Did I miss something?

[Richard Gaskin]

dreamscapesoftware.com wrote:

> I've used Axialis Icon Workshop, and it is a wonderful program.
>  It just kinda drives me crazy that, since Revolution is a
> development application, that an Icon editor would not have
> been already created.

As a development tool, it need not necessarily also be an asset creation 
tool.  Some might even argue that the scope of each is beyond the scope 
of the other.  Apple's Interface Builder and XCode, for example, do not 
provide image editing environments.

I've considered making an icon editor in Rev, but in spite of the cool 
factor I had to step back and look at my own work, recognizing that I 
use (and love using) Fireworks to create most images, and many others 
use Photoshop, and no matter which image editor you're using you're 
probably also relying on a few Photoshop-compatible plugins for things 
like bevels, highlights, glow, etc.

Rev is a great development tool, but without support for the dozens of 
Photoshop plugins we all rely on it'll always be somewhat limited as an 
image editing environment.

And even if support for Photoshop-compatible plugins were added 
(listening, Chipp and Chris? <g>), it would be a tremendous amount of 
work to create something that offered all of the conveniences already 
built into Fireworks and Photoshop (layers, multiple undo, vector 
cropping of bitmaps, mask control, etc.).

With a few externals one might well create another Fireworks in Rev, and 
quite possibly with greater productivity/ROI than Macromedia did.  There 
are hooks for image bitmap addresses, so it's fully possible.

But even with Rev's advantages in crafting GUIs, an application of that 
scope not a trivial task. Creating something on par with the most 
popular image editing packages would likely cost at least 20% of what 
those publishers spent in development -- a notable advantage for Rev, 
but still requiring substantial resources.

So while I think your efforts in delivering an icon editing environment 
in native Transcript are inspiring, I must admit that I probably 
wouldn't use it myself since Fireworks does such a wonderfully rich job 
for me already, and I suspect many others who make a lot of icons are 
similarly married to a dedicated tool.

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