Scope Problem on Standalones

[Richard Gaskin]

David Burgun wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> More confusion! The version of RunRev I am using says 2.6.1 build 152 in 
> the About RunTime Revolution box, but the version of the application is 
> Revolution 2.6.6.152 in the finder Get Info box.
> 
> How to tell which one is right and hard to know why they are different.
> 
> Is this the correct version?

Both.

There are two parts to the Rev product:  the engine and the IDE.

The engine version is 2.6.6 build 152, and the Rev IDE is 2.6.1 build 
152.  The former is obtainable with a call to "the version", and the 
latter with a call to "revAppVersion()".

There's a historical reason for this difference, which reflects 
practical considerations even today:

Once upon a time the engine we know as "Revolution" was called 
"MetaCard".  MetaCard v1.0 was released in 1992, and Scott Raney (the 
inventor of the engine) was unusually conservative with his version 
numbering, so even after a decade it was still at v2.4.  Somewhere 
around 1998 MetaCard Corp. licenced the engine to RunRev Ltd. to produce 
Revolution.  So at that time Rev 1.0 was using the MetaCard 2.4 engine.

A few years ago RunRev Ltd. acquired the engine from MetaCard Corp. 
Since then engine releases generally happen at the same time as IDE 
releases, but if the auto-update feature becomes functional that may not 
always be the case, as it would enable RunRev to update IDE components 
on the fly using the same engine build.

The MetaCard IDE's About box displays both the engine version and the 
IDE version.  Rev might consider this as well, but since they seem to be 
moving toward parity between the two there may not be a difference soon 
enough.

In the meantime it would probably be a cleaner experience for users if 
the version number in the Finder plist file reflected the IDE build, 
since any differences between IDE and engine versions are generally of 
interest only to the most ardent Transcript nerds.

Has anyone submitted a request for that to BZ?  Might be worth their 
consideration until the two versions are in synch.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Managing Editor, revJournal
  _______________________________________________________
  Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com