Rant Re Rev Documentation

[Charles Hartman]

It's not going to make me any more popular, but I have to say that  
this seems like an example of the basic problem. It's a pretty  
glaring bug -- as someone else pointed out, if you make the print  
dialog available, you probably need to pay attention to what it says.  
Some of the unicode and other text-handling problems people have  
pointed out are pretty glaring too. So are aspects of the Inspector,  
the Documentation window, and the Application Browser. These aren't  
problems of missing documentation, they're bugs & holes. And they're  
bugs & holes in places that someone just beginning to develop apps in  
Rev is likely to encounter -- not abstrusiosities off in the realm of  
getting Rev to communicate with RS-422 interfaces etc.

Which is to be expected! Yes. It's a work in progress. I acknowledge  
and appreciate that, and I certainly acknowledge and appreciate the  
work of everybody, within and outside RR, working on that progress,  
both in functionality and in explanation.

The trouble is that Rev is not an open-source, let's-all-get-together- 
and-build-it system -- it's a package that may be cheap from the  
point of view of a professional (that is: funded) developer, but not  
from other points of view. (Compare, say, Python.) Those other points  
of view include the "inventive users" Dan and others have talked  
about. They also include people like me -- definitely (decidedly!  
massively!) amateur, but with a certain amount of programming  
experience.

I'm not meaning to complain. I'm working on a Dreamcard app right now  
(can't afford the other packages); I've taken on that learning curve.  
I'm only saying that the curve is steeper than someone might expect  
from a non-freeware system. It's about as steep as for wxPython, for  
example. This list is a magnificent help, I hasten to agree.

Charles


On Jul 25, 2005, at 11:29 AM, Dan Shafer wrote:

> Bill..........
>
> That tidbit is not in the current draft. I did look into it but as  
> far as I can tell, it's not possible to do this. At least if it is,  
> documentation for how to do it is definitely buried or missing.
>
> Dan
>