ListMagic (was: RE: ListMagic calculated columns)

[Jim Bufalini]

Dear Bill,

Thank you for your very astute observation. How many times have each of us
added a "nice to have" feature, only to discover, in retrospect, that it
implied a dozen other features and functionality to others that we never
intended. ;-)

You may let your hope spring eternal as far as ListMagic is concerned. Both
Eric an I believed in programs being "automatic." What this means is, if a
program can infer and do something, why force a user to do it? Computers
were supposed to save time, right? ;-) On the other hand, never hamstring a
user into your mindset.

My thinking behind my previous comments were that I could make public a
function that allows for the programmatic "editing" of an item in a list.
You will not have to use the function. It will just be available if you need
it, so that you don't have to repopulate an entire list.

Eric really did do a heck of a time-saver and mindless gadget with
ListMagic. I intend to carry the torch. 

Jim

> -----Original Message-----
> From: use-revolution-bounces at lists.runrev.com [mailto:use-revolution-
> bounces at lists.runrev.com] On Behalf Of william humphrey
> Sent: Saturday, February 07, 2009 2:10 AM
> To: How to use Revolution
> Subject: Re: ListMagic calculated columns
> 
> A list magic suggestion:
> Please don't add too many features. My favorite thing about listmagic
> is the
> ease of use. There are other very promising add-ons to RunRev that I
> had so
> much hope for but which I've been unable to use because I couldn't
> overcome
> the initial learning curve necessary to get to use them. A good example
> is
> Quartam Reports. It is a wonderful program/add-on which could solve,
> I'm
> sure, many of the problems I'm having with the reporting features of my
> database program but I was never able to figure out how to use it and
> ended
> up hand coding all my reports directly in RunRev.
> 
> List Magic just works right out of the box and takes very little
> understanding. Please be careful as you add features (which as the
> programmer you will understand but you risk your user not being able to
> figure out).
> 
> Maybe you make two versions? A feature bloated one and the original one
> only
> with even cleaner and more bug free code?
> 
> Just a suggestion. I also didn't mean to pick on Quartam reports like
> that
> (only as an example of what happens with complex programs). Valentina
> also
> has a reporting function that I've never been able to figure out enough
> to
> use productively. It might be because I am used to the old reporting
> function "Nine to Five Reports" for hypercard which had the advantage
> over
> our Quartam Reports and Valentina Reports of not having to work with
> SQL
> databases.
> 
> Bill
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