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Questions Regarding the Upcoming LiveCode 8.0

Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2015 6:59 pm
by SirWobbyTheFirst
So I was noseying through the LiveCode website and noticed some of the plans for 8.0 and I thus I have a couple of questions I was hoping could be answered regarding the new release:

1) In the website it states that 8.0 will automatically native-themed objects for your stack, will this mean that a progress bar placed onto a stack will look and feel exactly like a progress bar for a native Win32/MacOS application? By this I mean in Visual Studio if I drop a progress bar on a form and then set its value to 50/100 the progress bar shows a sort of pulse in the filled section, additionally will it mean we can have indeterminate progress bars like in Windows Update when it is checking for updates. Because that would be pretty cool, especially if it opens the way towards Ribbons in Windows, the Aqua toolbar on OS X and would make LiveCode apps look like first class citizens on their respective platform.
2) The LiveCode Builder language, will this allow us to possibly override some of the functionality in LiveCode? For example I work on the Nix "virtual" OS and one of the things I'd like to prevent would be the activation of SecureMode (Because it would just well break Nix completely) as well as redirect attempts to use LiveCode's commands such as Open File and Write To File to the actual APIs in Nix so that security would be enforced and it would also be pretty cool to be able to write in that functionality without having to study and work with C and the engine's own source code.

I apologise if these seem like some of the longest questions you have ever read so I shall try and Reddit-ify things up with a TL;DR. Ahem, tl;dr Can I do all the things with? :D But seriously, if these two above are true and what you have planned, I will be overjoyed beyond belief.

Kindest regards,
Mike.

Re: Questions Regarding the Upcoming LiveCode 8.0

Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2015 9:01 am
by LCMark
@mickpitkin92: In regards to using OS controls, then yes we are working on allowing you to write widgets that leverage these relatively easily. We'll be providing emulated versions for all platforms with a much higher degree of fidelity than we currently have (so even the emulated ones should be indistinguishable from native ones); but we'll also be providing wrappers around the common native OS elements.

In regards to modifying the language, then the long-term goal is to move much of the engine's currently functionality into LiveCode Builder to make it easier for anyone to modify and augment it. In terms of what you are wanting to do in terms of changing behavior of existing syntax, then this would be possible when we introduce Open Language (which is targetted for the next major release after 8 - when we have matured widgets further). We'll be moving all current syntax forward to the Open Language model, and you'll be able to produce your own variants of the core engine modules which do as you wish. So, you'll be able to modify the file module (for example) to put in the access control you require.

Re: Questions Regarding the Upcoming LiveCode 8.0

Posted: Fri May 08, 2015 11:39 am
by geofhaigh
Warning about LC 8 AutoUpdate!

I was developing happily with LC 6.5.2...
But following persistent notifications to update, I allowed the LC AutoUpdater to do an update. It chose LiveCode 8.0, without warning me that:
- LC 8.0 (dp 2) is a development version, with lots of bugs,
- Once you have touched a stack with LC 8.0, it seems you cannot go back. Both LC 6.5.2 and LC 7.0.4 see such stacks as being corrupt.

Any suggestions about how to recover from LC 8.0?

Re: Questions Regarding the Upcoming LiveCode 8.0

Posted: Fri May 08, 2015 3:57 pm
by LCMark
@geofhaigh: You can control what the auto-updater notifies you of by tweaking the settings in Preferences > Updates - you can control which type of releases trigger it to bounce at you :)

In terms of a stack becoming corrupted then did you drag a widget onto your stack before saving it? LC8 *only* saves in the new stackfile format (which previous versions cannot load) if your stack has a widget on one of the cards. If you load the stack into LC8 and delete the widget(s) and resave it should revert back to LC 7 format.