My BBC Master - - - getting Beeped-off.

[Judy Perry]

Richard,
I know you have a deep respect for Raney.  And I don't contend that he
wasn't smart.  I  begrudgingly admit that even I think he was a freaking
genius for reverse-engineering the HC file format and building a new
development environment that superceded Hypertalk and made extensions of it
possible, not only on the Mac OS, but also, crucially, cross-plat-wise.  But
I also do believe that he could have made this (music scripting thing)
happen but didn't want to and made whatever excuse he thought we'd all buy
for not doing so.  And at the US$1,000 a license he was charging at the
time, I find this completely unacceptable.

I probably have his excuse buried deep somewhere in my inbox.  If
sufficiently motivated, I could probably find it.  I certainly accepted it
at face value at the time but obviously do not now.  In fact, it was only in
trying to justify his claim to my largely PC-using CS majors that I was
forced to accept that he knew that what he was saying wasn't entirely true.
 And thus was a lie.  And he knew it was a lie.

I really think he was deliberately dishonest.  And private conversations
with others who were around at the time indicate that they also believe he
was deliberately dishonest.  I could have accepted it if, at the time, he
just came out and said, "I think this is a stupid feature I don't wish to
support, but pay me $1,000 anyway for my not doing it -- or not."  I would
have still thought he was a jerk, but I would have respected that he was an
honest jerk.  As it is/was, I cannot even think that.

I have no reason to believe Kevin & Co. are similarly dishonest.  I think
they also accepted his excuse at face value.

The fact that it KEEPS COMING UP tells us that there is SOME market for such
a feature.  Is it enough for Kevin & Co. to invest in? I dunno.  But there
is a market.  Because, if there weren't, it wouldn't keep coming up. (And,
let's be honest:  it wasn't ME beating the primary drum this time!)

But back when he was berating us all for not wanting to pay him $1,000  per
license for his product that couldn't do what  we could have have done years
before with HC, while implying it was technologically impossible, THAT I
blame.  I mean, he's smart enough to reverse engineer the file format and
add to the language BUT HE CANNOT FIGURE OUT HOW TO DO scripted sound on PCs
when Walsh or whoever it was figured it out in abcCode?  THAT I don't buy.

NOT seeing the value in such a feature isn't the same thing as implying that
such a feature isn't possible.

I'd be happy to eat crow on this but even when eating said crow, I'd
probably still contend that THAT's not how I read his (Raney's) explanation
at the time.   Which is what's under discussion.  Because, if there's
ANYTHING that MIDI/abcCode etc. demonstrates, it's that Raney was DEAD WRONG
in his implication that this can't be done.

And I for one don't think that it's because he wasn't smart enough to know
otherwise.

As for an external, I agree with you... and some really intelligent people
have argued that hope springs eternal...  Hopefully we won't have to wait an
eternity!  I am for one hopeful!

Judy
http://revined.blogspot.com

On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 8:39 PM, Richard Gaskin
<ambassador at fourthworld.com>wrote:

> Judy Perry wrote:
>
>  Because Scott Raney had absolutely no use for it and lied that sound
>> channels and/or HC-like musical scripting couldn't be supported under
>> Windows IIRC.
>>
>
> The wording of whatever was said there may be important.  Dr. Raney may
> have been infuriating at times, but I've never known him to be willfully
> dishonest.
>
> That he didn't see the value in it seems more like him.  Indeed, neither
> has Kevin or anyone working on the engine in the 10 years since.
>
> HC-style sound channels have some nifty attributes useful for a few
> projects, but until someone can put together a business case for this it
> will continue to be a wish rather than a feature.
>
> But of course with a sufficiently compelling business case any tool vendor
> would be stupid not to.
>
> Why isn't there an external for this?
>
> --
>  Richard Gaskin
>  Fourth World
>  Revolution training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
>  Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com
>
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