From Windows to Mac

[Preston Shea]

I have been developing stuff for Windows with Revolution Studio 3.0 and now need to create standalones for Macintosh. What hardware and software will I need to buy to be able to make this possible?

[Mark]

Eh?! What do you mean, Preston? You should be able to create a standalone and send it to a friend for testing on a Mac. No additional software and hardware required.

Mark

[Preston Shea]

That sounds too good to be true! I won't have any format problems putting my Mac standalone on a floppy, CD or FTP server just as it comes out of my Windows XP machine and a Mac will be able to run it? Way cool!

I noticed all the cross-platform talk on Rev but never paid any attention before as no elves had ever asked me to make something for them. To think I could have been writing stuff for Middle Earth all these years and never knew it!

[andyh1234]

The only times we have had problems in the past with fonts etc it has been when we developed on a mac and deployed to Windows, if it starts life on Windows and looks good there it tends to look better on the mac, but if it starts like on a Mac and then swaps to Windows sometimes there are little formatting issues.

With the latest versions of RunRev problems seem few and far between, we compile for Mac, Windows and Linux, fortunately I had all three platforms, but as a general rule if it looks good and works well in the Windows RunRev editor, it will work on all three platforms pretty well.

Id still get a mac though That way you can run Windows, Mac and Linux all on the same machine and see what the differences are. I have Vista, XP, Ubuntu and OS-X all running quite happily on my Mac.

Andy

[Lynn P.]

Sorry to be a bubble buster, but that hasn't been my experience.. however I am going the opposite direction. I develop on a Mac and deploy to both Mac and Windows but I always have problems getting my Windows versions to work and appear correctly. Macs are more forgiving I think, especially in the hardware and driver department. Since pc's running Window configurations can vary so much, I have run into incompatibility problems on some machines. But going the other way... Windows to Mac, your problems (if any) will most likely be appearance issues. And in some instances of having to interact with the system software, your code will need to be different for each platform.

[greggarcia]

Hi Everybody and greetings from mexico, as other i do not if this is the right panel to post this. I own a Macbookpro running windows XP with parallel software and i am evaluating Revolution, I will try to develop software for the small and medium companies, but here 100% are using windows, so i have the doubt if i buy the Mac version it will be work for windows dealing in a network interface, dealing with more than one user, dealing with Database. Do you think it will be a good idea or i must buy the windows version since all my clients will be windows user?

Thanks so much
Greg.

[Garrett]

The biggest problem developing cross platform is making sure you don't use any platform specific code. If you do, and do not compensate for it by adding some code to check which platform you're program is running on, you'll run into some errors.

In the past, I had some minor issues with GUI settings between the platforms, mainly between Windows/Linux and OS X. What looks good on Windows looks good on Linux, but on OS X, there are some minor discrepancies with the GUI. I believe it's because OS X has different size standards than Windows and Linux.

If you don't want to rely on others for testing your programs while you develop them, then look for an used Mac Mini PPC. I'm sure there's a few out there, and they shouldn't be too much since they've dropped the PPC line a few years back now.

It's a shame you didn't live at my house. I have at least 2 Linux boxes running, 1 Mac Mini PPC and 1 Windows Vista box running, all networked together. You might even get a work out as you run room to room to use each machine. That, and my kids might yell at you as you bust into their room to jump on a computer in their room

~Garrett

P.S. Put Linux on your kid's computers if you don't want to constantly wipe and reinstall Windows almost monthly on their computers! They might despise you at first for it, but in the long run, you'll save some headache and the kids get over it when they see that myspace still works fine for them on Linux. If they want games, tell them to get a job and buy their own XBox or something!

[mwieder]

I think running XP in parallels you won't find any issues that wouldn't come up in a "real" windows machine. I run vmware instead of parallels, but all the networking is the same. If you need enterprise-strength database stuff then of course you will need the enterprise version, but there *shouldn't* be major differences in the platforms with either studio version. The windows standalones you create with the mac version will run on windows machines without problems other than possibly the need to fiddle with UI issues, and those will be apparent in your virtual environment.

[greggarcia]

Thanks Garret for the quick reply, my main field is related to instrumentation and control, but since the last 4 years i was selling an ERP for this zone, but was too expensive for the owner here, so, some time i hired programer to develop program in VB or .net, i own more laptops (old laptops)with windows xp professional, but i love my macboopro, so i spent more time doing something with it, and i would like to take advantage develop the applicatin in my mac and apply for windows. Programs like we do in VB, like "inventory control", CRM, Sales, POS, manage customer, etc. Fit to any particular requirement VB or .net are too expensive to buy and a lot information to learn since i am the sales man and trying to develop a program so i point to Rev because it look like less coding than VB or .net, but i really want to make sure this is right for develop this kinds of applications.

Regards

[greggarcia]

mwieder thanks for the reply, i am thinking for the enterprise license because i have to project that may be i can win if i offer i good solution and good price, one is a very small particular project related to do some automatization of data and the other is develop one like a CRM. For me is better using my mac and then testing in my old computer to see how it will look instead invest in another laptop and buy the Revolution windows platform. Call me crazy jaja, for buying a maccbok pro since nobody here in my town using an apple computer, well just the folk that working with the marketing and printing stuff.

regards
Greg

[Garrett]

I'm pretty sure that Rev can do the things you are looking to do, and likely with less code too.

But you will need to be able to test on each platform you intend to distribute to, to insure that you are getting your intended results. If you find something out of whack, then drop in an IF statement checking for the OS you're program is running on, then adjust whatever needs adjusting.

Something like this:

Code: Select all

  if the platform is "Win32" then
    put the filename of this stack into varPath
    delete char -16 to -1 of varPath
    put URL ("file:" & varPath & "RhymeSearchSettings.dat") into tFileSettings
  else if the platform is "Linux" then
    put the filename of this stack into varPath
    delete char -12 to -1 of varPath
    put URL ("file:" & varPath & "RhymeSearchSettings.dat") into tFileSettings
  else if the platform is "MacOS"  then
    set the liveResizing to true
    put URL ("file:/Library/Application Support/Rhyme Search/RhymeSearchSettings.dat") into tFileSettings
  end if

Using the "IF..ELSE..END" (or a CASE...SELECT for those who see fire in their eyes when they see an IF statment :p ) like above you can adjust your gui objects if needed to fit the proper requirements for each platform. Might add a little more code, but it sure beats programming 3 seperate programs, one for each platform and overall, I believe you'll still tap out less code than using VB or .NET or anything else.

[greggarcia]

Thanks again Garret, i see that Rev is very good programming language, now i will look the what free DB fit better with REV i saw in this forum that SQLlite is a good one, i will try it i will look also for mysql, since for commercial purpose every business works with databases.

Regards
Greg Garcia