Why 7Mb. [Was: Why 10 hours for a newbie and 30 days for a "programmer"]

[Wilhelm Sanke]

What might be the idea behind the renaming of Express to Dreamcard and 
at the same time changing some of the conditions of use?

Seems to be in a similar category like the naming of "Revolution", which 
could be understood as a goal to be reached somewhere in the future and 
as sort of a promise that its developers want to reach as soon as 
possible, but at present are still prevented to reach because of a 
number of self-inflicted obstacles coming up in the course of struggling 
with principles of design and strategies of programming. Hopefully they 
- and we - will get there eventually - supported by engaged discussions 
about "bugs", use of the IDE, education etc. etc. going on on this list.

"Dreamcard" is probably supposed to conjure up a feeling that this 
product can be used in a "dream-like" way, as a solution to programming 
problems you have always dreamed about and wanted to have. I indeed hope 
there will be such a product in the future.

At present - in its very first initial stage of development (the 
development will hopefully progress very fast) - "Dreamcard" is just 
"Revolution" minus some - not altogether unimportant - features and an 
oversized seven and a half megabyte Dreamcard Player as a necessary 
add-on (7.4 MB on Windows).

I am confident that it is possible to build a much smaller "player" - 
and that anybody in possession of a Revolution or Metacard version that 
allows standalones would be able to build a small player (for the 
Dreamcard users) in a couple of minutes or at most in half an hour.

I repeat here my post that addressed such issues, which I sent on 
Wednesday, Sept 1, under subject "Dreamcard Player" and which got 
somewhat lost in the turmoil of the Dreamcard discussion on the list:

> As Kevin Miller wrote on Sept 1:
>
>> The products are differentiated by the license key you enter.  If you
>> requested Dreamcard you will have a Dreamcard key, and if you launch the
>> program you will notice the splash screen says Dreamcard.
>
>
> Another of the differences apparently is (I did not yet try Rev with a 
> 10-day Dreamcard key) that you cannot build standalones with 
> Dreamcard, but have to use the platform-specific Dreamcard Player.
>
> I downloaded the Windows Dreamcard Player, which is 7.49 as 
> "revplayersetup.exe" and needs 7.41 MB hard-disk space after 
> installing. This means that you either have to add these 7.4 MB to the 
> stacks produced with Dreamcard (if you want to distribute your stacks) 
> or have to ask potential users to download the 7.4 MB Dreamcard Player 
> from the RunRev site.
>
> One question I want to ask here is, whether it wouldn't be possible to 
> considerately downsize the Dreamcard Player? A "raw" player produced 
> with Revolution or Metacard would have a size of somewhat slightly 
> more than the engine size, meaning about 1.6 MB in unzipped format. 
> With such a "raw" player you of course would need to move all 
> necessary resources (dialogs, icons etc.) into the stacks before 
> distribution. Would this be possible in Dreamcard?
>
> My MC-Player - that also runs Rev stacks - has a zipped size of  881 
> KB and contains all necessary icons, dialogs, cursors, libURL (see 
> <http://www.sanke.org>, page "samples").
>
> The "Read_Me_First" of Dreamcard Player 1.0 states:
>
> "The Dreamcard player allows you to access programs created with 
> Dreamcard.
> The Player is free.  To use it, double click it, then either open the
> Dreamcard program you want to run using the Open button to the right 
> of the
> address bar, or navigate to a program stored online by clicking on the 
> User
> Spaces button."
>
> When I double-click the installed Dreamcard Player on Windows XP, 
> nothing of the above happens, in fact nothing at all happens!
>
> The only form I can use the Dreamcard Player is to drag stacks onto 
> its Revolution icon, which indeed then opens Rev and Metacard stacks. 
> Unfortunately, however, no mouse cursors are visible inside the stack 
> area of the opened stacks and you need to move the mouse "blindly". Am 
> I missing something here?
>
> Regards,
>
> Wilhelm Sanke
> <http://www.sanke.org>