The Winds of Change

[richmond62]

Apart from the ref to the Scorpions . . .

https://livecode.com/the-winds-of-change/

This sounds interesting and suggests that there will be such a large change that LC 10 files
will probably not work in LC "Community" 9.6.3.

"New engineers will be moving to or joining that team from next week and give us the biggest team we’ve ever had working on LiveCode in our 20 year history. "

I wonder how they are going to finance this.

[richmond62]

a new design for the Tools Palette

I wonder what is wrong with the current design?

[OpenXTalkPaul]

a new design for the Tools Palette

I wonder what is wrong with the current design?

Well personally I don't like it all that much. I think widgets should have their own palette for one thing.

I was just working on a seperate Align / Distribute palette because that has annoyed me for a long time that it's only available as a tab in the Property Inspector, or from the menu (without accelerator keys assigned).

[OpenXTalkPaul]

Our goal is that you can take an existing stack and run it within a browser and barring a handful of web-specific limitations, it will work well.

---SNIP---

running code that relies on the “wait” feature within the engine, meaning that a lot more code will run without modification. Yes, the research took a while. It’s going to be worth it.

Seems like they're concentrating a lot on delivering an HTML5 / Web Assembly Engine that does much of what the desktop / mobile engines do, but on the web. Personally I'm not all that interested in web dev stuff, pretty much because of that "handful of web-specific limitations", and if I was I'd be already be using HTML5/JS/ + ton of JS libraries available in browser or even with an offline / client side engine like Electron / Node.js and such.

Web Assembly is a great thing for app portability though. I recently ran HyperCard in a full blown macOS 8.x install running inside an WASM emulator (JS version of Basilisk II) just as fast as any other native app, and there are already Apple Silicon native builds (I just don't have an M1 Mac to try it out on).

An xTalk on the web is great for people who don't know or don't want to know HTML/CSS/JS though. There have been different attempts to make that happen since the 1990s (LiveCard anyone?). It would be nice to see xTalk finally become popular on the web since HyperCard inspired the first web browser.
It's just not what I'm interested in.

It's good to hear that they've hired more people as they sure seemed to be understaffed for a long time.

[richmond62]

Why does "cynical Richmond" have an odd feeling that all the bruhaha re the HTML thing
is a distraction from things that may, in the long run, prove more important, such as
sorting out all the bugs that have been clogging up the system for ages?

First there was the obsessional fixation on Filemaker (whether that ever came to any sort
of successful fruition I have no way of telling).

Now the HTML thing: which, to be fair, is an ongoing obsession as this is the second attempt
at this sort of thing.

[AndyP]

...

First there was the obsessional fixation on Filemaker (whether that ever came to any sort
of successful fruition I have no way of telling).

Now the HTML thing: which, to be fair, is an ongoing obsession as this is the second attempt
at this sort of thing.

I think the web work is all tied in, and as a result of the FileMaker project.

LC recently did a 10 part training and explainer collaboration with FmTraingTV on YouTube.

First video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gndJjTPbpkk&t=5s

LC have LCFM deployment to Android, IOS and Mac with Widows in beta and web in progress, so LC have been pushing hard on LCFM, they obviously see a reasonable market and potential growth in FileMaker and LCFM.

LCFM is not something I would ever have the use for, but it does seem to be driving decisions at LC HQ.

[richmond62]

it does seem to be driving decisions at LC HQ.

Indeed it does: obviously hoping to capture a share of the Business market . . .

. . . at the price of ignoring (and subsequently virtually excluding) the other
end of the spectrum . . .

. . . one wonders whether LiveCode have done their homework adequately, and uptake
of the Filemaker thing will be sufficient to pull LiveCode out of the very serious
financial trouble they have been in recently (but have been trying to paper over)
and allow them to continue functioning.

I think the web work is all tied in

Presumably you mean that the web work is a by-product of the Filemaker work.

I am not convinced about this as they did try to introduce web stuff before, and it
failed dismally (well, maybe it did not, LiveCode may have stopped development
on it before it got very far for other reasons which we don't know about).

The Filemaker thing reminds me of an unfortunate event where a friend of mine was hired to write
a suite of EFL software for a chain of English Language schools here in Bulgaria; by the time he'd finished
then the chain had gone bust: he got no money, and as all his software was full of that chain's logo
and connected directly to their in-house textbooks it was effectively junk.

Tying your reins to some else's horse seems like a risky business.

[richmond62]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gndJjTPbpkk&t=5s

"how far away is Windows support?"

Followed by Miller's prevarication . . . does not send the right signals:

Yes, No, we very much hope so.

" . . . it really isn't far off."

Well, I wouldn't base any business plan on that sort of forecast.

What I do NOT understand is why LiveCode have, many times, promised things which have not
materialised: such as the Kickstarter goals which many, many people donated to (including myself)
only to see them sidelined or casually overlooked.

Certainly does not inspire confidence.

[richmond62]

I think widgets should have their own palette for one thing.

That does seem a good idea.

BUT, then, why not hive off quite a few palettes
rather than the slightly confusing "wheel of fortune":
-

SShot 2021-11-08 at 13.00.59.png (84.75 KiB) Viewed 2752 times

[OpenXTalkPaul]

I think widgets should have their own palette for one thing.

That does seem a good idea.

BUT, then, why not hive off quite a few palettes
rather than the slightly confusing "wheel of fortune":
-
SShot 2021-11-08 at 13.00.59.png

Yup, that may indeed be the direction I'm heading in... that toolbar thing at the top under the menubar seems like a big waste of screen space to me, I'd like to have things like text/font, color swatches, guide rules, align, etc. there, maybe make buttons to toggle other palettes visibility... make it a lot more page-layout app like.

Building brand new IDE palettes and stacks with SVG Icons may be easier than finagling some of the existing ones, which is what I'm trying to do right now so that they work better with "DarkMode".

The align / distribute palette is coming along OK, but I find myself adding / imagining new features that didn't exist in LCC, like Align to Stack Edges...with Margin Settings / Align to Stack Center and the like... I don't want to get too bogged down with making a super-duper-align-distribute-equalize-duplicator-palette though, at least not right now, there's too many other things to do!