OpenXTalk RC4 testing...

[tperry2x]

Would

Code: Select all

set the global hiliteColor to dark green

make me happy?

How about having a popup menu in the preferences stack where you can select the global hiliteColor from a list of choices?

[richmond62]

#1. OK;: Вългария (that's 'Bulgaria' to the uninitiated) is a wonderful place in terms of alcohol intake. Been to a, what might in the Anglo-Saxon world be termed a "piss-up", but does not really do justice to that sort of event: our host 'celebrating' 40 year of what we call in Scots 'wadden', but in Inglis (Sudron), does not do justice because is a lied of the brain raither than the hert.

#2. Yes, Yes, Yes.

#3. I would hope, on the new day, in the forenoon, I can gie ye a mair considerait repone.

#4. One thing I TOTALLY fail to understand is how 'Kev' and company, byding in Scotland, as they do, can be SO disgustingly English in almost aa respecks!

[richmond62]

A popup would be super.

And this nonsense abune abune 32 letters maks me aye forjaskit.

Some fowk will hae computer programming is a science.

My cousin, Stephen Mathewson, being totally Anglified, would have that:

https://www.researchgate.net/scientific ... n-69549151

But, quite apart from the fact that he killed my sister's guinea-pig by treading on it, and did not give a shit . . .

Computer programming, at its best, is an art

[tperry2x]

Computer programming is also completely subjective.
What one person might like, another might hate - so feedback on things are always welcome.

Speaking of which, I've just been tweaking the tools palette.
I've largely replaced the green background hilights with purple, but looking at the tools palette (now I know how to edit it), some of it is pure SVG, some of it is pngs.

My aim is to choose pngs which work in dark and light mode, and personally I like colourful buttons. So my next job will be to customise these button icons to look less grey and generic.

I seldom use widgets myself, but I can see some people might.

Weird question to do with the preferences stack. How is it generated? Some stacks seem entirely blank, so I'd assume these are generated by a .livecodescript file somewhere.

[richmond62]

I got myself completely tied on a knot with the Preferences stack as I really could not work out where 'all that shit' originated.

[richmond62]

What is a social creep?

Someone who says whatever he/she imagines will keep the interlocutor(s), happy.

Or, as my late father would say, " the brown tongue brigade."

[richmond62]

Thinking about an IDE that might work on PPC Macs, early 32-bit INTEL Macs,and so on . . .

THIS is NOT a problem as such as LC Open Source versions are freely available to run on these machines.

The ONLY real advantage would be if there were a version of OXT that could function on those machines or, at least, produce standalones that would function on those machines WITH all the code advances that '963' contains.

Personally, I do not think the effort would be justified (see paragraph 3 above).

There are only 3 or 4 reasons I hang onto 32-bit Macs:

1. I STILL use software I paid good money for 20 years ago which does not run on 64-bit machines [Bryce 7, for 3d world modelling, mainly].

2. I like poking around in old HyperCard stacks and so on.

3. I invested a lot of money in that hardware and it goes against the grain chucking it out.

4. I'm bonkers.

I believe that very few people indeed are going to develop any new software for MacOS Sorbet Leopard, and if they are, LC 6.x.x will serve.

I use 2 2006/7 iMacs and LC 8.1.10 provides everything I need for them.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

01-runfirst.png
I ran the 'open this first' on the dmg, as I didn't want to go through the drudge of creating a meaningless account with Livecode. I'm guessing that each user would have to do this, as it saves in their respective home/preferences (I'm hoping the prompt to create an account can be fully pruned out next time around).

Yes, me too. That is all due to a registration stack that is embedded into the engine binary. Which means the engine(s) binary executable must be recompiled from source without it in order to get rid of that problem. Another option is to use packaging tools that create installers that place the file where it looks for it during the installation process.

[richmond62]

Isn't there a way to embed the 'first run' thing inside OXT and set it to run at startup so that end-users don't have to get confused?

[OpenXTalkPaul]

When building a standalone, I get this grey inline banner (which if I remember, was Livecode's alert at prompting you to buy a license). The licensing text does not seem to be there, and at least there's a close button still...
03-banner.png
But if you are unlucky enough to click on this (by mistake), you get taken to:
04-banner-clicked.png

So, can this be removed entirely?

Yes, I thought I did!
Unlike most of the bits of standalone builder, that URL lives in the binary UI stack part of the thing, so just doing a find in a directory with a code editor like Atom or similar won't find it (because it's in a binary stack format).
This 'build' may not be entirely in sync with all of my work. Part of the problem is I'll sometimes make small edits on one of like 5 different installations of OXT on different machines, and I'm really not very good at making sure they're all in sync, with only two of those installs also having GitDesktop installed for repo syncing.

I'll make a few updates after I read through your reports and then reupload a new RC4 dmg.

[tperry2x]

Thank you Paul, much appreciated.
I hate to be a pain, as I'm aware it's not easy... but do you think there will be an RC4 appimage for Linux soon?
Meanwhile I'm discovering things 'hacking together' OpenXTalk Lite, so any advances that are worth noting, I'll let you know about so you can hopefully incorporate them into RC4.

Could you add my amended "revtools.livecodescript" into your build please?
(if only I knew how to use github)
https://www.openxtalk.org/forum/viewtop ... 3331#p3331

[OpenXTalkPaul]

My two favorite additions to RC4 are the retro-pandering ability to, from the message box, put:

Code: Select all

 PlayPMD "Boing", "C4w"

or the synonym 'PerformMusicData':

Code: Select all

 PerformMusicData "Boing", "C4q E G"

And the massive amount of SVG Paths that are included with the OXT icons library extension.
They don't all load into memory unless you specifically load those extra libraries.
The first time you open SVGGlyphs browser it will ask if you want to load the additional SVG libraries and then takes a second or so to load them as an array into memory, which can be a few megabytes for some sets. In the additional sets all of FontAwesome is loaded (not that outdated subset that comes with the LCC Icon SVG library), all (6000+) icons of the latest Materal Design Icons release, and a few others. You can flip the icon if need be (some imported icons may need to be), and export the path to an SVG file that you should be able to edit in Illustrator, InkScape and similar. Pick an icon set from the popup menu, and then use the search field to find an icon in that set by name.

SVGGlyphs.jpg (59.07 KiB) Viewed 2825 times

[OpenXTalkPaul]

(if only I knew how to use github)
https://www.openxtalk.org/forum/viewtop ... 3331#p3331

I'm no expert but I can try to help with what I do know...
First you make your own a fork off of OXT (DontPanicEdition) IDE repo, then edit the file in your fork. You can use the web interface to paste in your entire new version and Git will scan the text for differences and display them. Next you can do a pull request, then we can all look at and approve the change to merge it with the OXT repo.

[tperry2x]

I wonder how much my problems with OXT on Linuxes may be related to having containerized the thing inside an .AppImage. I know there's more that can be done in the AppImage set up, like adding directories to its global $PATH variables. I think that's what needs to happen for some things (like loading the FluidSynth libraries) to work properly.

If I could request if it could remain as an appimage as it's much more convenient for the end user - (probably a selfish point of view as I know it's probably a royal PITA to produce the appimage in the first place).

Alternatively, I'm thinking of a shell script on linux that just unpacks the 7zip archive to /opt/ then makes a desktop shortcut:

install.png (29.61 KiB) Viewed 2810 times

[tperry2x]

First you make your own a fork off of OXT (DontPanicEdition) IDE repo, then edit the file in your fork. You can use the web interface to paste in your entire new version and Git will scan the text for differences and display them. Next you can do a pull request, then we can all look at and approve the change to merge it with the OXT repo.

If I got rid of the .ai files and .psd files (and throw away the files that I don't think are used), does that mess anything up in your fork? Also, what about files that you can't copy and paste - can you just upload entire changed files to be considered for the merge?

[OpenXTalkPaul]

First you make your own a fork off of OXT (DontPanicEdition) IDE repo, then edit the file in your fork. You can use the web interface to paste in your entire new version and Git will scan the text for differences and display them. Next you can do a pull request, then we can all look at and approve the change to merge it with the OXT repo.

If I got rid of the .ai files and .psd files (and throw away the files that I don't think are used), does that mess anything up in your fork? Also, what about files that you can't copy and paste - can you just upload entire changed files to be considered for the merge?

No. If you delete them in your own fork it won't effect the original fork unless you push that change 'upstream' back to the OXT branch you forked from, and then on the OXT repo end, it must be accepted and merged into to that OXT fork. I actually have an outdated fork of it in my personal account repos (I've been meaning to delete).
Those AI / PSD are just Illustrator and PhotoShop files that I used while working on icons and IDE graphics, then later converted to SVG Path strings or PNG pixel graphics the IDE actually uses. I left them in case anyone (including me) wants to pick them apart, redesign, optimize or whatever reason.

Assuming the files that 'you can't cut and paste' are binary stack files format, then github just sees an unrecognizable format and simply blindly syncs the file, showing basic file info for the change. The process for fork push / pull / merge is still the same otherwise. One sort of binary format GitHub does recognize are graphics, PNG /JPG and other images, icons, SVG files. It can display old image next to new image for a quick visual comparison of change.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

Would

Code: Select all

set the global hiliteColor to dark green

make me happy?

How about having a popup menu in the preferences stack where you can select the global hiliteColor from a list of choices?

Yes I'd like to make all of the IDE theme editable, preferably with some presets available. These are presently 'hard-coded'/constants. There used to be different sets switch/cased depending on license, but only community set is used in OXT. The same way there is syntax style/color sets, some elements are already user customizable ther, but there's more that could be.
The preferences UI stack is kind of a pain in the ass/arse to work on though.

Text highlight color in general is a property with an inheritance chain, starting with the OS (at least on macOS) System Preference panes text selection color, then the default/mainStack (which for the IDE is the good 'ol 'Home' stack), then your-stack/card/control looking for a setting of that property, but the IDE highlight color I beleive should only affect IDE stacks.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

Weird question to do with the preferences stack. How is it generated? Some stacks seem entirely blank, so I'd assume these are generated by a .livecodescript file somewhere.

Not a weird question at all, the preferences file is a binary stack file (not script only) that has lots of custom properties/multiple property sets that store various IDE user prefences (and more). While the Preference UI has all the buttons, fields and such for setting those properties. The defaults settings are used when a new preference stack is created by the Home stack, if one is not found in ~/Library/Prefences/OpenXTalk or if you use reset preferences button in the UI.

I use the project browser to edit the binary stacks (must use 'Show IDE Stacks in Lists' from the view menu). It's a bit difficult to deal with the revPresencesUI stack, like if you want to add controls.

I just used it to fixed the LC references in the mobile support pane that Richmond pointed out (another one that I'd thought I had already fixed), and that 'tip' banner URL in standalone builder now points to the main OXT web page, which is in a custom property in SBs UI stack.

[OpenXTalkPaul]

Wow! There's a queer thing: having finally got my brain in gear and finding the Dark/non-Dark mode button, I find it doesn't seem to work.
-
Screen Shot 2023-09-03 at 18.03.32.png

Hmm? It works fine on my laptop which is still running BigSur 11 (for reasons) and my iMac with macOS 12, and another iMac that runs macOS 13.
I wonder if they (Apple) has changed something (again) with the system 'native' dark mode in the latest betas builds?

Also I'll have to remember to do some testing on my media server box that runs 10.10.5, which is the closest I have set up to the 10.9 minimum (I can also run Snow 10.6 install on that old monster of a rig).
10.9 had no 'darkMode' at all, 10.10 started to do some 'dark' changes, but it wasn't until 10.14 that macOS had a real darkMode.

[richmond62]

Back, at around LC 7 (before, arguably, they got too clever for their own good) everything was a stack.

Personally I am tempted to go and hack 7.1.4, IFF I can work out a way to get it running on MacOSes 12, 13, & 14.

In case anyone is wondering . . . The LC 8.x.x series work on MacOS 13 'Ventura'.

Of course, at the moment, with MacOS 14 'Sonoma' (perhaps better called "Fog") everything goes 'Dark'.