RevSession opening issue (was RE: RunRev versus WinRar)

[MisterX]

 > Precisely.  But without the OS vendor managing a central 
> registry, we must rely on the goodwill of third parties and 
> their various ad hoc substitutes; i.e., it may not be 
> possible to "know"; at best we can only guess, and hope.

Although I miss the "creator" code which was quite handy, it doesn't prevent
(and please correct me if this has been fixed since) other files from being
opened by the wrong program on macs. Examples like ttxt, ????, MSFT, R*ch,
etc will definitely force you to choose manually which program to use or
have an add on editor to change the creator codes to your liking. Something
which doesn't work without file extensions !!! So was my mac experience.

On PCs, one or many types are handled by your favorite app. You just set the
extensions, and done. I know there can be conflicts but even at work with 40
million files, all the IDEs you'd care to hear, I haven't had word of
trouble in this dept... 

> > Rev still can't open stacks normally on PCs when you double 
> click on 
> > it's documents - the stacks or your application's 
> stack-documents... 
> > Win32 always opens another session of Rev...

> How does this differ from Notepad or Internet Explorer?
> 
> Try this:
> 
> 1. Open Notepad
> 2. Type something in the new document
> 3. Save it to the desktop, but leave it open 4. In the 
> desktop, double-click the saved document
>     - it opens a second instance; changes saved in either instance
>       will overwrite the file, but neither instance will let the
>       other know
> 
> I can't find verse and chapter on this behavior in the Win 
> HIG, but it's a documented part of the OS (Ken, still have 
> that reference handy?).

Im not sorry at all for the long detailed explanation that follows. Just a
bit of background, and behavior design by example principles. Just hope it
helps ya dig or tame the dark side - irony, sarcasm, inferences are all
figments of your or my imagination and is purely fictional or just a
figment. I tried to stay objective (xed.)

Let's not look at what Moft recommends (notepad is just not a good example
of GUI standards (like most NT4 guis - note it took MS until W2K to put the
control-s shortcut in the menu! And F3 is so intuitive while Cmd-F gather
dust. grrr) - notepad is rather a lame tool for usability testing (no
drag'n'drop though) or standards comparison (it's ok to test fonts, or r/w
files or edit html, cmd's or txt files for example). 

But look at how ....ALL..... other programs do open many docs into one app
session which also are the likes of Rev, I mean real Editors... Whether
files are opened as different files, tabs or cards in a parent window,
doesn't matter but you have the choice and that's where the double clicking
becomes pratical for Rev Files or becomes a "thing to avoid doing". Most
programs also offer to watch or correct or overide or not the extension in
the OS which is a common feature im sure you've seen too. 

UltraEdit, Photoshop, CodeWarrior, the Flash IDE, etc, etc, etc all work as
expected... Sorry to contradict you again but it's more of a rule of thumb
or a common sense standard, or a feature design or a programmer's choice. I
dont like most Moft or Apple programmers for their lack of insight in
correct and in depth management of the common sense of some GUIs but that's
another "monopolistic behavior" economics of innovation story. 

A curious exception you mentioned is the browser area. 
Here, there's no lack of innovation in a lame delivery environment - stacks
are much better ;)

But...

Depending on the preferences you set in your pc (you know, options in the
tools menu), you can have IExploiter open new windows or reuse the window
(same in dos or explorer); ABBrowser(.com), gives you the option of tabs, or
new windows and FireFox screws it up by default reusing your current (or
last viewed) tab - but there's surely a plugin to solve this!

After 6 years in the NT world, I got to add that there are the MS standards
(and WMI is truely awesome and scales up to advanced directory forests in a
snap - pun int.!), then there's the normal (common sense) standards, the mac
standards (very nice as usual but poor on keyboard ergonomics (last i
tried)), the lame standards (win3.1, nt4, some unix, some mac gui
limitations none of which can't be enlightned with crash-risk increasing
extensions) and last but not least the opensource standards - usually the
best of all of the above. 

None is wrong, just unpleasant at some point or many. Some of the most
sophisticated software I got has some of the worst GUIs out of their purpose
program - it's so far out that it's mind boggling a programmer touched this!
It's amazing they are so popular or that it never gets fixed either, let
alone cost money, or how they became the best of their class!!! But making
nice guis takes time, testing and more time! ;< 

It seems like a trivial thing but it cascades farther than one dares
imagine. That's the intrisic and stochastic nature and interface design of
gui economics andor ergonomics thing... but that's another IT ecosystem ;)

I dont mean to be an expert in it nor is my word to be mixed with Absolute
(i only drink our belgian mineral water Jupiler ;), but I like to weight all
advantages and disadvantages and compound them by the frequency at which I
can or cannot use them... Then it's practical or not. 

In brief, this one "session opening" issue makes the iexplorer standards or
any other Win32 file launching ability (toolbars, palettes, start menu,
shortcuts, cmds, etc...) useless to open further stacks in the only session
you'll ever open and use. It also makes it possible to change rev stacks
using two different running sessions if you do see it in time (and it's not
hard not to notice you have 2 rev session opened.) I think that covers
enough frag damage digging bullets in other kill zones. And a possible route
with an extension to my windows batch to open RunRev (the one that saves
sessions.logs from being overwritten!)

Well, that wasn't so hard to resume after all.

Richard, i dare not venture arguing against Macs. Like many others and for
very valid reasons, we can't justify a platform switch but enjoy the
possibility to share cross-platform tools up to where it is support[ed|able]
- after that, it is just the extra steps that make good software conform
easily or not to others or even on [our|your|e] own platform (thus less
support for all no matter what - but that comes at the IDE or IDE GUI level
to start. And 2.5, 2.5.1, are showing progress!). 

I see business or ergonomic issues which I keep pointing out that need
adapting to quality standards. I hope the critique is taken positively and
not as a rant.

Just had too add some background credibility babling i guess ;) My short
week off the cyber world visiting my mom was truely invigorating and mind
opening too. Would you believe my mom has more creative nitrous than me? ;)
If you're ever around Lyon.fr, and need a bed and breakfast, you'll flip!

It's not so bad, I can still do ma own gui to ma own standard across HC,
FMP, MC, AS and Rev! (More to come Dan!) Just adapting to other standards...
The simple solution to this problem was writing my own NeXT
pseudo-Browser+TAOO Preview+Editor... All modular and "reassemblable" into
any other app! Now that's a feature cascading standard! And it only gets
better! 

Want to join the TAOO team yet? Watch the next thread! 

Cheerios
Xav
http://monsieurx.com/runrev