Critical mass

Want to talk about something that isn't covered by another category?

Moderators: FourthWorld, heatherlaine, Klaus, kevinmiller, robinmiller

How to reach the critical mass?

Poll ended at Sun Mar 23, 2014 12:21 pm

More videos
0
No votes
Promotion on journals
0
No votes
Promotion on blogs
1
5%
Promotion on social networks (Facebook, G+, etc.)
1
5%
Interview videos
0
No votes
More examples
7
37%
A better homepage
2
11%
Success stories
0
No votes
No action, Livecode is well known
0
No votes
Other...
8
42%
 
Total votes: 19

Mark
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Re: Critical mass

Post by Mark » Tue Feb 25, 2014 11:57 am

Bangkok,

HyperCard came with an excellent set of sample stacks and insanely perfect documentation. We didn't read books about HC because everything included with HC was sufficient to start programming with it. Okay, actually I did read two books about HC, but that was after I already figured out how to use it.

Kind regards,

Mark
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Re: Critical mass

Post by FourthWorld » Tue Feb 25, 2014 4:31 pm

sefrojonesGAda40 wrote:...the documentation is sparse, outdated, or hard to find.
The documentation team is currently working on a comprehensive rewrite of the User Guide. At 378 pages the current version included in the LC install covers a lot of ground, but will need revision for the changes in v7.

In the meantime they're also working on an update to the current User Guide for releases prior to v7, and would like to prioritize sections that may be out of date. But in my initial brief review of it I didn't come across any sections that had information that's incompatible with the current version - can you help us identify where those are?

Thankfully, the "hard to find" part was addressed a couple versions back with the reinstatement of the "User Guide" item in the Help menu in addition to the button that's always been in the Resource stack:
http://quality.runrev.com/show_bug.cgi?id=11027

In addition to any incompatibilities you come across, please feel free to offer any other suggestions you may have for the User Guide and I'll forward them to the team.

Also, in the bug report database you'll find that most of the info in the Release Notes relating to new features has been added to the Dictionary over the last three or four versions (they've been catching up on those at a pretty fast pace lately, with most documentation items knocked off in under 48 hours) , but if you see any that may be still missing please either note them here or better yet consider opening a bug report so the team can jump on them immediately: http://quality.runrev.com/

Thanks for your help on this -
Richard Gaskin
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Re: Critical mass

Post by Klaus » Tue Feb 25, 2014 4:48 pm

Hi all,

this Livecode "success story" is not too bad either:
http://livecode.com/wp-content/uploads/ ... -study.pdf
:D

Best

Klaus

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Re: Critical mass

Post by FourthWorld » Tue Feb 25, 2014 4:52 pm

Klaus wrote:this Livecode "success story" is not too bad either:
http://livecode.com/wp-content/uploads/ ... -study.pdf
That is indeed a good one, but as one of only three cases shown in the front page there remains a good opportunity to add more. I've discussed this with Ben, and we have a plan in place to address that very soon.

What path did you follow at the site to find that PDF? I was hoping to find background info on the KLM case there, but I didn't see links to any other info for that or the NASA case.
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Re: Critical mass

Post by Klaus » Tue Feb 25, 2014 4:58 pm

Someone posted this link to the mailing list a couple of minutes ago 8)

Yes, the "goodies" are very well hidden on the RR website.

Another reference is the Univerity of Vienna (Austria), which is running the complete management
of every aspect in the Univerity with Livecode connected to a BIG Oracle database.

I had the pleasure to lend them a helping hand, when they finally made the switch from MetaCard 2.3 to
Runtime Revolution in 2004 :D

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Re: Critical mass

Post by Mark » Tue Feb 25, 2014 5:02 pm

Hi,

I'd like someone who voted for "more examples" to explain very briefly and clearly why s/he made that vote. There are plenty if examples IMHO, they're just difficult to find. More examples that are equally difficult to find won't help.

Kind regards,

Mark
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Re: Critical mass

Post by amthonyblack » Tue Feb 25, 2014 5:34 pm

Klaus wrote:S

Another reference is the Univerity of Vienna (Austria), which is running the complete management
of every aspect in the Univerity with Livecode connected to a BIG Oracle database.

Hi Klaus do you have a link reference for that?

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Re: Critical mass

Post by FourthWorld » Tue Feb 25, 2014 5:41 pm

Mark wrote:I'd like someone who voted for "more examples" to explain very briefly and clearly why s/he made that vote. There are plenty if examples IMHO, they're just difficult to find. More examples that are equally difficult to find won't help.
Thank you, Mark. I was wondering the same thing, that perhaps my "Other" vote asking for more examples of finished products might be the same as the "More Examples" option, which I had taken to mean example scripting tutorials.

While it's true that the learning examples throughout the community are as spread out as they are numerous, LiveCode itself ships with 78 examples included in the install (in the Resources stack, accessible from the toolbar).

Should "Resources" be renamed to make it clearer that it provides learning resources? If so, can we come up with a brief name for it that would be more descriptive?
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Re: Critical mass

Post by Klaus » Tue Feb 25, 2014 5:53 pm

amthonyblack wrote:Hi Klaus do you have a link reference for that?
Yep: http://livecode.com/wp-content/uploads/ ... dy-new.pdf

And here the "showcase" section of the RR site: http://livecode.com/showcase/

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Re: Critical mass

Post by Mark » Tue Feb 25, 2014 5:59 pm

Richard,

I think it is sufficiently clear that "more examples" means examples to learn from.

Kind regards,

Mark
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Re: Critical mass

Post by FourthWorld » Tue Feb 25, 2014 6:29 pm

Klaus wrote:And here the "showcase" section of the RR site: http://livecode.com/showcase/
Thank you, Klaus! With your link I was able to pinpoint where the last site revision had apparently inadvertently nixed the Showcase link from the main taxonomy - filed as bug #11851:
http://quality.runrev.com/show_bug.cgi?id=11851
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Re: Critical mass

Post by amthonyblack » Tue Feb 25, 2014 7:10 pm

Klaus wrote:
amthonyblack wrote:Hi Klaus do you have a link reference for that?
Yep: http://livecode.com/wp-content/uploads/ ... dy-new.pdf

And here the "showcase" section of the RR site: http://livecode.com/showcase/

Thanks Krauss I have seen most of those before but there are a few interesting ones I haven't. (EDIT - No the ones I had not seen are just schools using livecode to teach not actual apps].I will have to agree that the website needs some reworking. the natural place from the homepage for the showcase would be "what can be made" not the footer link

Incidentally the problem with the KLM example is there is no indication what exactly was livecode used for -the entire site, login etc or just the reservation portion

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Re: Critical mass

Post by Klaus » Tue Feb 25, 2014 8:14 pm

amthonyblack wrote:Thanks Krauss...
A little more attention, please, thank you 8)

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Re: Critical mass

Post by richmond62 » Tue Feb 25, 2014 8:30 pm

Well; I do think that there was something a bit wrong hereabouts with approach.

I may be also slightly guilty; although I will only apologise to the extent of saying that I am sorry if I have hurt "amthony"'s personal feelings.

BUT, 'amthony' is right (as far as I can see) on 2 points:

1. RunRev website navigability and searchableness.

2. The need for Runrev to have, upfront, on their website, a socking great list of all the great stuff that has been
built using RR/LC.

I am aware that, recently, RunRev have started charging people who are marketing stuff made with LC for a listing on their website.

This may bring RunRev short-term gains (and I'm not sure about that), but if they listed ALL those who wanted to be listed, free of charge, I suspect the long-term gains would be greater.

Actually, the way RunRev's website, name of product, icon changes, and so on have been transmogrified a fair, few times over a relatively short-period make me think of a company that keeps chasing short-term gains,
rather than a company that is settling down for the long-term and establishing a long-lived, solid reputation.

Apart from its single-platform capability, one of the things that drove me away from Toolbook was the way it went through multiple changes of ownership, packaging and
presentation, so that after a while one really didn't know who owned it, and where to look.

As "somebody else" (as they say in politically correct places) mentioned on the Use-list: "I didn't contribute to the Kickstarter to lose PPC support" [and no s/he didn't, but as that was not discussed either way, they didn't contribute
to keep it either.], I do feel that RunRev are not behaving like a company that produces an Open Source product, insofar as they do not appear to take heed to the sort of criticisms as points
#1 and #2 above [which have been made in far more trenchant terms by people 'nearer to the throne' than me].

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Re: Critical mass

Post by FourthWorld » Tue Feb 25, 2014 8:53 pm

richmond62 wrote:1. RunRev website navigability and searchableness.
So far in this thread we've identified one key taxonomy issue, and a bug report has been submitted. If you find others let's explore those and see what we can do to improve the site's navigation.

Search is a harder question because I've found that the best search enhancements come from synonym tables, and while they're not hard to derive in an automated machine-learning way from projects like WordNet, those only help with general conversational US English, and provide little enhancement for specialized vocabularies like medicine or programming. LiveCode's English-like syntax compounds this somewhat, because some tokens are used in scripting differently than they may be used in conversational English, producing undesired clustering when stemming.

That said, it may be possible to explore tagging options to enhance search. But of course those are labor-intensive, requiring crowd-sourcing to be practical, and that means adding an authentication system and other elements to bring it about.

So in the meantime we're stuck with an off-the-shelf search engine, though even with that I generally find what I'm looking for at livecode.com. Have you found specific search terms there that yield inadequate results?
2. The need for Runrev to have, upfront, on their website, a socking great list of all the great stuff that has been
built using RR/LC.
The outcome of the taxonomy bug is that apparently the Showcase link was removed from the main nav bar during a recent round of updates to the site. A bug report has been submitted for that, so we can expect that to be addressed soon.
I am aware that, recently, RunRev have started charging people who are marketing stuff made with LC for a listing on their website.
That's only the consultant's listing,unrelated to the Case Studies. The amount of traffic I get from there is low, not surprising given its modest place in the site's layout. Shouldn't really concern anyone. As with any service, the most valuable marketing resource is one's own web site.

With case studies, if anyone has a stellar success story with a great-looking screen shot it would be helpful to bring it up. But as amthonyblack noted, simple apps aren't enough. To grab the attention of newcomers they should be truly outstanding works, technically sophisticated and visually compelling.
Richard Gaskin
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