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Tailspin

Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2023 3:32 pm
by richmond62
I just suppose I expect too much . . . looking for help:

https://lessons.livecode.com/
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As a user of LiveCode 9.6.3 I was 'somewhat surprised' to find lessons had been 'updated' to version 8.

Re: Tailspin

Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2023 3:36 pm
by richmond62
I must say how grateful I am sure all of us who donated to the HTML5 appeal feel on
finding that the Open Source version was dropped BEFORE it had been brought to anything
approaching fruition.
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I'm glad someone is grinning.

Re: Tailspin

Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2023 2:02 pm
by richmond62
I was wondering as one does about doing something about my Sanskrit digitisation
program for ARM Macintosh . . . from which my annual, average income over the last 12
years has been $200:
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Re: Tailspin

Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2023 2:05 pm
by richmond62
Then I began to think about Lies, Claims, Hype and . . . strangely enough, Truth:

https://livecode.com/core-benefits-of-livecode/
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Erm, not at subscription prices like that.
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To what? Certainly NOT to fixing bugs that have lain around as long as 19 years, or
to criticism or questions.
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Faster than what? Without any comparisons, facts and figures that's simply a meaningless word.

Re: Tailspin

Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2023 2:10 pm
by richmond62
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No, you are not.

Kevin Miller's front-end for MetaCard was extremely creative, and, arguably, has contributed to xTalk's survival for a further
20 - odd years.

The only people being CREATIVE at the moment are your end-users, as can be seen in the LC Forums, and since dropping the
Community version those creative contributors have reduced to a pitiful few.
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In what way?

If by 'flexible' you mean that the language can be used to perform all sorts of tricks on computers, then you
are not as flexible as an awful lot of other programming languages.

It is hard to see what 'flexible' could mean otherwise.

Re: Tailspin

Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2023 2:19 pm
by richmond62
Now, do not get me wrong, xTalk is the only language that I ever do anything seriously with (the HyperNext
bloke seems unreachable), and I love it and what it can do.

What I do NOT like is the way our friends 'up north' behave:

1. The rude and thoroughly insensitve way the Community version was dumped, especially after all
sorts of flowery promises and donations sought and received from people who depended upon
a free, or at the very least, cheap version of xTalk.

2. The ludicrous advertising that, surely, insults the intelligence of a lot of people.

3. The 'Education' blurb that is backed up by next to nothing.

4. The pricing.

Re: Tailspin

Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2023 2:23 pm
by richmond62
And, to a spot of truth . . .

LiveCode has been used (and its community versions continue to be used) to great effect by
educators both for preparing software for educational content delivery, and for teaching
programming concepts.

and a bit more truth . . .

Quite a few of those educators have mentioned what they have been doing with LiveCode, and
'our friends up north' have neither listened nor responded.

They have lost any educational chances they may have once had . . .

Open X Talk must fill that gap.

Re: Tailspin

Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2023 2:31 pm
by richmond62
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In the sorts of circles I move in claims like that are just plain hilarious
if they are not backed up by references so the original research can be checked.

Ah: here it is:

Using Cognitive Load Theory to select an environment for teaching ...https://researchportal.scu.edu.au › pdfCoverPage

Of course the 'free' and 'open source' are now completely out of date:
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page 6
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"Less brain power", my Aunt Fanny!

The conclusions section at the end of that paper are far from simplistic (mainly because the study was conducted by
real academics and not folk trying to sell washing powder).

"The design and application of the cognitive load analysis method described here offers a prospective way for instructors to assess different IDEs in a wide range of contexts. The method is open to modification with respect both to the cognitive load factors that are considered and to the calibration of scoring used to assign values."

Re: Tailspin

Posted: Sun Jan 22, 2023 2:40 pm
by richmond62
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This, presumably, means we use a different half of our brain to program with LiveCode than if we program with
other computer programming languages.

Any half decent neuro-scientist will tell you that mental processes don't work like that.

ALSO, as, in the script editor, one is typing code just as one types code, for the sake of argument, in BBC BASIC circa 1982,
any claims about using different parts of the brain are worthless and about as valuable as a phrenologist telling you
that the bump over your left ear (which you got knocking your head while you were changing the oil in your car) indicates
that you get sexually excited by kangaroos.
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The most instructive thing about these 2 pictures is that the phrenological areas are completely different.

But this is about the level of the claims made by 'our friends in the north' in the 21st century (when phrenology
was exposed as total fraud at the end of the 19th century).

Re: Tailspin

Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2023 7:40 am
by richmond62
The first, coloured, phrenology diagram suggests we speak through our nose.

Well, I suppose it is better than some other orifices. :D

Re: Tailspin

Posted: Tue Jan 31, 2023 12:24 pm
by richmond62
SuperCard again, or just eyes bigger than one's stomach?

Not very promising either way:

https://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.p ... 34#p221257

Last DP May 2022.

Re: Tailspin

Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2023 1:17 pm
by richmond62
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Early 2013

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/17 ... escription

10 years later NOTHING has resulted.
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Still waiting.

I believe (stuck at DP 4 for 9 months: overdue pregnancy) that the LC 10 GUI will look vaguely like what they were wiggling seductively
at us suckers 10 years ago: and we'll have to pay a lot of money if we want it.

Re: Tailspin

Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2023 1:19 pm
by richmond62
https://help.kickstarter.com/hc/en-us/s ... 5001107133
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Learn about accountability on Kickstarter

Re: Tailspin

Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2023 1:26 pm
by richmond62
https://web.archive.org/web/20140812042 ... ful-crowd/

"Over the last 13 months since being with LiveCode the strength and loyalty of this community has never failed to amaze me. We are a bigger & stronger community than we have ever been and that is very powerful. It means that all of us together can control the future of our product."

And they said 'thanks' by NOT keeping their promised goals and, finally, by shafting us.

Re: Tailspin

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2023 4:14 pm
by OpenXTalkPaul
richmond62 wrote: Sat Jan 14, 2023 3:36 pm I must say how grateful I am sure all of us who donated to the HTML5 appeal feel on
finding that the Open Source version was dropped BEFORE it had been brought to anything
approaching fruition.
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I'm glad someone is grinning.
As I've said this before and I'll say it again, the Emscripten Engine actually does have tons of potential to it, at least as much potential as HTML5 and Emscripten does, which looks like Emscripten was updated three weeks ago: https://github.com/emscripten-core/emscripten/tags. Emscripten port of the Engine is necessarily the most portable of the GUI based xTalk Engines we have available to us, and it can be run offline where loading times are much less of an issue as there's no internet connection involved in the middle, and it can be wrapped in platform specific dressings bundled with a JS executable engine such as Electron (or similar) which as a side effect gives access to all of Node.js / thousands of libraries. And there's support in the Extension Builder language for moving data back and forth between JS Obj / JSON so that's helpful.
On top of this we could mix in other xtalk engine implementations, run OpenXION scripts for example, or perhaps integrate with ScummVM.js to run Lingo script interpreter? Going in this direction would give us a polyglot environment basically. Maybe we could even add in loading HyperCard stacks in a Basilisk II core (or vMac libretro core), or similar mixing in of platform emulations, at least as far as supporting various xTalk implementations is concerned.

Re: Tailspin

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2023 4:31 pm
by OpenXTalkPaul
richmond62 wrote: Sun Jan 22, 2023 2:02 pm I was wondering as one does about doing something about my Sanskrit digitisation
program for ARM Macintosh . . . from which my annual, average income over the last 12
years has been $200:
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And that is why I think LC will never have a significant base of hobbyists / casual coders making niché software with LiveCode while they keep that pricing model, it's just not financially sensible to do so unless your ideas turn into a viable commercial enterprise rather quickly, I think it's a shame because other people like me, who has spent a significant amount of time learning to wrap various Sound and Music and other API things into a format usable from this xTalk engine, they could really nurtured a more expanded platform with greater diversity of uses. I've just kept going anyway, I blame Frederic Rinaldi for the inspiration for that!

Re: Tailspin

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2023 4:47 pm
by OpenXTalkPaul
richmond62 wrote: Tue Feb 14, 2023 1:17 pm Screen Shot 2023-02-14 at 3.15.30 pm.png
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Early 2013

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/17 ... escription

10 years later NOTHING has resulted.
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Screen Shot 2023-02-14 at 3.16.47 pm.png
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Still waiting.

I believe (stuck at DP 4 for 9 months: overdue pregnancy) that the LC 10 GUI will look vaguely like what they were wiggling seductively
at us suckers 10 years ago: and we'll have to pay a lot of money if we want it.
The look is similar to what I had in mind for dock-able palettes (and did some experiments with implementing) in the IDE, still not a fan of single window UIs for developing UIs (unless it's only for designing a UI for mobile devices but even mobile/iOS is going the other way now). Similar to Adobe apps workspaces behavior, we have the good old backDrop and fullscreen modes now if you want "single window" feel (and I do not, unless it's for mobile previewing or slideshow / kiosk).

But yeah that was a big promoted goal to have a modern UI (although that looks abit dated 13yrs later).
Another one is the 'Open Language' thing, vestiges of that idea are in Extension Builder language modules but that's not really well documented, although the format is fairly easy to understand and I may just try to add that 'aint' keyword (Synonym for 'IS NOT' ) to Extension Builder language just to see how that works.

Re: Tailspin

Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2023 5:10 pm
by richmond62
A recent thing you "just have to love" is how, as the LiveCode downloads page has gone 'tits up':
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https://program.livecode.com/

getting hold of the read-me PDFs has become a pain-in-the-bum.

This page:

https://downloads.livecode.com/livecode/

is still active: but for how long we don't know.

Re: Tailspin

Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2023 7:58 pm
by richmond62
How do you express your feelings about this without being incredibly rude?
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https://forums.livecode.com/viewforum.php?f=65

Re: Tailspin

Posted: Sun Feb 19, 2023 2:48 pm
by richmond62
My Dad, lately dead and lamented, stated that his favourite hobby was banging his head on the wall because it felt great when
it stopped.

I have been banging my head on LiveCode central for about 22 years, and it is not great, because even when I stop the pain remains.

https://helloworld.raspberrypi.org/arti ... r-language