Rev IDE vs MetaCard IDE

[Wilhelm Sanke]

I do not care too much how the historical icons look, what I care about 
is the functionality of the Metacard IDE. Above all I like the quickly 
accessible "Control Browser", which is my main tool during programming. 
Also: No interference from front- or backscripts in the IDE.

The workflow - for my needs - is fast, and this is not only because I am 
used to the MC IDE.

The Rev IDE has improved considerably and gradually over time. In the 
beginning it was nearly un-usable, especially with stacks that contained 
a larger number of objects, so you had to produce your own tools for 
specific purposes. What I like most of the present Rev IDE is the 
Dictionary.

Still, there are points that could be improved. A few examples.

- Response speed of the Rev IDE is sometimes slow:
    When the menubar comes up (on a 3 GHz Windows computer), first a 
blank rectangle is shown, after which menuitems and icons apppear.
    Opening menus is especially slow with cards that contain many controls.

- You can have open only one script editor at the same time in the Rev 
IDE, the Metacard IDE allows any number of open script editors (which 
simplifies the comparison and editing of scripts)

- If you edit a script and close the editor with the close icon - 
instead of the compile button - the tools palette (which disappears when 
you open the script editor) will not re-appear. You have to take a 
detour now to bring back the tools palette, for instance using the 
message box.

- Using the Property Inspector, which comes up with a noticable delay, 
and accessing the script needs one step more than in the Metacard IDE. 
But of course, using right-click on an object for getting at script and 
properties is the same in both IDEs.

- Using Rev's Standalone Builder with larger stacks was a nightmare 
until recently (including IDE version 3.5). With some stacks the 
Standalone Builder needed 45 minutes and longer to build the standalone 
- as opposed to one second in the Metacard IDE. Happily this has been 
fixed now with version 4.0, and it should be mentioned that this 
improvement was initiated and supported by a discussion between Oliver 
Kenyon and Metacard users.-

The group of Metacard IDE users - all of which are Rev Enterprise 
license holders - are naturally interested in the further improvement 
and development of Revolution (both the engine and the IDE) and some 
group members have made valuable contributions to this development. This 
is not only because the Metacard IDE - in the same way as the Rev IDE - 
needs and uses the Revolution engine (which, by the way, originated from 
the old Metacard engine). New Rev features are usually integrated into 
the Metacard IDE, too. At present there is work in progress to adapt the 
Metacard IDE to the new standalone building process of Rev.-

Wilhelm Sanke
<http://www.sanke.org/MetaMedia>