Ultra Beginner Question/Request

[Stephen Barncard]

Len,

in answer to question 1:

The 'methodology' is surely different than procedural languages.
Rev, like all modern GUI based products rely on 'events' rather than 
the command line (where command ---> return) was the only user event.

to Question 3: The basic concepts of events and hierarchy are left to 
tutorials which others will contribute, I'm sure.

In answer to the second question, here's some things I think about 
when starting a project in Rev:

The best way to construct (or reconstruct) a program with any tool is 
to immediately put yourself in the position of the USER

1. What is the purpose of the app?
2. what is the input data?
3. What is the desired output data?
4. What are the conventions and symbols best recognized by the potential users?
5. What is the best methods for the operator (user) to process input 
to output using methods provided in the programming platform?

Since the operator/user is the slowest component of the man-machine 
link, it would make sense to put a lot of time into the user 
interface to make as easy for the human, in a hurry and possibly 
without training, to figure it out. Runtime Revolution allows us to 
concentrate on the UI - and gives a toolkit of functions to make the 
coding part much easier.

So what many of us x-talkers do is backwards from traditional 
programming - we design the user interface first and get right down 
to making little parts of the 'idea' work immediately while using the 
UI as the actual test bed.

Look at the input and output of your Tcl/Tk routines and see if 
there's not a 2 or 3 line equivalent that can be easily written in 
Transcript. Also you will find complete packaged functions built in 
Rev that will replace thousands of lines of code..just look at the 
higher level calls in your legacy code.

You could even name the handlers with names to correspond with the 
subroutines in Tcl/Tk. Create and test some of your subroutines that 
do the actual mojo of your app, then take a serious look at the user 
interface, for which you now have many modules to use that have been 
designed to work across platform boundaries.

You'll find that you end up developing the UI and the working code at 
the same time, one directly related to the other. The message 
hierarchy makes subroutines logical and reusable over and over. You 
might find it faster to replace whole sections of the original app in 
Transcript rather than trying to fit the old individual routines.

This cross-platform compatibility thing, by the way, has been 
promised by many over the years but only REV has achieved GUI 
translation to this level.

With the recent addition of the Internet and SQL/Database functions, 
I feel there are few things you can't do in Rev. The wave of clever 
and useful apps now appearing that were done in Rev are now showing 
up.

stephen barncard




>Hello All,
>I consider myself a pretty good programmer and have been told I'm 
>fairly bright in general.  I've had Revolution for a couple of weeks 
>now, and I just can't seem to get my head around the "methodology" 
>of using Revolution.
>
>I'm not worried about command syntax or what controls are available. 
>My problem is how to go about DESIGNING a whole project.  I am 
>trying to convert a rather large application I have in Tcl/Tk to 
>Revolution and just can't seem to get started.
>
>...
>
>Len Morgan