Open Letter to Rev: Quality Is Job #1

[Andre Garzia]

I am very pleased with the 2.7.x release, my only complain is the lack of a linux engine. Coming to the use-list complaining about the product is on my humble opinion not the most polite and wisest path. I think the only way for the RunRev team to better its product is thru interaction with its userbase. I belive people here that ship software understand that bug reports gets more attention than user mailing lists.

During the last years, I've sent many reports and requests for RunRev support and they were always there to help me. There are bugs in Rev, but all language have bugs, the only way to solve them is to help RunRev solving them. We can do that by replicating the bug and finding recipes. Advanced users might even be able to isolate where the bug is happening, this would be invaluable info for the RunRev team.

One thing we trylu need is a Suite of Tests that test a rev distribution for obvious bugs. This little stack could be executed and it would test things. Many languages have this kind of suite, Ruby has it and so does scheme. This would help finding bugs in new releases.

I think that going into a flamefest with RunRev on the use-list is not useful. For example, in this thread someone said wrongly about the file format change, as if the new format serves no purpose. This is said out of thin air, with the new additions of ink and blendmodes, they had to change the file format to acomodate this new technologies. I think that before saying something people should get more info.

I am no QA person. I am a 26 years old developer with no formal education. I've shipped some cool software using the 2.7 release. As for the struggle between dreamcard and the new rev media. They are different products, its like saying Rev Studio is awful because Enterprize is so much better. If the 2.6 release is working for you, if you feel no need for the new features of 2.7, why upgrading to a new codebase? Keep using 2.6 till 2.7 release is tested, debugged, re-tested... I have Rev installed on my machine from 2.1 till 2.7.4, depending on my needs I develop in other versions. My cgis are developed in Rev 2.6 and my desktop apps in 2.7... 

andre