ARE YOU SERIOUS REV TEAM? MAJOR SCRIPT EDITOR ISSUES

[Peter Armstrong]

Dear Revolution Community.

Thanks so much again for your comments, it is a truly
amazing community!  One day I hope to contribute back
in.  My rather heated comments on the buggy IDE are
somewhat appeased by a more than helpful community so
very generous with their answers and thoughtful
comments.

Thanks Trevor, the external edit in BBEdit seems to
work nicely!  At last I can relax and get down to
understanding Rev and not worry about my code.  An
excellent addition (Transcript terms) to BBEdit.

Thanks Alex (?) at Mindlube for the great MLXEditor,
seems to be the conduit necessary between Rev and the
outside world. Great!  Nice and easy, works perfectly
as far as I can tell.  Maybe Rev should build
something like this in to the IDE?

Bill thanks for your comment that you have been using
the IDE for years no problem.  I’ll try and create a
recipe for the code loss I suffered the other day and
post it to Bugzie.   Seems like it is the Single
Handler view, which I was just exploring (I noticed
too that it only sometimes loads the local/global
variables correctly).

Just out of interest: does the Rev team contribute to
the list?  Just wondering.  Also I didn't want to
contact them yet as we are still evaluating the
software and I'm sure they are deep in code land...
fixing?

Chipp thanks too for pointing out how Rev handles
scripts.  I found that there seems to be a custom
property (?) that stores the script, formatted.  
Getting the script of an object (unformatted) is
separate from the custom prop that seems just to store
a formatted version of it, with an MD5 fingerprint (I
assume as a checksum to see if anything has changed). 
Seems an odd way to do things.  Oh well.  So I guess
the Script Cleaner removes the extra baggage?  Does
building a standalone do the same?

Xavier: is your editor the UltaEditor plug-in?  I
couldn’t find your editor on your page, perhaps I just
missed it. (Unfortunately - or fortunately as I see it
- I develop on Mac and port-test on our PCs so
UltaEditor isn’t really an option.)  Many many thanks
though. 

Thanks to everyone else, plus the few that didn't want
to comment directly on the list, I agree with you.

In the end I need to make a simple and quite serious
decision: should we spend time and try and develop a
project in Rev?  And into the future: should we switch
our whole team over to Rev?  At least with a stable
editor I can and will continue evaluating the product
without worry.  The list has been more than helpful in
helping me to ‘drive around the potholes’ for the time
being.

For the record: if the List hadn't been so kind and
generous, I would have left Rev with a bad taste in my
mouth after about a week of testing.  My earlier
excitement with the power built in to the Rev engine,
and my earlier speed tests, would have been lost on a
list of issues that can and should be fixed.  If
getting new customers is part of the Rev teams aim,
then perhaps a bit of tidying up would be in order? 
It seems from the list things have improved somewhat,
so there is hope is what I hear.  Feature freeze n
fix.

As a suggestion perhaps the Rev List could start up a
small spec for a new script editor?  A basic screen
layout showing dock-able Variable and Message watcher
and a streamlined interface could be a start point. 
There are plenty of good editors out there we could
use as reference ... optimised functional layout and
best real estate use.  I’d certainly be willing to
help, however my Transcript skills are rather lacking
at this early stage...

ROI is a very valid point.  I’ll be able to look at
this later once I get past first base... but I am very
impressed with the engine.  I wouldn’t feel I had a
good ROI if I sat my team down and asked them to write
a simple script editor as their first project.

The breakpoint issue is a fantastic tip, I’ll keep
that in mind when I have to return to Rev for
debugging.  

Who is the team than developed the Engine?  Hats off
to this team! Are they still developing it as a
separate company?  Seems like Metacard no longer
exists?  Is there a list that tells me what has been
recently added to the Engine (and may be buggy),
separate from Rev additions?  I guess that any command
starting with RevCommandName is a transcript
equivalent? 

Is there a way to turn OFF storing the custom property
formatted script?  Surely this bloats out the stack
considerably and from what I can gather (and guess by
my loss of data) may have other issues... just to make
the scripts look pretty (pretty wild if you turn on
default script colorization!).  I’d opt for the plain
Jane version if it saved all the other issues.  BTW
thanks Trevor, script colorization in BBEdit works
perfectly and is actually useful.

I’m a programmer and I run a small team so we are very
familiar with development cycles.  Rev has done an
amazing job, no two ways about it.  The community is
extremely kind and nurtures newbies, rather rare to
see.  Makes me want to immediately get in and fix the
Transcript code myself, if I could, and contribute
back.  I just wonder how committed Rev are to their
alpha - beta - gold candidate cycle?  Maybe the
product has enough features now to sit down and go
back over what has already been put in place?  I have
had many issues with tables, again loss of data and
data returning after I’ve hit the delete key. Very
odd.  Are tables a recent addition?  I’ll stay clear
of these too.

Thanks again to all the kind and generous spirits out
there.  I’ll keep testing Rev and hope for more
success, which I know will come.  Perhaps then my
questions will be more focused on silly script
mistakes and learning Transcript, a process I will
certainly enjoy.

Regards,


Peter Armstrong






		
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