Livecode 9 menus look terrible in Ubuntu

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Re: Livecode 9 menus look terrible in Ubuntu

Post by FourthWorld » Fri Apr 27, 2018 11:10 pm

bogs wrote:
Fri Apr 27, 2018 10:56 pm
I wonder who determines when something is seldom used, though, I don't remember seeing a poll on it anywhere :?
I can't tell if you're being serious there or just having fun.

What percentage of users would you guess want a rapid way to make their UIs look 20 years old and in a platform-specific way?
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Re: Livecode 9 menus look terrible in Ubuntu

Post by ClipArtGuy » Sat Apr 28, 2018 12:20 am

Same menus in 18.04...
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Re: Livecode 9 menus look terrible in Ubuntu

Post by bwmilby » Sat Apr 28, 2018 2:05 am

Now I feel silly for not bringing this up a month ago... I noticed when building but thought it might have just been an anomaly with my system. Of course Devolution made it look fine anyway.
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Re: Livecode 9 menus look terrible in Ubuntu

Post by FourthWorld » Sat Apr 28, 2018 2:26 am

And I feel silly for not upgrading my Ubuntu install for four years. Up until a few months ago I had a reason to stick with 14.04. But I really should have tested the 18.04 beta, not just for Ubuntu but for LC as well.
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Re: Livecode 9 menus look terrible in Ubuntu

Post by bwmilby » Sat Apr 28, 2018 2:49 am

What is weird is the first time I built it in 16.04.3 they looked normal. Then after a system update they changed. I do recall that the Firefox icon changed after that update but have no idea what else was upgraded. Now that 18.04 is out I’ll need to get a VM built and the build environment configured. I did add Mint 18.3 Cinnamon (which also lets me build) and they look fine there. I have Debian 9.4.0 Gnome, but something doesn’t let me link there. Menus look fine though (rc1).
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Re: Livecode 9 menus look terrible in Ubuntu

Post by bogs » Sat Apr 28, 2018 3:47 am

bogs wrote:
Fri Apr 27, 2018 10:46 pm
Funny enough, I seem to remember reading about how to fix just this kind of issue in linux (from way back in time). IF I find it again, I'll post it here for posterity :wink:
Well, I knew I'd come across it again if I thought about it hard enough, clicked my heels together 3 times, and said "Theres NO place like..." oh wait, thats something else.

Anyhoo, seems that back in the mists of time (or at least around the 2.6'ish to 3.x era of Rev), the issue was with it not using the controls/decorations if it couldn't find the correct libs, although I don't think I've seen a .sh file installed in any of the many older environments I currently have.

Now, is this relevant today? Dunno, but I do know that things like menus, buttons, etc all fall under the libs discussed in this article. I'd say if your not getting the display your supposed to, it probably couldn't hurt to see if this works. For me, it is a little harder to tell because, well, like Richard pointed out, I not only like motif, I pretty near use it all the time.
FourthWorld wrote:
Fri Apr 27, 2018 11:10 pm
bogs wrote:
Fri Apr 27, 2018 10:56 pm
I wonder who determines when something is seldom used, though, I don't remember seeing a poll on it anywhere :?
I can't tell if you're being serious there or just having fun.
Does it have to be one or the other? I usually try to have it both ways :wink:
What percentage of users would you guess want a rapid way to make their UIs look 20 years old and in a platform-specific way?
I don't like guessing, and I have no information to base it on. The guy your asking currently does it all the time, and I suspect a lot of mobile dev's might run test machines to see if it looks right, but if I had to guess, I would guess that most people aren't crazy (like me).

In any case, who said that the choices had to stagnate at 20 year old UI looks? Keep the current choice and update the look to the last 5 years, or offer a range of looks, the ones you already have up to modern.

Now I would just bet, for the guy who is dev'ing for Winders on a nixen box (or mac from winders, or whatever), it would be boss to have the ability to see if the button / label / menu / tab pane looks right with 2 clicks (4, if you decided to change it back) :shock: even if it is just emulated to look that way, it looked pretty close here for 20 years ago interfaces.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think lots might be interested in seeing that come to fruition.
bwmilby wrote:
Sat Apr 28, 2018 2:05 am
Now I feel silly for not bringing this up a month ago... I noticed when building but thought it might have just been an anomaly with my system.
I have not been playing with your system :twisted:
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Re: Livecode 9 menus look terrible in Ubuntu

Post by FourthWorld » Sat Apr 28, 2018 4:26 am

bogs wrote:
Fri Apr 27, 2018 10:56 pm
I wonder who determines when something is seldom used, though, I don't remember seeing a poll on it anywhere :?
I can't tell if you're being serious there or just having fun.
Does it have to be one or the other? I usually try to have it both ways :wink:
Serious fun is the best fun.
In any case, who said that the choices had to stagnate at 20 year old UI looks? Keep the current choice and update the look to the last 5 years, or offer a range of looks, the ones you already have up to modern.

Now I would just bet, for the guy who is dev'ing for Winders on a nixen box (or mac from winders, or whatever), it would be boss to have the ability to see if the button / label / menu / tab pane looks right with 2 clicks (4, if you decided to change it back) :shock: even if it is just emulated to look that way, it looked pretty close here for 20 years ago interfaces.
You had me up until that last line.

Back when all OS UIs were emulated, it was indeed super cool to be able to flip between appearances without leaving your machine - or even the current session.

But the OS X UI was far too complex to emulate. And at the rate it was changing it would have been back-breaking to try. XP had also come out and was very different from the emulated Win96 appearance. And by that time Linux started getting good themeing, so a single hard-wired Motif wasn't able to cut it anymore.

So now "appearance manager" is default on all desktop platforms because the engine now makes pretty smart use of OS rendering routines in its compositing. Big hurdle at the time, but well worth it, as each OS revamp takes less and less work to support, in some cases none at all.

And of course now that the OS does the heavy lifting with control rendering, any given OS look-and-feel now requires an OS to go with it.

If there's any upside RAM is now cheaper than ever in my life by far, and VirtualBox is both really great and totally free. So if you have a Mac you can run both Win and Linux; if you're not using a Mac Apple's EULA prohibits use in even a VM on any "non-Apple-branded computer", so to follow their guildance you'll be focusing your design efforts on Windows and Linux.

Not nearly as nice as just a single click right in the IDE, but about as good as practical in our modern rich-GUI world.

All that said...

The lookAndFeel property is still supported. The IDE is so overloaded with complexity as it is they're just trying to be prudent about the subset of features that get GUI support there. I don't believe MetaCard had a GUI for it, at least not before it went FOSS. But the language feature still works.

And remembering that got me thinking: I once wrote a plugin for this, way back in the MC days.

So rather than you having to make a plugin, you can use this one. I just tested in v9 under Ubuntu and it seems to work okay even after all these years.
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Re: Livecode 9 menus look terrible in Ubuntu

Post by bogs » Sat Apr 28, 2018 5:08 am

Well you know already that I use Virt.Box a lot, especially anytime someone says "I can't install it on xyz..." I have about 3 disposables set up, 4 Win machines (for quick and dirty testing I usually go to WINE though), 3 BSDs, 2 perm Linuxes, and I use SheepShaver for OS9.
FourthWorld wrote:
Sat Apr 28, 2018 4:26 am
Not nearly as nice as just a single click right in the IDE, but about as good as practical in our modern rich-GUI world.
Well, the 2 clicks is nice, as opposed to the choices you have even with the VMs. Having to go the VM route to test the look, you have to break the flow of your work, do a full compile, move the file from where your working / saving to either a shared folder or other method to get it on the vm, rinse wash repeat.

While I understand the points you made, I certainly do still think the older way of doing it was nicer, even if harder to achieve. I am not sure that the windows interface changed all that much, if anything it looks to me (in 10) to be flat and easy to emulate the look of, OSX I might have to concede though.
FourthWorld wrote:
Sat Apr 28, 2018 4:26 am
I don't believe MetaCard had a GUI for it, at least not before it went FOSS.
Believe it my friend, BELIEVE!!
Selection_003.png
MC 2.5 starter kit, pre-FOSS.
Thanks for the toy, even though I'm not in anything that new for more than ts'ing / helping others, new toys are always welcome :wink:
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Re: Livecode 9 menus look terrible in Ubuntu

Post by FourthWorld » Sat Apr 28, 2018 5:19 am

bogs wrote:
Sat Apr 28, 2018 5:08 am
Well, the 2 clicks is nice, as opposed to the choices you have even with the VMs. Having to go the VM route to test the look, you have to break the flow of your work, do a full compile, move the file from where your working / saving to either a shared folder or other method to get it on the vm, rinse wash repeat.
Another plugin idea: I test most things in the IDE, not only saving the time of making a standalone, but I don't even need to copy the stack file over - Nextcloud does that for me with all my work files across my machines.

That's easier than making standalones, but it could be easier still: a plugin could run the revert command on an open stack file, and it would reload the fresh copy from disk, after it's been updated by Nextcloud (or Dropbox or Google Cloud or whatever you use, I'm just a Nextcloud fanboy).

So you could just keep working on the system you prefer, click one button in a tool in your IDE on the other system, and you instantly get the freshest stuff.
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Re: Livecode 9 menus look terrible in Ubuntu

Post by bogs » Sat Apr 28, 2018 6:14 am

I must have a weird development cycle, I absolutely forbid the dev environment to be on a machine I'm testing for deployment due to a number of completely bizarre events I've encountered where the recipient had an issue that didn't show up in the dev cycle, later narrowed down to the IDEx having installed the necessary dll or other bits and pieces for certain things to work, which weren't installed on the end machine (since they had no dev environment).

Mark was instrumental in my signing up for dropbox, but I am mostly using that just for hosting the MC development (which is important to me, but is hardly private code) because of Yahoo going hinky, and examples for people on here. I sure wouldn't host anything I considered important on someone else's servers, for that stuff I have a series of USB drives.

While I have the luxury of working on the system I prefer ('nix), and I don't do much dev work for stuff on Windows and Mac, for the odd times I do it would be nice to have it preview to make sure it looks right. I'm sure you remember the recent thread about underlined letters on buttons, common in 'nix and windows, and not so much on mac. Well, I didn't know about that until you pointed it out, I thought it was universal. IF there was a preview, of the interface, I could now check to see if it showed up correctly for each desktop at least.

I realize it isn't going to happen, and like I said, I'm ok with it, after all, I'm not going to be jumping on the newer IDE anytime soon, I've got what I want :P
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Re: Livecode 9 menus look terrible in Ubuntu

Post by richmond62 » Sat Apr 28, 2018 8:20 am

who determines when something is seldom used
?

Those at 'Head Office' of course: and pretty random-looking at that.

I don't know if you have completed any of those surveys (check each box from 1 to 10)
that 'Head Office' send out from time to time. They always make me feel creepy as
they are structured in such a way as to end up with rather meaningless results.

Here's a simple survey from the "Richmond Market Research Dept.":

1. Are you long in the tooth enough to remember the 'Look and Feel' menu
item in Runtime Revolution? Answer Yes or No.

2. If your answer to #1 was 'Yes' would you like the 'Look and Feel' menu
item restored to LiveCode? Answer Yes or No.

3. Would you like a range of contemporary options in 'Look and Feel'?
Answer Yes or No.

4. Do you ever have an urge to commit violence on people who put out surveys of this sort?
Answer Yes or No.

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Re: Livecode 9 menus look terrible in Ubuntu

Post by richmond62 » Sat Apr 28, 2018 8:22 am

I must have a weird development cycle
Don't worry, you are not alone; therapy and counselling are available. 8)

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Re: Livecode 9 menus look terrible in Ubuntu

Post by bogs » Sat Apr 28, 2018 4:21 pm

richmond62 wrote:
Sat Apr 28, 2018 8:20 am
I don't know if you have completed any of those surveys (check each box from 1 to 10)
that 'Head Office' send out from time to time.
First I've ever heard of em, but I've only been (trying to learn) Lc since around 6.0.1 sometime in 2013. :mrgreen: where do you normally see these surveys?
1. Are you long in the tooth enough to remember the 'Look and Feel' menu
item in Runtime Revolution? Answer Yes or No.

2. If your answer to #1 was 'Yes' would you like the 'Look and Feel' menu
item restored to LiveCode? Answer Yes or No.

3. Would you like a range of contemporary options in 'Look and Feel'?
Answer Yes or No.

4. Do you ever have an urge to commit violence on people who put out surveys of this sort?
Answer Yes or No.
  1. Yes, I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth :D
  2. Yes, but I'm funny that way :P
  3. Yes, but doesn't everyone :wink:
  4. No, I figure karma will do what I'm not willing too :twisted:
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Re: Livecode 9 menus look terrible in Ubuntu

Post by FourthWorld » Sat Apr 28, 2018 5:13 pm

Such a survey would need to include the most relevant question:

5. Would be willing to pay several million dollars needed to dynamically emulate modern OS appearances on every platform, and pay any legal fees where doing so may result in copyright or patent claims?
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Re: Livecode 9 menus look terrible in Ubuntu

Post by richmond62 » Sat Apr 28, 2018 6:25 pm

copyright or patent claims
I find it very difficult indeed to see how one can patent the bevelling on a button,
the contrast between a font and its background, or any of the other subtleties that
go to make up an interface.

Surely this piece of nonsense I dreamt up in 3 minutes thanks to the good offices
of GIMP cannot be patented?
richmondButton.png
richmondButton.png (42.44 KiB) Viewed 25839 times


Maybe I should patent a whole WOBBLY interface. 8)

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