folks, I just can't figure out who they are!

If you're delivering to some government organisations, there's a big 
hurdle to get over for any program to be accepted from a security 
point of view.  If you want to deliver an initial product and then 
come back with future offerings, it's easier to get a Player cleared 
for use once and for all and then deliver a series of stacks using 
that Player.  I've done this with MetaCard as a Player and several 
training stacks.

Also, such organisations hate having to retrofit programs to 100s or 
even 1000s of existing workstations and they'd never let users 
download and install new applications for themselves.  However, if 
you can get a Player included in the standard build of a workstation, 
they have no problem letting users download and use stacks (with 
certain safeguards of course).

They view an xTalk Player plus stack as simply another example like 
the Flash Player + Flash animation, the QuickTime Player + QuickTime 
movie, etc.  It's an easier sell, especially if you can supply a 
plug-in installer for the Player so new users can simple click on a 
link on an intranet page and the Player can be quickly and easily 
installed!

This issue of what's seen as a browser plug-in vs what's seen as a 
separate application can be a complete enabler/show stopper for large 
organisations - they will happily allow "plug-ins". but little to do 
with "programs"!!  This is why I REALLY hope that RunRev will follow 
up the Player approach with something that makes it easy to provide a 
"plug-in installer".  I assume that the security model that's been 
the subject of much discussion recently, is a tilt in that direction?!

Cheers

Peter
-- 
Peter Reid
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