FLASH: TTFN...

[Warren 'The Howdy Man' Ockrassa]

[Not really Flash related; just FYI]


I need some time off, a little retreat -- and I suspect it's mutual

anyway, heh heh -- just a bit of time to regroup.


In the last few weeks I've raised no small amount of hell about an issue

that doesn't bear repeating, and frankly, I'm plumb wore out right now.


I have become deeply disenchanted in the process with decisions which I

perceive as having been driven by a completely different set of

priorities than my own.


That is not a judgment; it is a statement of my reasoning.


I believe that the folks at Macromedia are interested in selling

Director, which is fine, of course -- but that to some extent they want

users to become the vehicles of advertisement. That is not my job.


Unobtrusive logos on packaging are one thing, and I know that many

things in the last few weeks which have been discussed are going to

change. This does not however change the fact that decisions were made

which are at odds with my needs as a developer of

non-entertainment-related (or unentertaining, I suppose ;) content, and

that there's no reason to believe similar mistakes won't be made in the

future. One gadget more or less might not mean much to a gadget-freak

web surfer but there's no room for that kind of thing in a business

advertising -- or education, when you think about it -- world.


It is my belief that Director -- well, Shockwave in particular -- is

being promoted more from an entertainment-creation perspective, which

really is not in line with what I am doing. Therefore I need to back off

a bit.


Of the suggestions made that would have made this entertainment-based

packaging truth less obvious, the only one which would probably have

satisfied pretty much everyone -- that of breaking out the remote from

the SW7 base plugin -- has not been seriously discussed by anyone in a

position to actually do it, at least not that I have seen.


Please note that I am not abandoning Director, and that I am not taking

down the Director-related content on nightwares. But in my reevalutation

I have realized that for my health, at this time, I must focus on other

activities and other platforms for a while. Platforms which do not

impose logo requirements on me, platforms which do not end up getting

changed *radically* in terms of functionality -- without warning, to the

point that previously functioning routines are broken -- in every full

digit version update, platforms which don't attach irrelevant and

unaddressable software packages to required plugin content, platforms

designed by teams which do *not* disregard vehement protest from their

own beta testers.


I should point out that with a more open-communication policy with

developers as opposed to web surfers, this could have been one hundred

percent avoidable in the first place.


This is becoming a rant. That is how much of a sore spot this has become

for me. That is why I need to go away for a while.


For those of you who are interested in what I'll be doing, I'm going to

delve into some of the platforms I've mentioned earlier, MetaCard,

tcl/tk and python. Not a single one of them has Director's power, but

they are all extensible and all quite capable of interaction with each

other and with other applications, which makes them tolerable working

solutions for at least some of my requirements. Of course I have to put

in some serious hacking time with them to get to know them.


I'll be back eventually. But not to the degree you've seen, and not with

an exclusively-Director focus. I don't have the trust to be able to ever

do that again.


Till then, keep hackin' dat Lingo!


--

    warren ockrassa | nightwares |

warrennightwares [dot] com (mailto:warrennightwares [dot] com)

         --    n   i   g   h   t   w   a   r   e   s    --

      director faq    lingo    tutorial    free files    links

                    http://www.nightwares.com/


         To unsubscribe: http://www.nightwares.com/unsub/


------------------------------------------------------------------------

To UNSUBSCRIBE send: unsubscribe flasher in the body of an

email to

list-managershocker [dot] com

.  Problems to:

ownershocker [dot] com

N.B. Email address must be the same as the one you used to subscribe.

For info on digest mode send: info flasher to

list-managershocker [dot] com