Hello -hh, thank you for the kind words.
I want to make sure anyone reading anything I wrote above doesn't mis-construe my replies in a 2 year old thread with what may seem to them to be nickety complaints due to my writing style, which I sometimes feel is nickety myself. My goal here sure isn't to waste anyones time, never mind the core team who, by and far, puts out a very good product. Nor is it to denigrate what I find to be a fascinating language to program in.
Having said that, your notes are all well taken and understandable, I'll try to take them in order.
- Screen and not using workspaces - I do know about work spaces, however in the 15 or so years I've been using Linux it is usually the first thing I turn off. I work in a single screen because there are other things I am doing that require monitoring, such to the point that I can't just dedicate the screen to programming.
However, let us say that I decided to go with workspaces on Linux, and ignore everything else. It doesn't add to the main question almost all of my posts in this thread targeted, which was posed in the first post:
Postby asayd ยป Wed Mar 18, 2015 7:00 pm
Hi Folks,
...A few months back I solicited responses on the use-livecode mail list to the general question--What do new users (or even experienced users) find confusing about the LiveCode IDE? Now that the IDE has gone/is going open source on github, I thought I'd post the list here as food for thought:
I am a new user, thats for sure, but the first time I tried and failed to get my brain wrapped around Lc was the release of the first community edition. Believe it or not, despite failing to "get it" that (or many subsequent) times, I really REALLY like this package, so I am above all else trying to faithfully respond to that first post.
- Dictionary - I should probably have put my comments about the dictionary along with some of the conversation Richard and I had. I have actually downloaded and used Bernd's tiny dictionary, and think it is a heck of a work. If at some point I am finding myself more in the 8 or 9 series, you BETCHA that will wind up being my go to dictionary.
However, the way I read that first post where it pertains to my input is someone "new", in other words, someone lets say who just downloaded Lc for the first time, and maybe has even played with it for months. It took me over 6 months of plugging away this time before I even heard of tiny dictionary, and it sure doesn't come with Lc as a download.
Your looking at it with the jaundiced eye of someone who has many years of using and working around things. I do not think people taking it up for the first (or maybe 4th) time will have that eye, they are going to look at what comes down and if they don't last long enough to figure out that it even can be modified, my belief is they will walk.
Big deal? Maybe. I obviously am coming back to Lc again and again despite having alternatives I do understand, and I think this time I'm finally getting it (yay), but I sure didn't the first through fifth times.
- Look and feel - I personally have no idea how long look and feel was part of the view menu, but certainly through all the Lc's I used, but I *think* you missed the point of that edit, and I should probably have written it much clearer, as I say, my style of writing isn't always the best.
The point of the 'look and feel' edit wasn't to bring back the motif, win, mac, native choices, it was that since it had been deleted from the menu, perhaps it could be brought back to offer some one a choice between the newer and older style of the IDE. Again, I have no idea how easy / hard that would be to implement? I haven't written an IDE myself for nigh on 20 years now, and back then they were positively primitive. I took a run at it again in Squeak more than 10 years ago, but it is safe to say that idea was probably due to failure from the start
Lets look at your idea of Vms though, and whether someone should have to install one for something that was an option at least through 7.1.4. On linux / mac, if you want a windows interface, you could use Wine, probably the least impact required, and Lc does 'seem' to work pretty well in versions of it (
http://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=26591). I use it myself on occasion to test things out when developing because I know it won't have any impact on my main environment. I don't know that I would trust that for a complete development environment on any regular basis though, and if something happened it would be damned hard to figure out where the fault started.
Other Vms (virtualbox or vmware) have other issues. Although I have (don't ask) managed to get osx installed in various vms, I wouldn't call it a trifling task if thats the look your set on. Motif is easier, Windows probably easiest of all, but Vms also hit more heavily on resources and again are not something the new user is likely to focus on at all, certainly not for something like a look change.
Also for what I am thinking are obvious reasons, no vm images come with the dl for Lc, I am trying to concentrate on what comes out of the box, so to speak.
Are there work arounds to every problem I may encounter? Almost certainly, as you point out, "a lot of such changes available as "plugins" or "helper stacks" or "snippets"." Even now, though, I can't say I've ever gotten everything plug in related to work out of the box, I wasn't aware of what libraries were, or how to use other stacks and code re-use and (the list goes on) in Lc.
Certainly if your 'new'-ish to the package a LOT of the above isn't even readily apparent until you a.) know what to look for or b.) have been pointed towards it by someone after figuring out the right questions to ask.
I hope you take all of the above as it is intended, and that I was able to clarify at least a little. Peace out