The Linux problem, and a suggestion

Bernard Devlin bdrunrev at gmail.com
Fri Mar 5 04:30:50 EST 2010


Peter, I agree almost completely with you.  With a few caveats.

On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 8:43 AM, Peter Alcibiades
<palcibiades-first at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Fix the editor.  You must have some way of using the standard Linux
> programming editors in an integrated way.  Do plugins for Geany and Kate at
> least.  Maybe there are others.  I guess some will want Eclipse.

I think the above is not necessary.  It's asking for more
functionality on Linux than on other platforms.  Runrev need to fix
the existing script editor on Linux.  In my experience just moving the
insertion point around in the editor is like wading through treacle.
It makes the script editor unusable and makes Rev 4.0 look like an
alpha product.
http://quality.runrev.com/qacenter/show_bug.cgi?id=8495

> Deliver the Player.  The Media Player has been coming soon to Linux for
> years.  It may not be essential as a feature, but if its there for Windows
> and Mac, it has to be there for Linux.

Not only that.  We've been waiting for months now for the browser
plugin for Linux.  It was released as an alpha, then the GA for other
platforms was released.  Yet months later the Linux plugin no longer
exists as a GA or an alpha!

We can understand that there are some things where it may be simply
impossible for RunRev to offer some functionality of the Rev product
on Linux (e.g. quicktime features).  However, for too long they've
just been happy to offer a sub-par product on Linux, whilst charging
the same as the other platforms.

I have to agree with your friend.  If I was offered Rev for free
running on Linux, I wouldn't use it either.  In fact, that is the
situation I'm in.  I have an enterprise license, but I had to stop
using Linux in order to use Rev.

I'm sure some will argue with your list of demands, saying that Linux
is too diverse a platform to support adequately.  But we have to
remember that when the discussion of them guaranteeing that Rev works
with just one distro came up, there was almost universal support for
that.

Finally about the issue of revBrowser.  Richard has entered an
enhancement request for that.  Very decent of him, and I've added the
full 5 votes to it
(http://quality.runrev.com/qacenter/show_bug.cgi?id=8635).  It had
never crossed my mind in the past to enter this enhancement request.
When there is a deficiency in the Linux version of the product that
even the Dictionary is explicit about, one would expect Runrev to be
aware of it, and to have some timetable by which that deficiency would
be corrected.

Bernard



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