The absence of such a high-level IDE is an opportunity for competing platforms. And, given the lack of windowing, the iPhone OS seems like a far better platform for something HyperCard-esque than the Mac ever was.

With Gruber’s previous support and blessing from Steve Jobs himself on his Apple positive stance on changes to the iPhone SDK, it is interesting that he makes even this statement. Since his DaringFireball blog doesn’t allow for comments, it is not clear to what extent his support for cross platform tools means. The dialog is intense over on Slashdot, with the topic remaining a top page affair even today. I think even the loyalties of some long time Mac OS focused vendors and developers are getting tested as developers realize that the issue isn’t Apple vs Flash or the red herring of Flash vs HTML 5, but Apple vs Cross Platform Development and Apple vs Developers.

Although graphics have seen a lot of improvements over the last few releases of Runrev, the graphics system isn’t really hardware accelerated. That’s where a product like Franklin comes in and solves a lot of performance issues. Even if you aren’t making a 3D game or simulation, you can use Franklin’s 2D sprite engine which is accelerated by underlying DirectX or OpenGL support to speedily handle a screenful of sprites. Interaction with these (like any object in Franklin) can fire call backs to Runrev.

The best feature is that you can create your application on one OS and deploy to multiple operating systems. Build in Mac OS X for example, and you can compile for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux – and the applications all look native on all platforms and don’t have that sluggish feel of Java applications.

Runtime Revolution 3 adds several new features, including a new script editor, better online help, a new start center and more.

Mirye Runtime Revolution 3.0 includes the following major improvements:

Mirye Runtime Revolution 3 Script Editor. Mirye Runtime Revolution 3 includes a fast, modern script editing and debugging environment. Quickly access handlers, Errors, Documentation, BreakPoints, Variables and Search Results within a tabbed interface.

Mirye Runtime Revolution Help System. The new Mirye Runtime Revolution Help system includes all previously released materials plus Mirye Runtime Revolution 3 additions. But the improvements don’t stop there! You now have superior navigation and access to articles by subject.

Beautiful, Gradient Vector Objects. Mirye Runtime Revolution has always had built in vector object creation tools – now Mirye Runtime Revolution graphic objects support gradients. Not only can you interactively modify the gradients on objects, you can do this by script.

Multidimensional Arrays. Mirye Runtime Revolution 3 multidimensional arrays makes it far, far easier to work with data of all kinds. It will transform your use of working with XML data with Mirye Runtime Revolution applications.

RevCamp Subscriptions. Order Mirye Runtime Revolution 3 or Mirye Runtime Revolution 3 upgrades and updates and get a Mirye RevCamp subscription. RevCamp includes monthly releases of valuable content assets, tools, services and other features useful to Revolution developers.

Ultra Fast Database Applications. Mirye Runtime Revolution 3 Studio or Higher includes Valentina 3.1 ADK Advanced for Runtime Revolution. Paradigma Software Valentina is the fastest cross-platform database available and ADK advanced includes components for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows deployment, as well as Valentina Studio Admin visual database tool.

Benefits of Mirye Runtime Revolution Issue Format

The new release format offers the following benefits:

• Additional, Permanent Benefits. These are benefits that customers receive regardless of when they are announced. With this first issue, Studio and Enterprise customers receive Valentina for Revolution 3.1 ADK Advanced, the ultra fast database toolkit for Revolution.
• Limited, Timed Benefits. These benefits are only available if you download them within the limited time. With this first issue, Media, Studio and Enterprise customers receive the Business as Unusual Volume 1 collection of 20 royalty free soundtracks.
• News and Articles. With each release, there will be news, articles and tips offered to help enhance your use of Revolution.
• Special Offers. You can get special member offers for other, or third party products that will enhance your use of Revolution.

The Why Behind Mirye Runtime Revolution Format Change

Mirye Runtime Revolution is a professional tool for creating and deploying cross platform applications on all major operating systems: Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. In many respects, it overlaps and competes with the likes of Adobe Director, REAL Software REALbasic, MS Visual Basic, Java and even Adobe Flash or Microsoft’s .net framework.

Mirye Runtime Revolution overlaps with REALbasic, Java and .net framework in that it can deploy to multiple operating systems using mostly the same code base. But that simply describes features in the last step of a work flow pipeline – not the entire pipeline of a release.

Designers that have experience with Adobe Director, Flash or Microsoft’s new Expression more likely to recognize the pipeline, because these products also excel in aggregating combinations of audio, video and graphics assets. These are elements that are usually developed by someone else and upstream in the workflow pipeline.

Teams though can share more than just assets – but the knowledge of how to best exploit the use of those assets at each point in the work flow.

This brings us back to the format change and the question: Is Mirye Runtime Revolution only a deployment technology, or does it encompass the aggregated assets and knowledge? Even if you are a weekend developer and you wear all the hats of artist, layout designer, sound technician and coder, an additional benefit at any point in your work flow pipeline provides benefits to the entire project.

This brings us back to our new issues format. By providing ongoing knowledge and benefits in an magazine-like issue format – expanded beyond a software only update – a release can deliver benefits that are more timely, and benefit your entire work flow.

I can appreciate the arguments the same way I appreciate the arguments against updates to HTML. There are loads of libraries out there that do a great job at extending today’s apps – loads and loads. New versions collide with the support for those versions within existing and future browsers, whereas nicely loading external scripts can add value now without so much trouble.

This particular anti-Javascript group though isn’t really arguing about Javascript, but what they think should replace the browser as a frame of experience (sorry, that’s not intended to be funny). That’s an entirely different argument and predictive of what humans will want to get out of the collective network soup of the future Internet. Javascript should be incrementally improved to put more powerful and streamlined functionality into the hands of site designers who already have years and years of production experience with Javascript, rather than forcing them to learn brand new languages or huge paradigm shifts such as placing a proprietary technology (yeah, Adobe’s said they are opening up Flash – until its actually available, so what) at the center of whatever you create.

Ill be updating throughout the day.

Kevin Miller, president of Runtime Revolution spoke at the keynote, reviewing the significant success of the Revolution 2.9 release, including new improvements in printing, drag and drop and the new Linux architecture.

This was followed by some developer presentations by Quartam Reports and Daniels & Mara GLX 2.0 with Visual Application Browser.

Revolution will gain a PHP-style engine and plugin allowing you to embed Revolution code in a web page. A prototype was demonstrated by Robert Cailliau, co-creator of the world wide web. It will be compatible with all major web browsers. It will require little redevelopment of projects to bring them to the web.

• Performance is very fast – much faster than a Java applet
• This will have a sandbox security system similar to Java
• It will support database access
• It will support a plug in architecture if the end user will allow trust for it (including Applescript, shell, VB Script, etc)

A few demonstrations were shown.

Updated 12:15 AM

Trevor Devore, developer of Screensteps visual documentation tool presents the GLX Application Framework, a fast application starter framework for Revolution. You can download the documentation for the GLX Application Framework. Two very impressive features are file management, handling preferences, managing recently opened files and application packaging. You can download the framework and try it yourself.

Updated 3:05 PM

Scott Rossi of Tactile Media presents Multimedia I. His preferred graphics format for working with Revolution is the PNG format as it supports multiple levels of transparency, and the benefits of importing vs referencing graphics files. He followed this with a discussion of comparison of object effects vs card effects, and combining these with audio playback. He also demonstrated how to layer players to achieve multiple, simultaneous audio playback with Revolution.

Scott then demonstrated scripted music notation with Shakobox.

4:32 PM

Jerry Daniels of Daniels Mara gave an introductory presentation on building Internet applications. Jerry demonstrated how to create handlers and use the message path to access files on the internet to update local applications. Next, Jerry covered building a multi-tier architecture using tagged data. He recommended using tagged data for building application preferences, saving them in text files or using custom properties.

Jerry later moved on to how to extract data from the Basecamp API. You can also get example code from the GLX website. Lastly, Jerry demonstrated integrating browser-based data displayed through the web browser object from a website into an Revolution project using drag-drop.

5:44 PM

Devin Asay presented on building courseware and product demos using Revolution.

Bill Atkinson wrote many of the first applications that were available on the Macintosh computer, including the very popular HyperCard development environment. I took some lightweight notes of that conversation – not word for word notes but just jotted down a few things we talked about. We quickly found common interests in the Northwest, Japan, fractal based art and artificial intelligence.

Bill was a pleasure to talk with – his warmth and intelligence shine without any of the egocentricism you find in many executives in the software industry.

Bill was in the process of getting his PhD when he joined Apple. At the time, there were about 30 employees in the company. I didn’t get the impression that Bill completed his PhD, but he apparently continued with some graduate studies at the University of Washington.

Since leaving Apple, Bill Atkinson has pursued a number of interests, including his great love of natural photography – which you can see in Bill Atkinson Photography. We talked at length about the beauty of the Northwest and the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, a place where Bill has spent much time with his camera.

Bill has published some photography books, however he was very dissatisfied with the state of color display and printing in the United States. In order to go beyond the limitations of color available from US publishers, Bill had to go beyond the borders – to Japan.

In Japan, Bill found publishers not only willing to learn and put into practice the techniques he desired in printing, but a willingness to share that information, even with competitors.

So I had to ask – do you still use HyperCard? Bill still has some stacks that run his photography business – running on a G5 and maintained by his wife. But his involvement in programming revolves around Numenta, a business focused on developing software that simulates the neocortex. Numenta was started by Jeff Hawkins, the man behind both Palm and Handspring.

Numenta had caught my attention about a year prior and Paradigma was accepted into their then closed developer program. Bill was surprised that I knew about Numenta.

Bill believes Numenta represents more than the next step in computing – it has historical significance. Neurons in the human brain fire at the a maximum of 200 per second – and we cannot get around that limitation. Not only can human brain functionality be emulated by a computer, they can go far, far beyond these limits. Numenta is forward looking towards a kind of progeny of humans that will go beyond humans.

So will Bill hop back into programming tools and deliver HyperCard 3? It seems very unlikely. He was very happy to hear that the golden descendant of HyperCard – Runtime Revolution – is prospering and delivered the many modern features that never found their way into HyperCard.

If you are interested in natural photography – stop by Bill Atkinson Photography and pick up his book or prints.

08.05.25 Related: Wired Magazine: What HyperCard Could Have Been

You can get your free license by visiting the registration gift site.

It wasn’t very long after Valentina 1.0 that I first met Ruslan Zasukhin, founder, co-investor and VP of Engineering at Paradigma Software. Valentina 1.0 was strictly a C++ development kit at the time. Proactive International approached Ruslan to create a version of Valentina for REAL Software’s REALbasic development environment. Valentina has progressed – with server versions – including Valentina Office Server and Valentina Embedded Server, and support for many more development systems and two web languages: PHP and Ruby/Ruby on Rails.

While I have to remain candid about forthcoming developments, there are new products on their way in 2008 that will enable developers greater freedom to interact with, organize and display their millions of records. Watch for it!

MySQL has become a formidable competitor to other relational database management systems from companies such as Oracle and IBM. The database itself is free for people to download, and MySQL makes money by offering subscription support packages.

Sun has, over the course of the last five years, found itself the guest without a chair at the enterprise dinner table. Solaris OS was the operating system of choice when companies were building their first internet infrastructures, and Sun found new relevance with the Java – only for Java to find cold comfort on the desktop but a welcome home on the server. Open sourcing Java and now, the acquisition of MySQL strengthens the relationship it would like to groom with the now respected open source developer community; the relationship that Oracle’s support (or hijacking as Ive heard it referred to) of Red Hat Linux was supposed to accomplish.

This will matter little to developers who use ultra-fast Valentina database system or cross-platform development environments like Revolution.
Although Valentina competes far more with MySQL with Valentina Developer Network than it does with the many variations of SQLite based solutions on the market today, MySQL is now (or shortly) a Sun product – the hurdles will become one-upping Oracle and IBM. Notice the missing reference to Microsoft SQL Server in the reporting and you’ll easily figure out the commonalities Sun wants to compete against – the infrastructure market around the database – with the buttery goodness of open source to pull you into their total (and expensive) solutions.

Developers do not choose Valentina because there is a massive army of certified engineers or that there is a pre-existing enterprise ecosystem around it. Valentina’s strengths remain the same:

Clean object-relational model – often overlooked, but how you interface with Valentina just makes a lot of sense because it mirrors good general programming practices.

Incredible speed – why developers have always loved Valentina, and why competitors are now trying to boost their claims – our minutes-to-seconds mantra is true if you port from a competitor’s product.

Flexibility – your solution made with Valentina serving the same market as a competitor using Valentina can be entirely different. You have complete, granular control down to details in how data is stored in files.

- and finally, price-value. The cost to scale up to providing enterprise solutions isn’t a mystery and doesn’t require a call from an aggressive direct sales representative.

The Sun acquisition of MySQL won’t make any difference at all. If anything, the aggressiveness of MySQL direct sales representatives will likely lessen, unless the bottom end cost of licensing MySQL is raised to the level of interest of Sun sales reps who are also trying to sell you hardware.

Anyway, REAL Software has been strongly promoting their own SQLite based database server and placed significant policy barriers in their forums against discussing competing products – including banning Paradigma staff members after staff members answered questions asked by REALbasic users about Valentina for REALbasic. What would MySQL think about such policies coming from a potential partner?