My Revlet Works!!! aka getting the current plugin

Hot damn! It works after all :-D

Turns out that my silly little Plurals program now works online. I thought it didn't but it seems that I didn't have the current plugin. Silly me!


You can find it here

I'm doin' the Snoopy Dance!

From the FROM GOD'S MOUTH TO OUR EARS department:

"I'm especially impressed with the way you've preserved the same feel and flavor of HyperCard even in all the new features you've added and revised... When I finally got to Revolution it was like coming home again... You have created a very worthy successor to HyperCard, the only one I've seen which captures, preserves and seamlessly extends everything I thought was great about the original." -- Dan Winkler

And to think -- we wouldn't even know about this little gem if not for a recently spectacular little flamefest on the Rev use-list. That flamefest partially reignited the debate regarding whether we should be proud of Revolution's Hypercard origins or ashamed. You can read more about Hypercard here. People who are embarrassed by that lineage should just go away and program in C. Seriously. It's snobbery like that (produced in metric boatloads over on a recent /. thread on Rev ) that keeps people, especially normal humans, from even trying to make their own solutions.

From the wikipedia entry above (which is itself ironic given that the first wiki was produced as a Hypercard stack):

HyperTalk was sufficiently popular that one of its main uses was not as a database, but as a programming tool that empowered ordinary computer users. Thousands of "stacks" were written and distributed as "stackware" in the years when HyperCard was widely available. As stated above, programming "for the rest of us", that is, for non-professionals, allowed many thousands of personal applications to be created by individuals with a need for personal software solutions.

You or I are unlikely to make anything super-duper great, but that doesn't mean there isn't a place in the world for "little and gets the job done" ;-)

TwistAWord Now Available as a Facebook App!

The TwistAWord educational game/app, reviewed below, is now available online in a limited form Facebook web application. Check it out!

http://apps.facebook.com/twistaword/

To play the online version of the game, you will need to download the free web revlet plug-in. The IE browser, notoriously wonky and non-standards compliant, isn't supported by this plug-in, but FireFox and Safari are.

Enjoy!

Making Plurals

Okay, I was recently presented with an excuse to use Rev when my kids (eight year-olds) brought home a bit of language arts homework that they didn't understand on plural form construction.

Here's how the worksheet presented things:



A word that means one of something is singular. A word that means more than one is plural. Most singular words are made plural by adding s. Most words that end in s, ss, x, ch, and sh are made plural by adding es. Form the plural of each word below by adding s or es.


button_____

boss_____

wish_____

robot_____

clock_____

circus_____.


BORING! There are no illustrating examples. This presentation earns a huge FAIL from an instructional design perspective. My little boy was very frustrated. So, I dusted off my brain and tried to remember what little I used to know about scripting to try to come up with something better. Here is the Mac OSX result and here is the Windows result (I don't know if the latter works as I don't have a PC to try it on).

What I did.

It's clear that a few examples were needed for demonstration purposes. It also seemed reasonable to have them do more than 6 sample problems (so I did 12 instead). I decided to use two different typefaces: one for instructions/presentation/rule articulation and a second for examples/problems. Since I was short on originality, I decided once again to use a chalkboard motif, which makes the first font choice fitting: Chalkboard (on the Mac). Chalkboard was selected less for its name than for the fact that it looks like the sort of printing that children are taught: simple lines, no serifs, no funny-looking 'a's like the one I just typed. As California's third grade curriculum also introduces cursive writing at this level, my second font was a strange thing called #PilGi, which was the closest thing I could find to a cursive handwriting font pre-installed on my Mac. The chalkboard image I found after a quick search for public domain clipart although I could also have just gone and photographed an actual chalkboard (they really do still exist!).

Probably the most time consuming aspect of this project was turning all the text into images instead of using Rev's built-in field objects. Even where the same font exists on, say, both the Mac and Windows, you cannot be assured that it will look the same on both (spacing will be very different), thus as I wanted things to look the same, all text had to be turned into images, and transparent PNGs at that (so the chalkboard would show through). I fired up GraphicConverter, but (a) it's been increasingly wonky with each new release, and (b) I noticed right away that text at really large point sizes (I think for the title screen, it's something like 120 points) is horribly pixellated, so I needed to use a program that had some Photoshop-like filter features. GIMP, a free open-source software program with Photoshop-like capabilities, was suggested. I don't know how GIMP is on Linux or Windows, but the Mac version kinda sucks, although I've been told it sucks less than it formerly did. On the Mac, GIMP requires the X11 environment (instructions are on the website), and it does not look like a standard Mac app (the accelerator key is control and not the apple key; the application's menu bar is not anchored to the top like it's supposed to be but is instead attached to the document window). But, hey -- it's free and I managed!

The first few screens are timed presentations of information (the rules and examples). Timed means using the "wait" command. Alot. Well, turns out that this can sometimes cause problems, and so I got chewed out over using it ;-) But, as I couldn't figure another way of doing the same thing, I compromised and used "wait with messages" (but, to be honest, even that still caused problems with the revlet version -- the web deployable one). However, the Mac version worked and, as my kids needed it this week and not next year, good enough will have to suffice.

On to the drill-and-kill! One of the things I didn't like about the kids' handout was the presentation of the rule and the exception. Even in print, I think I would have tried to separate the two so that it was clear there were two states or cases or rules -- you either add "s" or you add "es". I think it should have been two separate paragraphs to avoid the whole Hamlet's "words, words, words..." phenomenon. So, for the testing component I presented rule #1 (most words take an "s") on the left in its own box-demarcation, and rule #2 similarly on the right. Users are presented with three nouns per screen followed by an "s" and an "es" button and told to click on the appropriate one.

Are they dead yet? So far, I hadn't done much to mitigate the BORING! factor. So, I went back and added sound (text-to-speech; the revSpeak command [side rant: why couldn't they have just used "speak"?!!]) for the presentation and the instructions. Using buttons for testing meant nothing had to be dragged around on-screen by little uncoordinated hands using computer mice that are wayyyy too big for them. As an added bonus, kids LOVE to click buttons (watch one in the elevator some time; my kids fight over who gets to press which button). If the appropriate button is selected, an applause sound is played and a dialogue box thrown up which confirms that the child has chosen the appropriate ending. If the wrong button is selected, a goofy 'you lose' kind of sound is played ("play audioclip" command) and a dialogue box appears telling the child that this was not the correct choice, what the correct plural is, and why. This drove my husband batty, all that dialogue box confirmation, but kids aren't adults and, well, it's another button they get to click! I also then (with more "wait" commands) try to subtly hilite the appropriate rule box, but I'm not certain that it's not too subtle. At the end, the student's percentage rate correct is shown.

What went right.

It didn't take too long to find royalty-free or public domain images and sounds (I think I paid $10 for the you-lose sound but I liked it and didn't want to spend a half-hour looking for something public domain). "Wait" didn't screw up anything on the Mac side. I managed not to do anything terribly stupid. The kids actually liked it (in fact, I finally had to shoo them away, saying "let mommy finish it!!!). I actually finished it.

What went wrong.

"Wait" screwed up the revlet. Because I didn't script it terribly efficiently, writing the "yea" and "boo" buttons only once and using "the target" to exhibit the appropriate behavior, at some point I ended up having to go through all 12 sets of buttons to see where I forgot to increment the counter for things like moving to the next screen and getting the right math with respect to percentage of correct choices. Oh well. I lived to tell the tale.

What I'd do differently.

Use "the target". Randomize the presentation of the 12 problem/words in the testing area. Maybe make the cursive text on the second screen larger. Find a better cursive handwriting font. Pay somebody to tell me how to get around the "wait" problem. ;-)

New Educational Game Made in Revolution

Recently-released TwistAWord is a new educational game made with Revolution and indicative of what a person can do with a little time one their hands (well, okay, maybe more than a little time).


It is advertised as a fun word game for children from 8 to 88 years (and up)... Cool design, funny sound effects and a competitive element make improving your language skills a treat! . TwistAWord utilizes a corkboard and paper scrap motif; its object is for the player to correctly assemble a phrase's words from the presented scrambled order. Hints can be requested:



Four levels are supported as are phrases in eight languages (Catalonian, Danish, English, French, German, Latin, Portuguese or Spanish). The game is visually appealing and, had I not turned my sound down, no doubt my children would have excited by the game's sound effects.

If you are wondering whether you as a normal human being (e.g., non-programmer) could make something similar, the creator of TwistAWord described its development as thus The scripting is laborious, tedious, but not very complicated, although I used a few tricks one might not immediately think of... The basics of the game are still relatively simple.

TwistAWord is available for Windows or Mac OS X, and you can download a trial version which will quit after ten minutes of play. For a limited time, it is also available at a 33% discount for a total purchase price of slightly less than US$15.

Rev Media Free; Web-deployable Stacks!

This is really awesome news! Check it out!!

From the press release:

New, Free and Accessible Web Platform Launched

WEDNESDAY 22ND JULY 2009

New revMedia 4.0 Public Alpha Test Version Available Today
World's easiest programming language launches on the Web

EDINBURGH (July 22) – The world’s easiest programming language today launched on the Web with the debut of a free "alpha test" version of revMedia 4.0. This new version of the company's popular cross-platform development tool can now deploy to all major browsers on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Users can use revMedia's English-like programming language, revTalk, to write applications in less time and with less effort than traditional, more costly Web development tools.

The revWeb authoring environment and revTalk are modern descendents of natural-language programming technologies such as SmallTalk, Apple's HyperCard, AppleScript, and Adobe Director Lingo.

"HyperCard was one of the original inspirations for the Web." said Robert Cailliau, who co-developed the World Wide Web along with Sir Tim Berners-Lee at CERN. Robert continued, "Today the Web can finally reach its full potential with a modern, powerful development language that honors the best ideas from that original concept."
Cailliau adds, "You can be a total beginner and still produce impressive software quickly. I use revTalk for all my coding needs, and know it goes far beyond programming 'for the rest of us.' Professionals will appreciate the speed with which they can build sophisticated solutions. It is a complete platform that gives you access to the entire Web, plus desktop and even server."

The technology is ground-breaking because the same, accessible language can be used wherever users wish to present their work. Previously, an alphabet soup of different languages and conflicting syntax had to be employed to create full solutions.
revMedia is a fully featured authoring tool that includes an integrated development environment (IDE) for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The product supports popular multimedia formats, vector graphics, powerful visual effects, drop shadows, OS-native look-and-feel, or interfaces with a completely custom skin. revTalk's unique chunk expressions make it easy to process text or crunch data. And for professional programmers, revTalk includes advanced features like object-oriented behaviors and multi-dimensional arrays.

Registration for the revMedia alpha is free and open to everyone. The final shipping version of revMedia will also be free. Users can upgrade to revStudio or revEnterprise if they need access to an advanced tool set, or to on-Rev to host server applications. The company will shortly be introducing a freely available, user-installable server language as part of its strategy to provide a complete English-like development platform for desktop, Web and servers.

The alpha test is available from http://revmedia.runrev.com

About Revolution:
_Revolution enables users to create applications using the platform of their choice and deploy to virtually every desktop computer in use today. Unlike other programming languages which rely on obscure symbols and complicated structures, Revolution uses plainly understood words and phrases for most of its operations. Casual users can ramp up quickly while advanced users save time by writing up to 90% less code than they would in a traditional language.

About RunRev:
Founded in 1997, RunRev focuses on bringing user-centric software development to all major platforms: Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and Unix. The company is based in Edinburgh, Scotland. For more information on Runtime Revolution, please visit the company on the Web at

http://www.runrev.com

Contact details
For more information or to arrange a review, contact:

Kevin Miller
phone +44 (0) 870 747 1165
email support@runrev.com
You may write to us at
RunRev
25A Thistle Street Lane South West
Edinburgh, Scotland EH2 1EW.

RunRev is a trading name of Runtime Revolution Ltd. All trademarks are the property of their respective owner

A Somber Good-bye...

First, a heartfelt good-bye...


Early Hypercard adopter/book writer and ever so helpful Revolutionary Eric Chatonet passed away last week from a sudden stroke. He was I believe 62, though you'd never know it from the incredible energy displayed in churning out Rev tutorials and example stacks... I never had the opportunity to meet him in person but in email and list exchanges he was one of the most kind, funny and humble persons you could ever hope to meet.



Needless to say, the Revolution community is stunned and saddened by his loss and wish his family the best as they and we mourn his loss.



RIP Eric.