Oct 15th 2021

Updates on the progress of this project
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OpenXTalkPaul
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Oct 15th 2021

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

It was suggested to me that we should have some sort of regular progress reports, so I'm going to try to post here, maybe once a week... don't hold me to that!

This first one will be for the month and a half since this project began...

The first two or three weeks or so was a lot of setting up.
At first it was just some discussion on FaceBook, where there is still a private group (I couldn't make it public after the fact), although it's not really being used since Seth set up this forum.

Additionally Mark Schoneville also changed the name of his LC users facebook group to OpenXTalk Users, which makes it clear that is not an LC Ltd. run FB group, and so it is OK to talk about OXT there (or I assume any other LCC fork or xTalk language, I believe Mark is also a SuperCard user).

I created some initial artwork to go along with the project (the homage to HC icon).

A couple of small bugs in the IDE were fixed (see the bug fix section of the forum).

So the next few weeks were spent looking at the startup process of the IDE and altering IDE stacks to un-brand and/or rebrand the IDE. This wasn't by choice, at least not entirely, as it was made very clear that we where expected to differentiate our project from the now closed source, commercial only LC Ltd product.

A few IDE stacks needed to be altered, including the main Home stack (which handles the start process), the IDE menu stack, the preferences stack, the Start Center, Splash, and a few other stacks.

The OXT IDE now creates its own preference file (separate from LCC's prefs), and it's own "My OpenXTalk" folder (separate from "My LiveCode" folder) in the user's directory.

Instead of spending a lot of time rebranding / rebuilding the Start Center stack, I modified the Home script that loads it to look for a custom "Start Center.oxtstack" file in the root of user's "My OpenXTalk" folder, and load that instead if found, if not then the now-blank old Start Center stack is loaded.

I added some "new" filetypes (.stk,.oxtstack,.oxtscript) to be recognized by the IDE. I did this in anticipation of the possibility of future changes to the stack file format, which I don't think there has been any changes since version 7.

On the Windows version I attempted to modify the registry file association scripts to accomplish this goal, but I tested this on Win 10 (64bit) and it doesn't seem to work properly (maybe it does on 32bit, I can’t test that right now).

From the initial artwork I created app and doc icons files (.icns on Mac, .ico for Win).

I modified some macOS app specific files to use those icons as well as get the OS to see OXT as a separate app from LC and so it has appropriate "Get Info" text in the macOS Finder.

I also modified the Windows exe to alter it's manifest/app info so that it now has the OXT icon and getting the exe properties in file explorer now shows OXT info, similar to 'getting info' in the macOS Finder.

A couple of weeks ago Seth made a bunch of edits to the dictionary raw .lcdoc files in order to unbranded remove / replace the word LiveCode and URLs that reference LC Ltd. run sites, and there was a LOT of them!

The following week I figured out the process to compile those .lcdocs into the dictionary that is included with the IDE. Then I realized that this process was somehow missing certain elements, such as a few docs for Monte's merg externals, and most of the Builder definitions. I was able to extract the .lcdocs from those sources manually and individually add them to the docs folder in the repo. The dictionary appears to be complete now, sans-commercial only things ( the tsNet api, XPDF api, most of the merg externals), there is also the API for my Piano widget and may be some docs from other extensions I had installed (which may eventually be included or available as package downloads).

I did some more unbranding edits and corrections (OpenXTalk.org NOT OpenXTalk.com for example) to the docs this week.

During the course of these things I’ve rearranged and added to the IDE repo so that it closely matches the directory structure of both Mac and Windows (merged together into a hibred) installed directories. This makes it easier to compare the OXT IDE to the legacy LCC IDE.

In addition to the above, I've recently begun setting up to build the engine from source. So far just on macOS, which has turned out to be a painfully unituitive process. I think I've almost got it, I still get all sorts of errors and compiler warnings, but it's less now and a few peripheral items are actually compiling all the way through into binaries. The build instructions are sparse, incomplete, and/or outdated.

Effectively the IDE is mostly now OXT, not LCC, at least on macOS and Windows.

That's pretty much everything done so far.

Next week I plan to install a Linux Distro, see how it looks there, possibly try to compile on Windows (the Windows build instructions seem to be more current thanks to Trevor DeVore) as well as a Linux.
Kdjanz
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Re: Oct 15th 2021

Post by Kdjanz »

Huge kudos! You’ve done a massive job. Well done.

So, newbie question- where can we get this shiny new creation? Will you also differentiate by having your own set of version numbers? Are we coming up to a 1.0.0?

Really - I’m quite surprised and very impressed at how far you have come so quickly.

Congratulations

Kelly
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Re: Oct 15th 2021

Post by micmac »

Thank you Paul for the forum-topic (me, the suggester)

Wow, what an enormous work you already have put in!

None of it, I would have been able to do.

My main concern for the whole project is how many people know about it.
I do not know how many subscribers you have to this forum, but there must have been thousands that have used the Community Edition.
As I have expressed elsewhere it was only by chance I noticed this forum. It was in a quote of a quote on the LC maillist.
I guess that sometime in the near future when the fist edition of OTX is ready, that press releases will have to go out to Mac, Windows and Linux news sites?

Mic
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OpenXTalkPaul
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Re: Oct 15th 2021

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

Kdjanz wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 3:44 am Huge kudos! You’ve done a massive job. Well done.

So, newbie question- where can we get this shiny new creation? Will you also differentiate by having your own set of version numbers? Are we coming up to a 1.0.0?

Really - I’m quite surprised and very impressed at how far you have come so quickly.

Congratulations

Kelly
Thanks. But to be honest, not so much shiny or new, so far it is mostly basic cosmetic changes.

The IDE is made of stacks/scripts and although it does provide a lot of functionality, it relies on the underlying Engine(s), which are the base XTalk language interpreters and integrated libraries that were used to build them (for example the Cairo 2d graphics library, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_(graphics)). Engines is plural because there is a separate "Development" Engine for each platform the IDE runs on (mac/win/linux), the variations of those (the GUI-less "Server" version and "Standalone" versions), and the two mobile platforms standalone engines. I have yet to compile any of these Engines from the source (I just started looking into that).

From what I now know of the history, so far this is basically the same path that was taken when the MetaCard's v2.x Engines were sold to RunRev (now named LC Ltd.) around 2003, and then some users worked on variations of the open source MetaCard IDE (such as Richard Banister's Devolution), which could still run on the now-Revolution-owned Engine(s), all the way up to early LC 6.x versions! This time however, the underlying Engines are also open source, and we have the Builder middle-ware, so there's two major opportunities to take this MUCH further than what was possible back when RunRev took over.

I did change the version numbering to start at v.1.963.1 in the repo, but given the history and references to specific version numbers in the dictionary, I'm not sure that is a good idea, unless maybe we edit the dictionary some more.

I do intend to make some sort of beta package that other people can try out and report back any problems they encounter. When I think it's ready for that, it will either be in a gitHub beta release, or hosted on some cloud storage such as google drive or mega.
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richmond62
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Re: Oct 15th 2021

Post by richmond62 »

such as Richard Banister's Devolution
Richard Bannister is an Irish developer who seems to specialise in emulators of ancient computers.
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Bannister.jpeg
Bannister.jpeg (9.77 KiB) Viewed 3504 times
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https://www.bannister.org/index.htm

Devolution: https://www.fourthworld.com/products/de ... index.html

is made by Richard Gaskin who is American.
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Gaskin.jpeg
Gaskin.jpeg (7.89 KiB) Viewed 3504 times
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Somehow I cannot see either Miller or Waddingham cuddling Richard Bannister:
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Gaskin2.jpeg
Gaskin2.jpeg (193.5 KiB) Viewed 3501 times
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https://richmondmathewson.owlstown.net/
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richmond62
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Re: Oct 15th 2021

Post by richmond62 »

Nor Brahmanathaswami:
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gaskin3.jpeg
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OpenXTalkPaul
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Re: Oct 15th 2021

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

micmac wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 9:11 am Thank you Paul for the forum-topic (me, the suggester)
You're welcome, I did have some help.
In fact this forum wouldn't exist if it weren't for Seth setting it up.
micmac wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 9:11 am Wow, what an enormous work you already have put in!

None of it, I would have been able to do.
Don't sell yourself short like that!
When I was a kid I convinced myself that I couldn't do higher maths because they were too difficult and also that I didn't need to because I was going to be an artiste, and so I put in minimal effort and got grades that reflected that. When I was in my early 40s and out of work due to "great-recession", I finally went to a regular college for a bit (originally went to an art-school after high school), with a totally different mind-set, after a refresher I realized, I could handle things like Calculus, and even made the Dean's list!

If you can handle a text editor (documentation) or the script language you can at least work on the IDE! Or maybe go edit some Wiki pages about xTalk Languages, or make OXT comments in the comment sections on related articles in various places on the internet.

YOU CAN DO IT!
go-for-it-you-can-do-it.gif
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micmac wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 9:11 am My main concern for the whole project is how many people know about it.
I do not know how many subscribers you have to this forum, but there must have been thousands that have used the Community Edition.
As I have expressed elsewhere it was only by chance I noticed this forum. It was in a quote of a quote on the LC maillist.
I guess that sometime in the near future when the fist edition of OTX is ready, that press releases will have to go out to Mac, Windows and Linux news sites?

Mic
So far there's 41 users on this forum, "word of mouth" will likely be the best method, but that could be difficult.
I just saw some user asking for help with the community version, who obviously was unaware of the recent changes, but it was on the forum on other side of "the wall", and so it would be inappropriate for me to say anything to them about this project on there, so I didn't.

I guess we will have to think about some sort of "press release" or similar when the time comes.
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OpenXTalkPaul
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Re: Oct 15th 2021

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

richmond62 wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 2:36 pm
such as Richard Banister's Devolution
Richard Bannister is an Irish developer who seems to specialise in emulators of ancient computers.
-
Bannister.jpeg
-
https://www.bannister.org/index.htm

Devolution: https://www.fourthworld.com/products/de ... index.html

is made by Richard Gaskin who is American.
-
Gaskin.jpeg
-
Somehow I cannot see either Miller or Waddingham cuddling Richard Bannister:
-
Gaskin2.jpeg
-
This is not the first time I've mixed those two names up. I don't know why because I've talked, mostly US politics, with Gaskin on Facebook for years now!

I must say that Richard Bannister released a LOT of truly excellent emulators for Macintosh for a long time (dating back to the 1990s).
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richmond62
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Re: Oct 15th 2021

Post by richmond62 »

I must say that Richard Bannister released a LOT of truly excellent emulators for Macintosh
Indeed: I work with his Horizon emulator here at home to prepare programming classes in BBC BASIC as
my BBC computers (I kid you not) are all in my school.

I have also always found Richard Bannister very helpful in terms of support and so on.

The greatest advantage of Horizon over MacBeebem is that the keyboard conforms to my Macintosh one
so I don't have to sepdn donkey's ages every time I want to be clever remembering which way Jon Welch
decided to connect BBC Micro keys with a Win/Mac keyboard.

But Richard Bannister is not in anyway connected with LiveCode or SuperCard as far as I can tell.
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SShot 2021-10-16 at 18.40.34.png
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OpenXTalkPaul
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Re: Oct 15th 2021

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

We may have to limit picture posts size at some point, I think there's 5 gigs allocated currently. I'm thinking about it now because I just realized that I posted a 2.3mb animated gif! That might be rather annoying for someone on a slower internet connection.
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richmond62
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Re: Oct 15th 2021

Post by richmond62 »

Over "on the other side" image sizes are limited to 250 KB.
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Re: Oct 15th 2021

Post by OpenXTalkPaul »

richmond62 wrote: Sat Oct 16, 2021 5:36 pm Over "on the other side" image sizes are limited to 250 KB.
I know, that limitation is rather easily hit up against if you try to post a modern ( > 72dpi density) screen shot.
Maybe 1mb, 1.5mb ? I just don't want to run out of room for more important files due to posting a lot of goofy picts.
I'm mean I'm fine with lots of picts, I just don't want to run out of space.
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Re: Oct 15th 2021

Post by richmond62 »

Well, while my Macintosh pops out PNG images as screenshots (vast) I convert them very quickly into JPEGS
that display perfectly acceptably at below 250 KB.
https://richmondmathewson.owlstown.net/
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