This post was written, as the title suggests, at the end of March. At that time the site’s creation was still underway. Please forgive the blurring of timespans :).
This site isn’t going to be a news aggregator. ClarionMag and TomRuby do a pretty sweet job of that already.
What we are going to do here is offer opinions. On the news. And on other stuff.
"What’s Doing" posts will take a look at noise on the newsgroups, at product releases, at community happenings.
But again, this is opinions (on the news).
Clarion Desktop
Okay, I’m a fan. Unabashed.
If you’ve been following the newsgroups, then you’ll see Gary has been working pretty flat out to get ClarionDesktop functioning on Vista (while adding a nice list of new functionality).
One Hazah! to Gary for his work. If you don’t already have ClarionDesktop (as a Developer), then you should. Not just because you are supporting Gary. This product is going to be one of the leaderboards for the influx of (potential) developers when Clarion 7 is released and pimped.
It’s a hub, an information presenter. And people want to know. I want to know that NetTalk has been updated. And I’d much prefer it happened magically (the transfer of that information to my brainpan).
NetTalk
The big kahuna of templates. This sucker is well publicised, and well supported.
Capesoft definately know how to support. They are polite and helpful BUT (and this is something hard to find) they will push you to think about what you’re asking. Most of the time now, I don’t just fire of the question to Bruce as soon as it appears. Otherwise I’m liable to feel like a fool because I didn’t see the template option, or regerenate .. or .. READ THE MANUAL.
If you visit the 3rdParty newsgroups, especially of late, NetTalk dominates the conversation. This is a good indicator of two things. It’s popularity, and it’s complexity. There might be other _things_ you can think of, but this is my opinion.
The popularity is just candy. The complexity, well I don’t think I’ve ever seen a NetTalk question go unanswered. Bruce (he’s the one working on it at the moment to the best of my knowle(d)ge) responds quickly and with clarity.
Bruce Barrington
I’ve often wondered about the mysterious creator of Clarion. My colleagues know a great deal about the beginnings, and I’ve forgotten most of what they told me.
This week on the newsgroups Nick posted this question,
What ever happened to Bruce Barrington (creator of Clarion) and the TopSpeed group?
Here’s what I gleaned, in an unspecific order:
– Owned/Ran a Hotel in the Florida Keys
– Sold the Hotel (http://www.hawkscay.com/)
– Russ begins to pun, others join in
– Tony gives us the lowdown on mouth exit grammar (US="barf", OZ="chuck up", Yorshire="Wommit")
– Jan gives us a possible location, Tibet.
Bruce would be an interesting man to meet. As said, I don’t know much of the history, only that some of it wasn’t pretty.
ClarionMag has an article written a long time ago. It was interesting that all that time ago (1997) there was excitement that TopSpeed had hired a new marketing company. I’d like to find out what happened there.