Wired HC Article (Rod McCall)

[Troy Rollins]

On Friday, August 16, 2002, at 12:12  PM, Wolfgang M. Bereuter wrote:

> For them rev may be a big improvment in UI design, but show me the 
> reviews from the designer, layouter, or multimedia authos please... 
> They are all mostly using iShell (Director)for authoring and rev for 
> the scripting projects...

Interesting. I hadn't thought about it from quite that perspective, but 
that is my company in a nutshell (or... iShell.) When it is heavily 
based on media and "interactive" we use iShell, when it is scripting 
heavy, we use Rev. For us, this is usually a pretty clear-cut decision 
on which tool to use. I'm not sure that I consider it a failing of Rev, 
unless one wishes to accomplish ALL possible projects in one development 
environment. Sure, that would be nice, but I've never seen such an 
environment. Rev is superbly fast for code work, and the language is 
quite fun and readable (we call Rev scripts "stories") but it is nowhere 
near the speed of development when it comes to "multimedia style" work, 
as iShell is. We have tested this. It takes MUCH longer to develop the 
same content in Rev that can be done in iShell IF it is a "media rich" 
program. Now, on the plus side, Rev's shear power says that it has far 
more "headroom" regarding depth of capability, and most things that can 
be done in iShell can be done in Rev - with a little extra effort.

So Wolfgang, I do agree that Rev has a ways to go if you wish to use it 
for multimedia development as opposed to the two other guys (Director 
and iShell.) Maybe I don't have the same expectations of the tool in 
that arena just yet. Besides... I really like iShell - for what it does, 
its powerful, stable, and extremely fast to develop in. I also really 
like Rev. It's even more powerful and reasonably fast - stability? That 
comes in time.  ;)



--
Troy
RPSystems, LTD
www.rpsystems.net