Slightly Overwhelmed

[Scott Kane]

Hi Joshua,

>  Hello everyone, thank all of you very much for all  your 
> help. I've managed 
> to learn a good deal about Revolution since I first  started. 
> I purchased Dan 
> Shafer's book "Software At The Speed of Thought." An  
> excellent book by the 
> way! I've also gone over all the videos and referencing  
> material, but it's a 
> little hard wrapping my head around everything.  There's very 
> many commands and 
> functions I'll never use, so it  makes it difficult finding 
> what I need and 
> exactly how to use it once found.  That's always been my 
> problem though. I 
> figure it'll get easier as I go. 

Rev can be a mystery to experienced programmers (of other languages)
as well at first.  Perseverance and a "try it in a stack and see"
process is really rewarding.
  

>  What would be the best way of saving the data into the 
> program,  client 
> info, pictures, audio? I thought about custom properties, but 
> I  haven't quite 
> mastered those yet. How about the scanning picture effect 
> while  scanning through 
> records, how in the world would I accomplish this (why on  
> earth he asked for 
> this I'll never know...)? Also any ideas of inspiration  
> would be greatly 
> appreciated. If this works out he agreed to  give me a letter 
> of recommendation 
> and help me establish  my professional contacts. In other 
> words it could very 
> well change my  life. Getting my foot in the door now will 
> insure it's open. 

You could undoubtedly do this with external stacks as documented
in the Employee database example in Rev Online.  However I really
don't think you can go past altSQLite for this.  It's fast and
will handle image files quickly and easily (especially if they
are stored in a separate table for images).  As far as the Hollywood
effect of "scanning pictures" it's exactly that - an effect.  It would
be slow and cumbersome to display this way as you'd have to slow down
the scan process to the point where a human can see it.  In reality
a real database would clumsy if forced to do this and would take a
considerable amount of time.  You'll note that in movies, where they
do this, that the system throws up a sequence of photos and magically
arrives at the correct one in a few scans.  You might like to explain
that to him...  :-)
  
> PS: I've often contemplated where to obtain quality  graphics for my 
> programs. I'm looking for background images, icons,  
> textures, animated menus, etc 
> (the whole 9 yards). Does anyone have  any recommendations on 
> where to get 
> customized graphics? 

Sure.  Sue Pinchotta of Ace Icons.  http://www.aceicons.com
I use her icons sets all the time and she has created some
custom ones for me too.  They are really nice to look at and
the PNG versions work well with Rev.  She has some sample
packs you can download as well as examples of her quality
ones on the website...  :-)

HTH

Scott