Broken Promises

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richmond62
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Broken Promises

Post by richmond62 »

During the LiveCode Kickstarter campaign (to which I donated) there was a list of goals (February 2012):

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/17 ... f-livecode

One of which was something called 'Open Language', which, like several other things promised that got people
to stump up money, never materialised:
We will introduce a new technology called “Open Language”. With Open Language, the more technical members of our community can create English-like words and phrases to enable everyone to write programs that use any aspect of a computer or device.
This sounded interesting:
We will introduce a new visual editor designed around today’s usability standards. The editor will be open. The more technical members of our community can create simplified versions of the editor for tablets or primary schools.
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GUIx.png
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When Will it Be Completed?

Within a month of the campaign closing we will launch the Community Edition with the source code. That version will have the source code as it is today. This will provide everyone who has made a pledge access to the platform.

Over the following few months we will be hard at work on the main goal of creating the next generation of the platform. We will restructure the code into modules that plug into a new kernel and deliver this version for testing over the summer. Once that is complete the community will be able to contribute to the source code easily.
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When the 'Open Language' offer was questioned in the recent thread relating to the release of a developer preview
of LiveCode 10, LiveCode central replied in this way:
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In regards to Open Language... this has no relevance at all to LiveCode 10, is not and has not been a part of its spec and I cannot comment on it any further.
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richmond62
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Re: Broken Promises

Post by richmond62 »

https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/06/ ... interview/

"The project was to include a new visual editor. The Kickstarter raised nearly £500,000, more than the initial goal of £350,000."

I often wonder where that £500,00 went, and on what my modest contribution was spent (fish and chips for the team?).
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xAction
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Re: Broken Promises

Post by xAction »

If everyone at LC gets paid $60,000 a year, and there are seven of them, as I've always imagined there was, 500,000 would be used up in 8 years before even paying rent.

You can look at LC's financials here

It cost Blender $1,300,000+ to operate last year.

I don't think 'the more technical members of the community' materialized the way they thought it would.
The Open Language could be implemented easy peasy if you learn some C code and Builder Language.
They intentionally limited documentation and ease of use of Builder Language so you couldn't compete with them.

And I have the feeling they sabotaged the build process of the IDE so nobody would build it and they could ditch open source and carry on as they were before while being able to say "aw shucks we tried, but it didn't work", like passive aggressive cheating housewives who were screwing around before and after every marriage counciling session.

Looking from the outside having not hung around the company for a decade it seems to me A LOT of money was spent on the website, the various video productions they did, filemaker thing, and the usual "oh another version of Mac OS, another version of windows, another IOS, another Android version....write code, build code, test build, find bug, repeat." process.

That editor is probably just a Photoshop mockup. I think if you put it to use as is you'd close a bunch of tabs right away because you don't need them. Those four buttons at the top seem overkill for the 'browse tool' 'pointer tool' paradigm.
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richmond62
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Re: Broken Promises

Post by richmond62 »

That editor is probably just a Photoshop mockup.
Indeed.

But that shouldn't detract from it as an idea to work from towards something of that sort, but better.
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richmond62
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Re: Broken Promises

Post by richmond62 »

If everyone at LC gets paid $60,000 a year, and there are seven of them, as I've always imagined there was, 500,000 would be used up in 8 years before even paying rent.
Quite so, quite so.

My only problem is that the Kickstarter page was a bit disingenuous about this.

Had the Kickstarter page stated something like this:

We will use the donated funds to keep ourselves financially afloat through an awkward patch while we attempt to
implement these features
  • .

    I think quite few people might have felt less cheesed-off subsequently.
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OpenXTalkPaul
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Re: Broken Promises

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

I mean, LCB IS extensible with modules so that's sort of open, and you can make script extensions too, but open language as was being described sounded like it "Open Language" was going to be a lot more than that, like "you can intermingle directly to with JavaScript libraries" level more. Perhaps that's the way they're going, they have made changes to some things like Booleans and Arrays lately that made me wonder if they're planing to merge Builder into Script, they also announced recently that they would make it that so people could build widgets in regular LCScript instead of Builder.

Kevin Miller is the same age as my Niece, 8 years younger than me. I thought he might be older than that.
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richmond62
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Re: Broken Promises

Post by richmond62 »

so people could build widgets in regular LCScript instead of Builder
If that were so, that'd be super.

I don't know why, but, having looked at LCB a few times, all I have experienced is an odd mental block.
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FourthWorld
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Re: Broken Promises

Post by FourthWorld »

OpenXTalkPaul wrote: Sun Nov 21, 2021 4:24 pm ...they also announced recently that they would make it that so people could build widgets in regular LCScript instead of Builder.
Intriguing. I'd like to learn more. Where can I read that?
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Re: Broken Promises

Post by xAction »

Isn't that in the 10.0.0rc announcment? Think that's where I saw it, but I try to forget so nothing they are doing there bleeds into what we are doing here.

But while we are on the subject,they are talking about directly referencing Javascript from Livecode Scripts, and they are going with webAssembly to fix their HTML5 mess.
I talked to a former Livecode game maker and man...was he PISSED...he pointed me to Construct3...drag and drop low/no code game making all in a browser for games played in a browser (or standalone) I was about sign up but it cost even more than Livecode. Former Livecode GUI master Scott Rossi switched to Construct a few years back.
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OpenXTalkPaul
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Re: Broken Promises

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

OpenXTalkPaul wrote: Sun Nov 21, 2021 4:24 pm How is this different?
Just guessing, and how I would do it if I knew how, and how I suggested it to Kevin Miller in 2007: would be to make it possible to do everything in the natural IDE environment, then pass that through the Builder Language to make it a binary just like building an application, but ...for the application.

It's completely irrational that they released Builder without a stack or two that makes generating a simple SVG widget as easy as picking an SVG file and filling out some metadata fields, and giving it standard mouseup, mousedown, drag and drop script functions.

If you can build binary applications for 3 operating system for nearly 20 years why suddenly step backwards with a difficult development process?
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