ARE YOU SERIOUS REV TEAM? MAJOR SCRIPT EDITOR ISSUES

[Peter Armstrong]

Hello, I'm new to Revolution (Rev 2.5.1: Mac OSX
10.3.8).  After a few associates mentioned Rev I
thought I'd spend a week or so using the software,
looking to migrate a few of our projects and team to
Rev.

THE SCRIPT EDITOR IS A JOKE AND HAS SERIOUS ISSUES!!

How can you expect any programmer to take your product
seriously when the <b>sacred</b> script editor has SO
MANY BUGS!!

I became wary of it when small niggly things went
wrong, then I LOST a whole bunch of code!  Here's just
the top 10 issues I found, most on the 2nd day:

----------------------------

01 Going to single handler view, closing the script
then opening again, then back to multi-handler view
lost ALL MY STACK SCRIPT.  EMPTY.  THEN OTHER SCRIPTS
IN THE STACK APPEARED TO BE EMPTY TOO!  ALL EMPTY!?

02 Going to 'single handler' view doesn't parse the
last handler, handler name shows but content appears
empty.

03 Syntax coloring doesn't work properly (not
everything is parsed correctly) and ends up looking
like a handful of colored balloons... I needed to
customize colors to make any sense of this.

04 On some occasions (when a modal dialog is open, an
error occurs?) dialog after dialog repeatedly appears
warning that 'can't edit while executing'.  Seemed to
appear three times?

05 Pre-emptive typing seems to only parse some of the
keyword tokens?  I can't work out what is parsed and
what is not: functions, constants...?  For example
'openstack' is parsed, 'itemDel' isn't?  (Actually it
did parse once, then it didn't the second time?) 
Don't know.

06 On another occasion all my script formatting (bold
etc) was lost. Something happened, I opened and all my
careful formatting was GONE.

07 Windows all over the place.  I found I was
constantly opening up the variable watcher, shuffling
windows around (I'm on a 22 inch monitor), resizing,
closing opening trying to see what is going on. 
Surely during development these could be organized
properly, perhaps with variable watcher attached to
the side or bottom of the script window with and
expander triangle?  I found I had to constantly expand
the width of this to see things properly.

08 Lots of incorrect errors.  I got 'Can't find
Handler' when in fact it was an error in the script of
the stack handler!!  What sort of message is that!? 
Wasted time trying to work out why the message wasn’t
being passed down the message path.

09 I found sending more than one parameter in a
function call from the message box only accepted the
first parameter.  Fine if sent from a button but no
good if sent from message box. 2nd, 3rd etc parameters
are ignored.

10 Escape doesn't close the window, it puts some weird
symbol in the script window. The 'double-enter' to
accept and save a script is kinda weird, why can't you
stick to a more conforming 'save and close' system?

----------------------------

After enjoying your software my confidence rating
dropped to ZERO.

Get it together, these glaring issues make your
product look like a beta or late alpha.  I don't mind
issues in other areas but the SCRIPT EDITOR IS SACRED!

Doesn't anyone else notice these things?  How long has
Rev been around?  How can I write code if I can't
SAFELY edit without worrying about code loss?

I know some will brand me as a 'disgruntled
programmer', however I'm just so used to a clean SAFE
scripting environment that Rev made me feel VERY
UNSURE of the environment.

I’d love to switch our team over – an excellent and
extensive set of script functions and commands -- 
however I don’t trust Rev now.  

Perhaps there is there a way I can edit in BBedit and
then save back to Rev??? At least I’d know that the
script is safe, even if my code has bugs.

On the up side: once out of the nightmare script
editor/ debugger, code and samples all seemed to
execute well.  Excellent speed.  

I see that you keep adding and adding more to Rev, why
not SUBTRACT things that don’t work and get the others
working properly. For example, tables also lost data,
I basically gave up on the Table Object and cRevTable
etc.

Good luck, I’ll keep looking out for script editor
fixes and improvements.  In the meantime, if any
serious programmers can tell me how to use BBedit with
Rev then I’d much appreciate it.  Seems the IDE is a
very leaky tank but the engine is pretty stable. 

regards,

Peter Armstrong
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