Important question regarding next major Rev version

[valetia @mac.com]

Pierre Sahores <psahores at easynet.fr> wrote:

> Be welcome to the List. There are lots of interesting thinks to share 
> with cool and helpfull people there.

Once again, I am not a newcomer to this list.

> Just take care about the thing 
> that Revolution is howned by a great but small company with full handy 
> designers and programmers, whose are working hard 16/24 hours, 6/7 days 
> to improve the performances of the product. They are always focusing 
> their efforts with 2 grades of priorities : First, the improvement of 
> the stability and the performances of the engine (witch always roocks, 
> if you know how to get the best from it), Second, the improvement of 
> the stability, the performances and the features of the IDE (witch is 
> not always exactly working as firsly expected,... mostly under the 
> Linux platform).

Well, those efforts have been rock solid for some time already. After
those priorities are settled, isn't it time to look at the remaining
priorities, which are just as important?

How would you feel if you had put together most of a 10,000 piece puzzle
and had just one last piece missing and you couldn't find it so you
couldn't frame it or show it to anyone...that's exactly what is happening
now...native UI support being that last piece...

> If you can work around the unavailable features or bugs you discover 
> and report to the RunRev Team, you will see that Revolution, is over 
> all, a very powerfull and suitable development tool, able to let you 
> code all kind of very suitable professional-grade Desktop and N-Tier 
> solutions.

That again proves my point. When you need to spend days and weeks trying
to "work around" unavailable features or bugs, and then end up with working
widgets that don't look and behave exactly like their native counterparts,
it defeats the purpose of using a RAD. It's supposed to save you time and
produce the correct output, which I know it can, if the UI is native.

We do not doubt the power of Revolution, in fact we have used it to create
what you term "professional-grade Desktop and N-Tier solutions" using both
the client and CGI. We have done full-featured cookie-based web login systems,
interfacing between RR clients and CGI for niche markets, etc. The thing
about such apps is they do not necessarily need to be based on a native look
and feel, but that is *not* what I am talking about here.

I am talking about getting the native look and feel right, so that RR users
can tap into the mass consumer market properly with apps that look 100% normal,
without any fake UI elements. I am talking about getting tons of RR apps listed
on VersionTracker, Download.com, etc. that look and work right and receive tons
of rave reviews from people on *all* platforms.

Right now, we have a number of apps just waiting in the wings to be released,
and they work just fine, transcript can handle everything without problems,
but we do not want to spoil our reputation by putting up something that can't
even display standard UI elements properly.

Again, that is why many are calling RR a toy, even though it is not so. It is
time to put a stop to that. Not only does it hurt RR's reputation and
bottomline, it's also holding back many developers...and consumers end up with
less choices - there is no advantage to any party at all for putting UI
development on the backburner...

Val