Reply to both (is RR too hard / easy?) and (is RR marketed to dev'rs only)

[Jan Schenkel]

--- Peter Alcibiades <palcibiades-first at yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:
> Two thoughts.
> 
> One, a big gap in Rev as a general purpose
> environment seems to be getting 
> data out in a structured form.  
> 
> [snip]
> 
> Could you do it in Quartam?  Probably, but not in
> Linux at the moment.  
> 
> I don't do this for a living, and restrict my OS
> environment, so its an 
> irritation not a showstopper, and its balanced by
> other eases of use in other 
> areas.  If I did it  for a living, and on multiple
> platforms, it would make 
> me think long and hard before adopting Rev as the
> general tool of choice.
> 

Hi Peter,

Quartam Reports has two parts: the layout builder and
the reporting engine. Both of these are built entirely
in Revolution - no externals needed (other than the
XML library that ships with Rev).

Right now, you can layout your reports on MacOSX and
Windows only - primarily because those are the two
platforms that I use on a daily basis and on which I
can easily test my libraries.

Linux is a bit of a strange animal in that respect. I
own Parallels Desktop, and I do plan to take Ubuntu
for a spin and see how well the Quartam Reports layout
builder works when built for Linux.

In the meantime, I think the majority of Rev
developers that cater for Linux, actually do so from
their Windows or Mac machines, rather than having
Linux as their dedicated development environment.

There is also the ambiguity of developing commercial
software to run on an FLOSS platform like Linux. I
admire you for your ability to stay clear of all
Microsoft products. And I will see what I can do in
the next update.

Best regards,

Jan Schenkel.

Quartam Reports & PDF Library for Revolution
<http://www.quartam.com>

=====
"As we grow older, we grow both wiser and more foolish at the same time."  (La Rochefoucauld)