Please read this perfect statement from @habitualshaker, I hope you’ll understand why most of the stack add-on developers refrain from supporting Elements in RW9.
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Not quite the way I understand it.
Realmac have a shiny new AP for RW9I, which would require plug-in developers to completely rewrite their code for it to work in RW9. Stacks would be one of the plugins affected, and by the comments from Yourhead it would be a monumental bit of work to get Stacks compatible with RW9
Meanwhile RW9’s big new thing will be Elements, which there isn’t a lot of details about apart from marketing hyperbole. They sound suspiciously like stacks, except you won’t need to buy the Stacks plugin anymore.
Realmac is offering stacks developers the chance to convert their stacks to Elements, cutting out Yourhead’s Stacks plugin altogether. It is meant to be voluntary but by the sounds of it the code could do it with or without permission (not a dev so don’t fully know all the technical details).
To me it’s Realmac trying to cutout the middleman so they have more control of their platform (as is their choice to do so) but it seems to come at the expense of cutting out Yourhead Stacks plugin, which to my mind has the only thing that has kept RW alive for many years as there has been little added to it. Without Stacks and stacks, RW remains a basic template based page builder with little native customisation options. The fact Realmac’s own site is built on RW + Stacks + stacks says a lot about the functionality of RW without Stacks.
It’s a very cold business decision but it’s their choice and I’ll not be investing in RW9, instead I’ll buy the Stacks app when it comes out.
Meanwhile RW8 + Stacks will still work until Apple changes something.
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You purchased them to use in RW8 or earlier, not RW9.
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Do you have any other software that you would expect the license to include the right to reverse engineer it, re-compile it (transpile) and use it in another application outside of that for which it was originally designed?
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But you probably upgraded Stacks. Look, I’ve lost count of the software and apps that I’ve purchased over the years that either didn’t keep up with the new Mac OS or IOS and fell by the wayside. When you purchase an app you don’t expect it to last forever - maybe this is the case here. If Stacks is not compatible with RW9 then so be it. You don’t have to purchase RW9 or the Stacks 5 app, for the foreseeable future your set up will work, just not forever.
stacks contain logic and many other language features from the Stacks API that does things like translate your settings into the output code, generate the settings controls that you see in the plugin page etc etc. This is the part that is being transpiled by Elements into RW IL (intermediate language) - from the RM statements.
Does this violate copyrights?
Software will work as stated when you bought it. You are entitled to that. You can expect support for that.
If you get anything more than that, just consider yourself lucky.
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No, you have completely misunderstood what Dan has announced for RW9.
As the roadmap stands, not a single RW project file using any stacks, will work in RW9, unless a series of high risk, yet to be demonstrated, events occur and users pay extra for. These will potentially involve a cost to noble each stack to work in ElementZ, and also a cost for the ongoing support of the nobled stack to run in an unknown plugin that does not even exist in a form that can be shown in public yet. It also requires that any Stacks developer discard their conscience, dignity and respect for another developers intellectual property developed over 17 years.
Dan has annexed Isaiah by breaking the API between RW and Stacks, meaning that Stacks would need a total rewrite from the ground up. Even if Isaiah were to invest 1000’s of hours into a new Stacks version for RW9, what would be gained when Dan is telling users that “Elements will be compatible with stacks API”.
The solution is either to do nothing and continue using RW8 + Stacks for guaranteed 100% compatibility with RW projects or to wait for Isaiah to complete Stacks App.
This has all turned into a very ugly public relations disaster for Dan, that will take a great deal to attempt to try to put right. Also please be aware that Dan has banned people from the RM forum and removed posts that challenge or disagree with his plot, so you will not get the full picture on that forum.
Also, any Stacks developer who is naive enough to announce at this stage, they will support Elements is technically deluded or just drunk on drinking Dan’s bath water or both.
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I think it’s worth pointing out that an OS update could break either RW8 or the current version of Stacks at some stage, so nobody should automatically assume this will be a stable option for a few years. RW7 will not even preview a page without crashing on me in Monterey.
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For example, my prerequisites define it clear: RW8 + Stacks 4 Plugin.
No Stacks Plugin in RW9, no way to use the purchased stack add-on there.
I already made pretty clear you don’t have to re-purchase any of my products to use them in Stacks5.app. I don’t know how you come to this conclusion.
Any stack add-on will be able to be used directly inside Stacks5.app. Period.
And of course, if there theoretically would be a Stacks plugin available in RW9, the same applies.
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The main stated aim of the Stacks app has been to provide 100% compatibilty with existing stacks that have already been bought.
In that regard if you wanted to keep your stacks after whatever Apple related change breaks RW8 + Stacks, the Stacks app would be the one to go for. RW9 could involve purchasing lots of new Elements of similar function (or not as details are scant at the moment).
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I really don’t think that is fair. All stacks were sold to be used with the Stacks Plugin from Yourhead Software.
All stacks will still work with both the plugin and any future Stacks5 App and there will be zero upgrade charges to do so for existing purchases. No one has changed any existing terms and there is no agenda.
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You still don’t appear to get it.
At this point there are no plans for a Stacks version to work in RW9, so there will be NO next version.
In your hypothetical missunderstanding you mention staying away from a re-purchase.
Dan has boasted that Elements will “use the latest web technologies”. So do you honestly think that Adam will rewrite every Foundry stack and all Foundry Addon stacks, and test them for free? Of course that won’t fit Dan’s brief of using the latest web technologies, so instead of basing the current Foundry on the 6 year old pre release Alpha version of the old Bootstrap 4, he will need to rewrite the whole lot. Even then, just to approach the same framework version as used in Blocs today, the cost of RW9 with all the Foundry addons will be about 3 times the cost of Blocs.
Then the elephant in the room will appear when something doesn’t work, because there will be no Isaiah to take the blame or sort the mess out. The blame shifting that has always been the Achilles heel of a RW solution will rear it’s head, except that Dan or Adam, who don’t incidentally, have 17 years of in depth Stacks debugging experience, will need to sort the mess out.
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So by that argument, you would expect stack developers to allow Blocs App, Wordpress Gutenburg or a.n.other app to reverse engineer the stacks and re-compile them for their own use?
What changes are allowable to make them work? What percentage of the original code should remain? Who supports the transpiled product if its code varies significantly from that originally purchased. These are all very real questions that I’m sure will surface.
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If we don’t choose sides then Isaiah / Stacks / Yourhead are rendered completely redundant. Not sure how anyone could opt to be an advocate for that (especially developers AND users that have built businesses upon what Stacks has afforded us).
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Would you pay for the Stacks plugin if the core RW product could load stacks natively?
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I have said on numerous occasions that if Elements were a competing product then no developer would have a problem.
The problem comes because Elements will read and transpile existing stacks thus rendering the Stacks plugin and Yourhead utterly impotent. Anyone who thinks that this is anything other than a deliberate Sherlocking of Stacks is deluded.
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Exactly. And those things should be stacks.
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