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":
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SShot 2021-11-08 at 13.00.59.png (84.75 KiB) Viewed 13968 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!

[tperry2x]

So, re-reading some old stuff on this forum (stuff I originally missed), I think we may all have opened up more to the idea of a browser-based implementation?
Is this because of the imminent demise of LCC/OXT on Arm macs. Not sure, but I'll be the first to admit that I was completely against using a browser for xTalk - but now it seems like the only feasible way forward frankly.

As mentioned at the top of this topic, the only thing I can find about "Livecard" is here. The rest seems to be lost to "The Winds of Time".

As was the case with Hypercard 3.0, which absolutely existed as a Beta (somewhere), but again - you can find hardly any trace of it now, just broken promises.

Looks like they were going to fold SK8 into it at one point (at least for inspiration). Again, just didn't happen.

[richmond62]

we may all have opened up more to the idea of a browser-based implementation

Not me: given a choice I would stay with what we have.

BUT:

1. No Mac ARM engine.

2. "Silly Buggers" with Xubuntu.

. . . . .

[richmond62]

Of course this:

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

was BEFORE the advent of Xavvi/Create:

I’m delighted to be able to report back on more of what we have planned for LiveCode 10.

It makes me think of Mikhail Gorbachev, who thought that by loosening things up a bit the Soviet Union, and Communism would survive: it didn't, and unfortunately, in the following attempt to develop a parliamentary democracy they ended up with a totalitarian regime just as oppressive as the one they dumped.

AND: "over there" is a bit like a totalitarian state . . .

everything got blown away.
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hatblowingsilhouettegrey.png (91.94 KiB) Viewed 10063 times

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AND I wonder how long it will be until 'Create' is finally released, and the FREE version that was mentioned at one stage . . .

[richmond62]

We’ve been tremendously successful in researching how to deliver a truly fantastic Web experience in 10.

My wife and I have been tremendously successful in preparing the garden for Spring, and manuring, digging, and sowing the seeds.

But if we don't end up with any vegetables all that will be nothing but a lot of wasted time, energy, and chicken shit.

AND I am not sure if I even understand exactly what being "tremendously successful in researching how to deliver a truly fantastic Web experience" until a "truly fantastic Web experience" is delivered.

Reading that web-page makes my muscles ache almost as much as they do from the last few days of garden work.

[tperry2x]

Not me: given a choice I would stay with what we have.

That's kind of just it. You can stay with what we have, but only until your OS won't run them anymore.
Those desktop versions are very much frozen in time. Yes, I've attempted to fix a few things in the LCC-based offering that is OXT Lite, but I do always feel like I'm waiting for the next thing to break. That's normally down to the underlying OS shifting (as you mention ubuntu), and MacOS being constantly adjusted to fit whatever Apple's particular whims are this month.
Yes - the LCC 6,7,8,9 versions will stay as they are of course, and will very much exist 'as is'. Because seems like nobody is having success on getting the engine to compile (or nobody is motivated enough to pour time and money into what could be a dead project) - I suppose that's exactly the realisation that LC have come to, and no doubt why Create is being.... um created.
Likewise with revMedia 4, (I'm assuming these system requirements still hold true):

System requirements call for Mac OS X v10.2.7 or later, 256MB RAM, 100MB hard disk space.

but of course, that's not going to see any further development.

In the absence of a working desktop version (which Paul has mentioned, we can wrap the webtalk thing you are seeing here in a desktop app wrapper) - it'll then be a single mac .app you can drag about (if that's your thing *codesigning issues notwithstanding).

[richmond62]

but only until your OS won't run them anymore.

OXT Lite (as it is at the moment) is fine, whether on MacOS 15 or a wide variety of Linux distros for pumping out standalones to run on Linux.

While Xubuntu current ('Rectal Rodent' as far as I recall ): erm: 24.10 and the LTS one that preceded that, while playing "silly bananas" with the MessageBox in the IDE has no problem running standalones . . .

[tperry2x]

OXT Lite (as it is at the moment) is fine, whether on MacOS 15 or a wide variety of Linux distros for pumping out standalones to run on Linux.

MacOS: just don't add custom menus, turn off gatekeeper, allow apps to run from anywhere
Linux: don't use latest ubuntu, don't use any multimedia
both: don't use the browser widget for doing anything secure with internet communications [banking etc] because it isn't.

Why I'm putting my efforts into the browser-version is we instantly have a whole assortment of 'multimedia engines' available that way. I'd expect Rosetta2 to cease to exist within 5-6 years, which means no more OXT / OXT Lite as we know it (not without an arm recompile). At which point, it will join the list of those above, as being 'frozen in time'

Either way, it can't hurt to be prepared.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

MacOS: just don't add custom menus, turn off gatekeeper, allow apps to run from anywhere
Linux: don't use latest ubuntu, don't use any multimedia
both: don't use the browser widget for doing anything secure with internet communications [banking etc] because it isn't.

This is not entirely accurate, on macOS you could probably use Browser Widget for doing some secure web stuff because unlike on Linux and Windows (which use Chromium Embedded Framework), the Browser Widget on macOS and iOS use the WebKit that is built into the OS, which is as up to date security-wise as whatever version of MacOS/Safari you're running is. That said, I've only ever used it for tinkering around with web stuff from xTalk script and make no guarantees about the security of Browser Widget.

[tperry2x]

Fortunately most browsers have ram protection, and projection against code injection built in. (Which makes perfect sense when you think about the kind of things they process). Unfortunately the browser widget in the IDE is vulnerable to code injection and memory inspection - so anything you load via the widget could be snooped upon. That includes any possible sensitive information (if you'd logged into your email account / sFTP server / cPanel etc). That's the only reason I flag it as insecure, although you would have to be pretty determined. But the kind of people who try this kind of thing definitely are and fit into that category.