me - the potential buyer

[Sarah]

Hi John,

I know what you mean, because even those of us experienced with other 
xTalk tools ran into problems starting. Basically it gets worse when 
you don't even know the question let alone the answer :-)
Anyway, we are here to help and we all hate seeing someone sink into 
despair, so here are a few starting points you could consider:

Metacard has a good tutorial: mtp.mc at http://www.metacard.com/pi6.html
Change the file extension to .rev and it will work fine. It doesn't 
deal with the graphical interface design at all, but gets you started 
with some simple scripts.

After that, since there aren't any Rev books out there yet, I recommend 
a HyperCard book. Rev has lots that HC doesn't, but it incorporates 
pretty much all that HC does and the docs note when this doesn't apply. 
Also any demo stacks can be loaded straight into Revolution although 
they can have some problems if they use menus. Books to consider are:
HyperTalk Programming by Dan Shafer
HyperTalk 2.2: The Book by Winkler, Kamins & DeVoto
The Complete HyperCard Handbook by Danny Goodman

Dan is re-writing his book to apply to Revolution: if you go to 
http://www.revjournal.com/ you can find some info about that as well as 
a couple of excerpts. Jeanne DeVoto is the author the Rev docs. I'm not 
sure that all these are still in print, but they can usually be found.

Apart from that, I assume you have done the tutorials that come with 
Revolution and if you have Rev 2.0, you will see the new Cookbook 
section which has quite a lot of example scripts. There are also 
numerous stacks available at the User Contributions section of the 
RunRev website and other places - all of which can be taken apart, 
examined, changed, tested etc so you can work out what is going on.

Finally, if you want the docs in a separate electronic format, go to 
http://www.inspiredlogic.com/downloads.html where Geoff Canyon has a 
stack that will export the docs into html, rtf or text.

Cheers,
Sarah
sarahr at genesearch.com.au
http://www.troz.net/Rev/

P.S. the manual isn't vaporware - the might stack of books is making my 
desk bend :-)


On Friday, July 18, 2003, at 04:05  pm, John Tenny wrote:

> Am I one of those that RR is interested in? I'd played a bit with HC 
> and liked it; never had a useful product in mind so went on to other, 
> non-programming tasks (like getting a PhD and running a graduate 
> teacher education program for 15 years).
>
> Now I do have a product in mind and a ready, if small market. It has 
> to be cross platform to be a success (success = breaking even, not 
> producing uncommitted cash)- a hobby with income. I stumbled across RR 
> and thought I'd found the right tool.
>
> The new pricing doesn't bother me at all - I was ready to pay the full 
> price for the SBE (which was less than the Studio after the intro 
> offer is finished) -- if it did the job I needed.
>
> What has stopped me dead in my tracks is that I can't seem to learn 
> the program. As a newcomer, I can tell you that the online help system 
> stinks - not enough examples, not enough detail in the 
> vocabulary/syntax areas, and a vaporware manual. Try finding how to 
> use the debug feature of the program. This may sound silly to you 
> experienced folks, but I'm an intelligent and capable learner, really 
> working to learn the product, and it's a quagmire.
>
> The free version let me play forever to try to get a handle on how 
> things works; because I know so little, I was not clever enough to 
> make things work within the 10 line limit, so was considering the SBE 
> -- JUST TO LEARN ON.
>
> I been reading this list (the most active I've ever seen) religiously, 
> and can honestly say I have not found one single thing that has been 
> at the level I need. This is a wonderful, supportive club of talented 
> folks all at the same, more advanced level, and I can see that it's of 
> real use to all of you. It's not to me at all. It's ok to be a printed 
> manual person, and I'm one, although the idea of a 3000 page manual 
> sounds ridiculous ( and I'd be happy to grade all the database access 
> for just one of the manual sections). Put the manual online as a pdf
>
> So RR has now (for a short time) a reasonable entry price tag ($199 
> for what I need); it's cross platform (although the list points out 
> numerous problems). But I think the learning curve is just too much  
> and no manual and no tech support and no list that doesn't intimidate 
> me. I'd love for RR to be a success, but if they're after people like 
> me, they're doing something wrong.
>
> Peace,
>
>     John
>
> Technology Integration Mentor
> OTEN PT3 Grant