What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

[tperry2x]

Please test with Mac/Linux. In a new stack, Tools > Menu Builder, click "New...", click "OK" to dialog for File/Edit/Help menus. The Menu Builder Menus and MenuItems should now be enabled and editable.

Indeed, it worked like a charm. I will try and test on MacOS today or tomorrow.

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Edit: tested on the mac, it works as it should. I also did some testing in the screenshot with in-stack-menus, replacing the mac menubar, and also in a standalone:

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Many thanks for your work on this

[tperry2x]

Hi TerryL,
Further up in this list of posts in this topic
https://www.openxtalk.org/forum/viewtop ... 5025#p5025

You mentioned:

3) Development > Report Builder scaleFactor. I made Report Builder to fit my small 10" screen. I thought the scaleFactor of the field could be increased from .6 to .8 or 1 for most people's larger higher res screens. It's easy enough to do. In msg box: set the scaleFactor of the mouseStack to .8, position mouse in the print field, press returnKey. Close the print field and you're asked to save changes.

Do you think this approach would work?

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I've added a slider on the report builder stack, so you can adjust the scale of the preview.

Please can you test the attached Stack on Windows and check it functions the way you'd like.

Report Builder.livecode

(27.37 KiB) Downloaded 566 times

[tperry2x]

@TerryL
I should also add that I tested this report builder on MacOS this evening, and am happy to confirm it works there too.

[TerryL]

@ tPerry. Report Builder with scalefactor slider works great on Win10. Why didn't I think of that? Excellent. Thanks for testing Menu Builder too.

Everyone should be quite pleased with tPerry's dedication to the OXT Lite project, and Richmond's suggestions and observations. I suspect we're attracting a few more people peeping over our shoulders. Please enter the conversation. Anyone from LC is welcomed too. Terry

[tperry2x]

I suspect we're attracting a few more people peeping over our shoulders....

Thank you Terry, much appreciated.
I have tweaked the report builder a bit more, https://www.openxtalk.org/forum/viewtop ... 5181#p5181 and you can download it from that post to try it out as well.

[tperry2x]

Other stuff I'm working on:

Refining the auto-updater a bit, so it tries to apply the updates automatically. If it can't, it now saves the update script on the desktop to be run manually by the user:

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Of course, on newer versions of MacOS, you start to see the OS getting in the way:

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[richmond62]

I think I shall christen you 'anti-Mac', or, even better, 'Aunty Mac'.

Mac 'getting in the way' is a pain in the bum, but, at the moment at least, I feel that the advantages of using MacOS over Windows outweighs that.

The snags about Linux are:

1. Limited uptake.

2. Too many variables between distros.

I run several Windows apps in Linux and Mac via WINE, including the WIN version of the "previous xTalk thing" we know and love.

It is also relatively easy to disable most of the guff that gets in the way on Mac.

[tperry2x]

I think I shall christen you 'anti-Mac', or, even better, 'Aunty Mac'.

Haha, yes - the silly thing is, I used to be all about the Mac. It was Apple or nothing. I worked in Apple retail for 6 years. But since 'Big Surly', I feel it's been going downhill steadily. Or maybe that started with 'El Crap-tin'.
I'm not a fan of Windows either - Windows Explorer is slow and clunky, and only getting worse upon each release. Although this is a trend also followed by MacOS Finder as well.

It all makes one feel a bit disillusioned with the state of desktop OS. At least with Linux, you can tailor it to your liking, and it's capable of bringing defunct hardware back from the brink of obsolescence.

Mac 'getting in the way' is a pain in the bum, but, at the moment at least, I feel that the advantages of using MacOS over Windows outweighs that.

Yes, true. Upon careful consideration, I dislike Windows 11 more.

The snags about Linux are:

1. Limited uptake.
2. Too many variables between distros.

I run several Windows apps in Linux and Mac via WINE, including the WIN version of the "previous xTalk thing" we know and love.

I know I'm probably getting off topic here, but the majority of people stick with windows because:

• It has not crossed their mind that they could replace it with anything else

• They are blissfully unaware that anything else exists

• They think they lack the technical know-how to replace it themselves*

• They perhaps feel that learning a new operating system is too much of an uphill battle*

*I can vouch for these parts, having also been a self-employed computer tutor for 4 years before my current job, - people hugely underestimate their own ability when it comes to computers.

Yes, you may run Wine at the moment on your mac. Until Apple prevent you running Rosetta 2 with a system update. Then you won't be able to run wine anymore. You'll have to resort to something like Whiskey as mentioned previously.

It is also relatively easy to disable most of the guff that gets in the way on Mac.

Also true, but your average mac user doesn't bother, so would see these warnings.
And my concern with this is that it might put them off using it, under the misapprehension that it was doing something nasty.

This is where Paul can rightly say that his browser-based approach does not have these issues . And he'd be right.
This is why I was fooling around with the idea of an OXT-Distro - you boot into it and all those issues are gone!

Anyway, I'm going to go and do something useful like having a go at making you a 32-bit OXT Lite 0.96 now...

[richmond62]

That is wonderful.

We need to shout about from the rooftops so that those in Darkest Africa (and what my younger son told about his work visit to Malawi things in some areas are very dark, technologically-wise, indeed) hear us.

[richmond62]

Imagine a disk image if 32-bit Lubuntu with OXT Lite preinstalled: should be a no-brainer for all those 20 year old PCs with mininum specs that end up in "murky corners" of what silly, naive Bill Clinton called the global village.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

I suspect we're attracting a few more people peeping over our shoulders....

Thank you Terry, much appreciated.
I have tweaked the report builder a bit more, https://www.openxtalk.org/forum/viewtop ... 5181#p5181 and you can download it from that post to try it out as well.

Nice, report builder and printing cards / stacks (ironically), is not something I've done very much with LC/OXT, but I personally do still like the idea of having 'hard-copy' and I know some people still want it.

[richmond62]

They perhaps feel that learning a new operating system is too much of an uphill battle

Frankly I have very little sympathy with that as my Mum and Dad at the tender ages of 78 and 76 respectively transferred from Windows XP to Xubuntu in a matter of 90 minutes: having previously transferred from MacOS 9 to Windows XP (which they found rather more difficult): Dad getting into that after his computer running RiscOS 3 went west.

Of course if you mean 'more' than internet browser, email client, office suite, graphic suite, watching films and listening to music, it might take a herculean 2 days.

I don't think people feel that learning a new operating system is too much of an uphill battle, I think they are just too mentally lazy in most cases to make any effort whatsoever.

They are blissfully unaware that anything else exists

Or they have 'sucked up' quite uncritically the myth that 'Linux' (and 'Linux' as a monolithic thing really does not do anyone any favours at all) is horribly complicated, a myth probably propagated by the same dumbing-down lot who, a long time ago now equated 'PC' with a machine running Windows, or people paid to keep people using Windows.

[tperry2x]

Seems to have been a common theme, or at least an excuse they all seemed to echo.

I find that to some extent at the school as well. Teachers struggle to jump between a windows and Mac operating system, but the students / pupils seem to have no issue with it whatsoever.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

I think we need everything on this survey...
However the thing I'd be most excited about would be expanding on the code-completion of script editing, it would help speed up coding everything else that needs to be done to the IDE, and that sort of has become a feature that I expected to find in a code editor. Even if we just used the same method that is used in the message box, where is just looks for matches in the lines of the message box history (stored in user preferences stack) and/or maybe pulls from the 'default scripts' of the target object type in Script Editor windows. There are already hooks in the editors behavior scripts for enabling in 'auto-completion pro' (or whatever they called it). Would be even better if we could allow users to add their own 'snippets' (there is already a snippets editor stack in the repo).
There is a GPL libraries by Trevor DeVore for spell-checking, cross-platform: uses Apple's Spell-check on macOS, and Hunspell on other platforms. I made a fork of the Hunspell wrapper a long time ago, and added the macOS binary of Hunspell (so I could work on both spell-check APIs at the same time). I also created an 'xTalk Dictionary' of most (all?) of our xTalk vocabulary, so it can check and suggest against that. Could be useful for implementing 'OXT-Autocompletion-Mega-Pro'
Here: https://github.com/PaulMcClernan/lc-hunspell

The xTalk 'dictionary' file alone is interesting to look through (although its probably not complete) and could be useful for other things:
https://github.com/PaulMcClernan/lc-hun ... lk/OXT.dic

[tperry2x]

Hi Richmond,
Since you asked - I've just uploaded a 32bit build of OXT-Lite 0.96 into that dropbox folder. (Same link as normal)
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/75kfz9ho ... 5xdm5&dl=0

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[richmond62]

Thanks: I shall download that and do a 'Quick-n-Dirty' compare-and-contrast with my goofy, kiddo method I have just posted.

Watch this space.

[richmond62]

Your 32-bit version is better insofar as the buttons on the Tools palette show up.

HOWEVER the messageBox still will not receive focus.

[tperry2x]

HOWEVER the messageBox still will not receive focus.

That does not really surprise me unfortunately. I expect that to be an issue if you are on Ubuntu, (this is the reason my OXT-distro I mentioned doesn't use Ubuntu and it works flawlessly).

If you are on Ubuntu, have a card inspector open. Then open the message box and it should receive focus. Note, under Ubuntu, if you have a stack inspector active and the message box, the window manager will fight for focus, so it closes the message box to avoid a race condition loop.

This is a shortcoming in the Linux engine as the systemwindow isn't supported in the Linux engine, so we have these hacky solutions to work around them.

Either way, I'm developing an alternative inspector. The idea will be to completely replace the original properties inspector with this one, and it will also include a message box - one wd to do it all.
It's in it's infancy at the moment, but is definitely on the cards. (Sorry, really bad joke) This will nullify these focus and window juggling issues. This *should* be part of 0.97 when it's eventually ready.
I also want to do a restyling of the dictionary a bit, and finish the 'all guides'. I'll be concentrating on getting these things finished.

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[tperry2x]

Low hanging fruit...
The updater is...um.. updated.
The dictionary is at a point where it is useable across all 3 platforms and now works identically.

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So now my next task will be to finish those 'all guides' - I'm making good progress on them though, and sit down and finish my alternative inspector / message-box combo.

This might not happen this side of xmas, so if you call it Christmas or Holidays, or whatever - I hope you all have a restful break and here's wishing you all well.

[richmond62]

Well done with the dictionary: this morning I had recourse to the LC 963 IDE to consult the 'dick', so am glad of that.

Thanks a million: and on 3 platforms: none of that nonsense on Linux where the Browser comes up and covers the whole desktop.

New version: erm . . . 0.97 or adding stuff to current 0.96?