The real Challenge for every development platform

[Gordon Webster]

As a new user to rev and in spite of the fact that I
like it very much, I could see how potential users
might be deterred by the lack of a clear roadmap for
getting started with Transcript and the whole
Hypercard thing. The manuals are well written and
replete with detail but it's hard to see the wood for
the trees in terms of finding out what you need to
know to build good applications with rev. I had to
stumble across an article by Richard Gaskin before I
understood what the message path is and how it works
and somebody else on the mailing list explained to me
the advantages of building rev apps from a single
standalone splash screen and then dynamically loading
the other stacks. The mailing list is a superb
resource and the rev community is incredibly helpful,
but the information a new user needs is so spread
around that finding what you need to know is like
panning for gold. Dan's book certainly goes some way
to addressing these needs but I think we need more of
that kind of pedagogical approach to rev for new users
(BTW Dan - I have a fistful of grubby dollars with
your name on them for when volumes II and III appear
:D)

Also, for a development environment that is very GUI
centric, there could be better tools for the use of
externals. I really like Python because virtually any
kind of activity I might need code libraries for, is
already catered for and I don't have to reinvent the
wheel (e.g. math, cryptography, 3D graphics, data
visualization, bioinformatics, COM, email etc. etc.)
If the rev community isn't currently large enough to
create this, making it easier to use other people's
libraries would go some way to addressing this
problem. 

Somebody on this list expressed the fear that critical
posts might give newbies to the list a negative or
over-critical view of rev, to which I would reply - I
think rev is great and my gripes (if you can call them
that) are based upon the fact that I like rev so much
that I'd like to be able to use it for EVERYTHING! 

Best

Gordon