When 1.0 ships...

[micmac]

When 1.0 ships I guess it would be a good time to reach out to the media (online computer media)

At that time the word "Lite" should be removed, I think. Otherwise it would make confusion.

tPerry2x have earned that by his continued efforts.

Mic

[richmond62]

If "Lite" is to be removed how will we diffentiate his work from OXT "Heavy", which seems to have gone to sleep?

[overclockedmind]

If "Lite" is to be removed how will we diffentiate his work from OXT "Heavy", which seems to have gone to sleep?

Ask him if he is willing to give a christening, 1.0 version change a name besides the word you suggested? ijs. Maybe he'd like an IntercapWord. I think I'd go that route.

[tperry2x]

How about OpenXTalk LHF?
https://www.openxtalk.org/forum/viewtop ... 5602#p5602
(low hanging fruit)

[richmond62]

How about OpenXTalk LHF?

Cripes: over on the "other forum" people are attacking me for being facetious for about 5% of that sort of comment.

"Kev's and Mark's Danglers" perhaps?

Mind you, in terms of "ships" that might be a bit low in the water.

[tperry2x]

I'd like to think we can be human about everything 'over here'.
Another reason why I don't get involved in the LC forum: there's too many people posting that can't take a joke.

Low hanging fruit is a concern though - and the more of it we can remove the better.

OXT KD edition. That's equally as applicable.
I have other suggestions of what to call it, but probably not suitable or repeatable in mainstream media - to think that LC expected people to pay for this in the state it's been left in. I bet they didn't have many / any Linux customers.

[richmond62]

As far as I am aware, and I may be quite wrong, the only person who persists with LC Linux is Mark Wieder.

[tperry2x]

As far as I am aware, and I may be quite wrong, the only person who persists with LC Linux is Mark Wieder.

Is that a "correct me if I'm wrong" comment
Just one person working on Linux for LC would seem a huge expectation for one person to deal with and maintain. I am sure you are 100% correct though. It seems like it needs a lot of love and lots of things fixing, but I'm more and more convinced that these are problems that are rooted at the linux engine level.

By trying to externalise as much as possible, creating if statements such as

Code: Select all

if the platform contains 'linux' then ....
[go do this instead]

It is a workaround, but those methods do not transfer to standalones necessarily. It would be better to fix at the 'engine' (such as it is). This is exactly where I am with things like dark mode, the incorrect date and time formats on sonoma, the systemversion problem, the browser issue, the player issue (sound and video), the native (actually non-native) controls and UI elements.... there's probably more if I made a fully exhaustive list

[richmond62]

Mark Wieder is NOT an LC employee; what he is is an extremely decent person who donated money to my wife's appeal for generators for a University in Ukraine, and donated me money for my 'new-fer-you' iMac, AND (which is far, far more relevant ) uses LiveCode Linux as part of how he pays for his bread and cheese.

[richmond62]

workaround

One of the things that NEVER ceases to amaze me is how Full-Blown subscribers to the Commercial version(s) of LiveCode are always coming up with 'workarounds' instead of saying, LOUDLY to the company that produces LiveCode: "We want that sorted out in short order."

I believe that the LC people (i.e. the company) with all the guff about 'community' and so forth have lulled people who pay a lot of money into a feeling that they are part of a cuddly-feely team, rather than customers involved in a straight-forward commercial transaction.

If I buy a television-with-aerial package and, when I don't get signals, I am told the work around is to shove a coat-hangar up the coaxial socket and secure it with an elastoplast, I am going to ask for either my money back, or that that company sends an engineer round right now to sort out my aerial.

[tperry2x]

Mark Wieder is NOT an LC employee; what he is is an extremely decent person who donated money to my wife's appeal for generators for a University in Ukraine, and donated me money for my 'new-fer-you' iMac, AND (which is far, far more relevant ) uses LiveCode Linux as part of how he pays for his bread and cheese.

That's good. He could of course still be an extremely decent person if he worked within LC. (I'm not tarring everyone there with the same brush) and I've never met him / or had any conversations with him.

I have though used his tip from the LC forums when he solved the colour picker issue for someone else to fix the colour selector bugs in the preference window that we had in OXT lite, so I do not doubt his ability in the slightest.
(I even commented and gave him credit for that in the script)

credit.png (11.82 KiB) Viewed 834 times

What I mean is that the expectation is on him (and him alone?) that he'll continue to keep LC's linux build up-to-date?

[richmond62]

a fully exhaustive list

It does go on and on, and I keep coming up against more things.

The LiveCode bug-reporting 'thingy' is chock full of endless 'bugs' (i.e. things that don't work) that have been overlooked; some are as old as the hills.

https://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=17508

Again: this demonstrates a lack of respect towards paying customers.

[tperry2x]

It does go on and on, and I keep coming up against more things.

I see what you mean:
https://quality.livecode.com/buglist.cg ... rch=player

Screenshot 2024-01-08 at 14-19-24 LiveCode Quality Control Center.png (194.89 KiB) Viewed 817 times

(enough said)

So with that in mind, you can see my reluctance to say that v1.0 is 'ready'. I feel it's a long long way off that point.
We should not expect favourable comments back - nobody out there will cut any slack for features that just plain do not work out-of-the-box.

That makes me feel annoyed (to say the least) - I'd love to release version 1 with lots more working than it is.
(I won't be reading the reviews or comments of people who expect this to work) It'll be quite soul destroying after the work I've put in.

(that site really is a goldmine!)
https://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=24023

New bugs introduced after the LCC 9.6.3 - problems that we don't have:

Screenshot 2024-01-08 at 14-32-21 LiveCode Quality Control Center.png (149.39 KiB) Viewed 812 times

(although with a simple fix that would take 10 seconds to change & test)

Emphasis mine above on that screenshot. If they don't recommend Livecode to people anymore, where does that leave OXT Lite?

I get the distinct feeling they are drowning under the weight of their own bug reports.
I suppose we should all be looking through this list to see if there's anything we can do to fix OXT in several areas?

It's very telling that there's no 'browse' or 'view all' button at https://quality.livecode.com as well.

[richmond62]

New bugs introduced after the LCC 9.6.3 - problems that we don't have

Funnily enough, the idea of releasing something AND expecting someone to pay for it, while it is still alpha or beta quality seems morally a bit dicky.

HOWEVER: as I am quite sure that you have introduced no new 'bugs', you can duck the rotten vegetables by stating, "All bugs that are present are from the code base on which this is built."

And, I'll bet a fair few of those bugs are tied up in the engine, and some 'lazy toads' have not touched the engine for quite some time before 963.

How about 'OXT Preview', then you really are covering your bottom?

[tperry2x]

I am quite sure that you have introduced no new 'bugs'

There's probably lots that mwieder (Mark) would look at and think could be done in a far better, or more efficient way.
There's things I look at and revamp (like the revMenubar and the height differences between different versions of MacOS is a good example - not having a sonoma mac to test on, I thought that 45 would be fine - it is for Catalina, but 52 is optimal for anything above that, as you correctly let me know about).

And, I'll bet a fair few of those bugs are tied up in the engine, and some 'lazy toads' have not touched the engine for quite some time before 963.

You've hit the nail squarely on the head there I think.

How about 'OXT Preview', then you really are covering your bottom?

That's probably a very good compromise, if everyone is happy with that?

[micmac]

To me "Preview" is software which still has a long way to go... which does not correspond with a 1.0 release.

RC (release candidate) is better in my ears.

Do you plan to announce it to the media?

Mic

[richmond62]

Yes, RC does seem a much better idea.

[tperry2x]

Yes, RC does seem a much better idea.

How do we differentiate what is currently OpenXTalk Lite with Paul's RC version, if they are both then to be called RC?
"Do you mean OpenXTalk Lite RC1, or do you mean OpenXTalk RCx?" a bit needlessly confusing.

I will also point out, at this point, the Mac version should come with an alert if you open it on anything past MacOS 11 Big Sur. Something along the lines of "Warning: OpenXTalk may not be 100% stable under this version of MacOS. You may proceed anyway."

I'm very tempted to put this in, in light of needing further bug fixing / testing by people on MacOS 12+
Until we can say that it's stable, I think the 'Preview' tag fits exactly where we are with it.
Linux and Windows can have a 1.0 release, certainly. MacOS - I don't feel that it's stable enough with the legacy engine we've been left, quite frankly.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

If "Lite" is to be removed how will we diffentiate his work from OXT "Heavy", which seems to have gone to sleep?

OXT 'Lite' contains a bunch of my work and some of my ideas too, which of course has my complete blessing (not that it needs it). Since that's doing the 'leaps and bounds' or something like that, then that's great. Take the reins, please!
I got nothing but respect for any contributions to the work of Open-Source xTalk for all.

I'm still working on the OXT Don't Panic (it's really not all that 'heavy') Edition. And I've never stopped working on it and I still don't intend to stop pushing for Open-Source xTalk for all until I'm returned to the soil. I simply do not have as much opportunity to work on it at the moment compared to the amount I did previously.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

That said I'm trying to wrap up a few IDE things at the moment, and I want to take at look at what 'Lite' edition changes have been made that I can roll in for some update-to-date DPE packages. I'm particularly interested in building for Linux again.

Not to get into a 'platforms' war, but someone here recently suggested developers tend to not use macOS, which I think is some sort of Microsoft sponsored myth. It seems to me that macOS (still being based on BSD) and Linux have more in common than either do with Windows OS as far as command-line shell commands and availability of certain open source libraries. I can install GStreamer, GTK, libFluidSynth, etc. from source in the macOS terminal, write wrapper for a library or shell command on macOS and use the same code, often completely unmodified on Linux.