Product Reviews

Software production may be seen as a long, painful business fit for hardened coders, but it isn't as hard as you might think. So what are the realistic options for end-user authoring in today's cross-platform world? Director suits animation-rich multimedia projects, but not 'real' applications. RealBasic is interesting but complex and a little buggy, particularly for cross-platform work. But there is an answer and it's Revolution.

Runtime claims that Revolution is a tool that provides seriously powerful, yet accessible software authoring powers for easy, cross-platform delivery. It uses a pleasingly English-like scripting language, and can create applications, without fuss, for use on Macs (both 68K and PowerPC), Windows and 11 Unix varieties from Alpha through Linux to Solaris SPARC.

In one sense it isn't entirely new in that the underlying engine Revolution uses is MetaCard, a little-known but very powerful cross-platform authoring tool created by Unix-based developer Meta. However, while MetaCard is still in active development, its interface is clearly from a Unix background and does little to help most users. Revolution provides a complete user-friendly authoring environment, which uses the MetaCard engine, so taking advantage of any future MetaCard enhancements.

Stack 'em high

In the old HyperCard tradition, Revolution documents are called stacks. As in HyperCard, a stack is a collection of cards and objects (graphics, buttons and fields) are placed on the various cards. But this doesn't mean it's weak in any way. For example, vector and bitmap graphics and QuickTime VR can be controlled by script, asynchronous animation controls and timer triggers are standard and GIF, JPEG and PNG are handled natively.

The engine that drives it all is incredibly compact and blazingly fast - even on ancient machines you'd be hard-pressed to distinguish a Revolution-based application from a traditional C-coded one. Production is simple

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enough for a novice to pick up, yet it has enough scope to tackle frighteningly large and complex tasks.

The language, called Transcript, is very similar to HyperTalk (andby association the other 'xTalk' languages, such as SuperTalk, Lingo and AppleScript), so scripters should find it accessible and expressive. Controls for graphics handling, data arrays, device control, Internet socket support and more are provided. The developer even claims an Internet client-server application can be written with 10 lines of script.

Making applications from your stacks is almost sinfully easy. Just choose Build Distribution from the File menu and you're presented with a list of deployment options for fine-tuning the end result. Building standalone applications for different platforms is largely a matter of clicking a checkbox for whichever ones you want. Once you've told Revolution which stack to use and filled in a few other items, such as creator code for Mac applications and application information fields for Windows, making an application is a matter of simply clicking a button. The application 'engine' code is built into copies of the stack - this is automatically downloaded for each required platform the first time around - and a minute later you have your new applications, each carefully stored in its own folder.

Platform ticket

Platform-specific issues, such as the placement of regular menus (in the menubar for Mac applications, within the parent window or elsewhere for Windows and Unix applications), are handled via Managers within Revolution, so a single project can be set up to produce tailored, platform-specific software. More importantly, authoring can be done anywhere without the end results looking like a 'port' from another platform. AppleEvents are supported on the Mac, while command-line access is provided on Linux and Unix systems.

Pricing for the final version of Revolution hasn't been finalised, but it should cost less than $400 for a single-user licence with mailing list support, and less than $1000 for full support and a year's worth of updates. There will also be a free Starter Kit version available for download. This will build cross-platform applications, but limits any single script to no more than 30 lines.

Revolution currently runs in Classic mode in Mac OS X. It can't create non-Classic applications, but this should change within the next few months as a Carbonized version is reportedly due by the end of the summer. Revolution 1.0 should be here by the end of July. Get ready.