room for an open source alternative

[Richard Gaskin]

Alain Farmer wrote:
> Hello Richard and y'all,
> 
>> ... so it would seem there would be room
>> for an open source alternative -- maybe.
> 
> Hear! Hear!  ;-))
> 
> We are on the same wavelength in this regard.  :)
> 
> As you all know, I'm making steady progress towards
> this goal, e.g. an open-source multi-platform xCard
> that takes advantage of all the relevant Web [2.0]
> standards, and so on. Yup! I speak of "XulCard". :-)

It sounds like maybe we're on different wavelengths, though I admire 
your work on XulCard and wish you the best.

I was referring to Rev-based IDEs, like MC.  My work involves mostly 
desktop apps, so attempting to rework it all into a browser-based object 
model seems difficult for many projects.

In the long run I see PythonCard as the logical open source alternative 
for desktop RAD, but given its current state it looks like we have a few 
good years left focusing on Rev.  And as long as Rev maintains a good 
price/productivity ratio, PythonCard may coexist with Rev as happily as 
Linux with OS X.  A little healthy competition keeps everyone performing 
their best.

In the here and now, MC is losing users to Rev.  Since the Rev IDE comes 
free with the package when you license the engine, there's certainly 
nothing wrong with that to the degree people are able to maintain, or 
even enhance, their productivity.

But the growing interest in Constellation/Galaxy suggests the Rev 
community may remain as hungry for others development styles as they 
were when Rev itself was born.

Currently, MC appeals only the those who were using it before Rev was 
born.  It's not simple to set up, and has relatively few features.  Of 
course those of us who grew up with it like it that way, and I continue 
to support its core mandate of minimal change to maintain its simplicity 
and freedom.

But on balance, I have to admit that from Day 2 with MC I've been 
augmenting it with my own tools.  As much as I like being close to the 
engine (i.e., close to my user's runtime experience), MC makes very few 
tasks particularly convenient, and a lot of things I do commonly aren't 
supported in the MC GUI at all (like editing frontScript, backScripts, 
and libraries), requiring trips to the Message Box if it weren't for my 
tools.

Over the eight years I've been working with MC I've amassed a lot of 
tools.  Many were one-offs for specialized tasks that aren't worth 
sharing, and some of the rest are available for free in my devolution 
toolkit.  But there's a lot more. A LOT more.  It's been difficult 
justifying the time to clean them up from "tool" form to "product" form, 
but they're coming along as time goes by.

I've started forking the MC IDE so I can better integrate these tools 
into a cohesive environment.  Many of these will still work 
independently of any IDE just as the ones in devolution do now, but 
sometimes I need an even less intrusive IDE than MC.

For example, I spend a lot of time making drawing apps, and neither MC 
nor Rev passes messages well enough to make such work convenient, so 
I've already begun taking steps to get MC out of the way, making an 
environment that is even closer to the engine while offering many more 
conveniences.

In addition to the sort of layout and construction tasks the MC and Rev 
IDEs have traditionally focused on, my forked IDE (working name "M2") 
will also include support for the superset of tasks ranging from project 
management to product management.  These new areas of support are 
largely driven by RIP properties (see 
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/revInterop/>), so they should be fully 
interoperable with any other tools which also follow those open 
recommendations.

So if any of you here have opinions about new ways we might expand MC 
but have been reluctant to recommend them for that IDE and don't want to 
put in the effort to make your own forked project, maybe there's a way 
we can divvy up work on this skunkworks version as a playground for 
these ideas.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Managing Editor, revJournal
  _______________________________________________________
  Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com