What's new in Rev 2.9 (was Re: New Drag-and-Drop?)

[Eric Chatonet]

Hello Richard,

Le 20 mars 08 à 17:04, Richard Gaskin a écrit :
> Eric Chatonet wrote:
>> When you know well Rev vocabulary yet, detecting new entries is  
>> easy  but what about those that have been only changed?
>> And what about all those who don't know by heart the 1605 words  
>> used  by Rev syntax?
>
> Many tokens are understandable as discrete things, so an example  
> handler showing its use in the Dictionary is often sufficient.
>
> When Ken Ray, Christopher Watson and myself wrote the SuperCard 2.5  
> Language Guide, one of our mandates was to copy Jeanne DeVoto's  
> style used in HyperTalk 2.2: The Book, providing complete end-to- 
> end examples for each token.   For many of them, that's a fair  
> starting point for learning.

When I was a bit younger :-) I wrote (French only) a software  
extension for HC that added more than 80 functions and could itself  
be enhanced by adding plugins.
It also included a library of more than 600 articles that provided  
all the practical knowledge necessary to program in HyperTalk.
With 20,000 hypertext references, two indexes and full-text search  
capability it provided easy access to the 1000 pages of this resource.
For every entry, there was one or more complete end-to-end scripts  
that could be run and debugged to understand by sticking one's hands  
in grease ;-)
IMHO, users seemed to like this approach but, to be frank, it was a  
lot of work...

> But there are some tokens which are dependent on others, sometimes  
> many others, like RevBrowser, Zip handling, U3, and now Drag and  
> Drop. These tokens can't be used in isolation, and require that  
> they be used in a specific sequence with other tokens to be used at  
> all.
>
> For RevBowser, U3, and a good many more, RunRev has thoughtfully  
> provided some very helpful example stacks in the Resources folder  
> installed with the app (though they might be more readily found if  
> the Examples folder were moved from its current location buried in  
> the cryptic "Resources" into the main app folder itself).
>
> RunRev's done a great job with the examples provided so far.   
> Adding one for Drag and Drop would go a long way to helping folks  
> make good use of Rev's empowering support for this common  
> interaction model.

I had another feature people liked: a kind of index telling which  
words were related to a specific action: text manipulation, D&D and  
many others of course.
They often told me this index was an invaluable source to arouse  
ideas about all great things it was possible to achieve using HC.

>> After what said Scott about finding new or enhanced features, I   
>> realized it was not so easy:
>> There are actually 39 new entries in the dictionary and 19 have  
>> been  changed since 2.8: kudos to the dev team :-)
>> So I have enhanced my Rev Search Engine to display all introduced  
>> or  changes entries in the current version by adding a new menu  
>> item:  "What's new in <current version number>".
>> This feature should be available in the next 2.9 release.
>
> Good work - thanks!  That's a very useful tool you've made.
>
> If only some kind Parisian might be motivated to make a tutorial  
> series offering examples of common tasks....
>
> ...oh wait, you've done that too. :)
>
> Care to add one for D&D?  It would be quite popular.

LOL
Not too much time right now but I think that some tutorials about  
Q&D, printing, error management, etc. might be welcome ;-)

Best regards from Paris,
Eric Chatonet.
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