Why isn't Rev more popular?

[Geoff Canyon]

On Dec 2, 2005, at 12:52 PM, Jeanne A. E. DeVoto wrote:

> Personally, I think the root cause of the problem is the inflexible  
> syntax for non-built-in commands and functions. What I'd like to  
> see is the ability to separate parameters with spaces as well as  
> commas, so you could do something like:
>
>   on doSomething  
> thisParam,null1,null2,thatParam,null3,null4,theOtherParam
>     -- code here
>   end doSomething
>
> called with:
>   doSomething 2 times to "fox" in stack (the short name of me)

This sounds like AppleScript's Prepositional Parameters: <http:// 
snipurl.com/ASPrepositional>

I love and hate this idea. Love it because, used properly, it would  
be great. Hate it because it's _hard_ work to define proper syntax,  
and therefore this feature would almost never be used properly.

That said, I do think there are obvious (to me, at least!) syntax  
enhancements to Transcript. The recent suggestions regarding querying  
boolean properties are a good example:

if field 1 is [not] [visible|hidden] then ...
while button 1 is [not] hilited ...

But there is much more that could be done. I've previously suggested  
this, but a macro system would allow us to experiment with syntax  
before committing to it in the engine.