mTropolis refugees

[Stgoldberg at aol.com]

Regarding mTropolis versus Revolution, I've used mTropolis for many projects. 
Presently all the programs in our medical publishing company have been done 
in mTropolis (www.medmaster.net).   Since the demise of mTropolis, I've looked 
at other programs but have now gone to Revolution, which works on OS X, has 
easy Internet connectivity, and has a far more advanced scripting language.   
The concept of behaviors and aliasing is also a feature of Revolution, but it is 
done differently, referring to premade scripts that may reside, for instance, 
in the stack or card.   To me, the ideal program would be one with mTropolis' 
interface, but with the power of Revolution's scripting.

One of the main problems with Revolution, which I understand is being 
addressed now, is the still inadequate documentation for basic features of the 
program.   mTropolis had a superb user manual. While Revolution has an excellent 
online dictionary that explains the meaning and usage of the various scripting 
terms, it still does not have an organized documentation of a number of basic 
features of the program, such as the property inspector, which is heavily used 
in the programming process.   

I suspect that I might not be using Revolution at all if I did not already 
have a significant background in Hypercard scripting, since it is so important 
to have the proper documentation to get started. There is a need for the 
beginner to have a good Getting Started manual, for both the scripting process and 
understanding the basic features of the program.    The Revolution forum is a 
fantastic source of information. There are many people who are right there 
immediately trying to be of help, and have helped me considerably a number of 
times.   I suspect, though, that there would be less need for questions addressed 
to the forum if the documentation for Revolution were better.   The problem is 
that in order to find something, the information appears scattered with no 
central source for addressing many "How to do it" situations.  While there is a 
user manual, it has no Index and the information is not well organized.   As 
mentioned, I understand this is being addressed, and will be important for the 
program to attract new users, particularly if they have no prior experience 
with Hypercard, Metacard or related languages.   All-in-all, Revolution is a 
very powerful program, easy to use in comparison with programs like C++ or Java, 
and is the best I've been able to find since mTropolis, which is why I've made 
the switch.
Steve Goldberg

In a message dated 11/16/05 7:52:28 PM, 
use-revolution-request at lists.runrev.com writes:


> From: Janus Jakaterina <nuzoo2 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: mTropolis Refugees
> To: use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
> Message-ID: <20051117000125.29608.qmail at web50202.mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
> 
> Are there many mTropolis folk now residing in the land
> of Revolution?
> 
> If so, how is Revolution for behaviors, aliasing, and
> messaging?
> 
>