Why isn't Rev more popular?

[Sarah Reichelt]

Wow! What an amazing set of conclusions for anyone to reach!

I've searched the mailing list archives for your name and haven't
found any previous posts from you, but I guess you must have been
lurking for several years in order to feel competent to make such
sweeping statements.

>         Criticism of Revolution generally apparently is generally
> disapproved of here. I've seen a number of valid criticisms dismissed in the
> same way as yours have been.

I think you will find that valid criticisms ARE well received, with
the keyword being "valid". Most of us here want Rev to keep improving
so it is in our interests to locate bugs and have them logged in
bugzilla so they can be fixed.

However as you will have seen many, many times on this list, most
times when someone complains about a problem, it is in fact an error
on their part. At other times, it is a limitation of Revolution and
those of us who have some experience in the area will always try to
provide a workaround. The final case is where there is a genuine bug
with no workaround, in which case a bugzilla entry is always
encouraged. If you read the responses to Herschel's emails, you will
find that this is what has happened.

>         But your point is valid: Revolution is not well suited for business
> needs. I see a number of people who claim that have or know of business
> applications built with Revolution, yet the references are never specific
> and, oddly enough, none of them (save one) are commercial applications that
> you could download an evaluation copy of. The one exception I know of is the
> upgrade of a product called "IdeaFisher." I downloaded the eval, allegedly
> built with Revolution, and it immediately crashed.

You are confusing two different things here. I write many business
applications, but they are not commercially available. They are custom
programs produced for specific businesses and are not for sale. They
run 24/7 and are extremely reliable. Added to that was the fact that I
was able to produce them quickly and can maintain them easily.

>         I'd love to see a referral to a commercial business oriented product
> built with Revolution that I could download as an eval. I don't mean
> relatively trivial apps like ButtonGadget (or whatever it's name is) or a
> plaything like "If Monks Had Macs." I mean a real live business oriented
> applications.

I may be unusual here, but I think of business apps as MUCH easier to
write than a beautiful entertainment piece like "If monks.." The
interface requirements for business software doesn't have to be
enormously eye-catching and the program logic is normally quite
simple. Games programming with fast moving graphics, sound, music etc
seems vastly harder to me.

>         Personally I don't think Revolution is suitable for such
> applications and no one here has actually provided unassailable evidence
> that Revolution has been used for such.

It may be that you have a particular business application in mind and
have decided for some reason that Rev cannot do what you need. However
instead of assuming that Rev just cannot do business apps, do you
think it might be more polite to check first and see if anyone else
has encountered the problems that you have been defeated by? Perhaps
someone here can help, or perhaps you will be able to do the Rev
community a service by pointing out some problem that needs to be
fixed.

Whatever you decide, I think you will find your experiences on the
list go along much better if you show a bit more respect for the other
members of the list.

Regards,
Sarah