mergZXing for android

[Geoff.Macumber]

Can anyone tell me if this is available yet?

I have tried but get no result. I really need to scan bar codes in android but cannot find a way to do it.

Help anyone!!

[Geoff.Macumber]

I have moved this to new topic to see if anyone picks up on it.

The new topic is Scan QR-Codes in andrord and iOS

Regards Geoff Macumber

[Mikey]

Terrible idea, don't cross-post. The list admin gets testy. The grey beards saw your message and left it. Just a "bump" under the original would have been enough to get one or more of us to chime in.
Here's the short answer: Check the bug reports at quality.livecode.com. See if there is already a request for porting mergAV to Android. If there is not, make one, and see what the answer is.

QR codes as of today can only be scanned on ios. Barcode scanning, like most of the other "merg" externals were written specifically for ios by Monte before he worked for LC, normally by wrapping some library or some high-level API. Monte was (and maybe still is) an Apple wonk, not an Android wonk. Many of the externals that Monte wrote were partially or fully funded by individuals in the community who wanted some feature and paid Monte to add it. Most of us were interested in iOS.
Also, you will want to use mergAV, not mergZXing, now, as the barcoding in mergAV is better/more responsive/more accurate than mergZXing, and I'm not sure that if/when Monte ever ports his externals to Android that mergZX will be one of them.

[mrcoollion]

I am also in desperate need of barcode scanning functionality for Livecode. MergAndroid would be sufficient for me now but there is no way I can get it (as an Indy Dev).
Here is the email string I got on this subject last week...
Maybe a good idea for you (and others) to do the same request so the urgency level might rise.....
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Paul ,

Thank you for your request. I don't have an eta at present, however it is
something that is likely to come with Infinite LiveCode, which will make it a
lot easier to add these kinds of features. We are making good progress on this.

Regards,

Heather

01/16/2017 17:00 - Paul wrote:

> I am sorry to hear this as 81+% of the mobile devices are android based.
>
> Is there any e.t.a. on an android external for barcode reading?
>
> Thanks for the information.
>
> Regards,
>
> Paul
>
> 2017-01-16 12:56 GMT+01:00 LiveCode Customer Support <support@runrev.com>:
>
> > Dear Paul,
> >
> > Thank you for your request.
> >
> > I'm sorry, we do not have this functionality as an external for Android
> > yet.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Heather
> >
> > 01/15/2017 15:17 - tawk.to wrote:
> >
> > > Offline message sent by Paul
> > > =======================================================================
> > > Offline message sent on Sunday, January 15, 2017, at 14:17 (GMT+0)
> > >
> > > Site : livecode.com
> > > Visitor name : Paul
> > > Email :
> > > Message : Where or how can I get the android externals to scan barcodes
> > with
> > on
> > > the android platform?
> > >
> > > Kind regards,
> > >
> > > Paul
> > > Submitted From : https://livecode.com/account/products/livecode
> > >
> > > Follow us on :
> > > https://www.facebook.com/tawkto
> > > https://twitter.com/tawktotawk
> > > https://www.tawk.to/blog/
> > >

> >
> > Heather Laine
> > --
> > LiveCode Support Team ~ http://www.livecode.com
> > --

> --
> Paul
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[jacque]

Monte has said that the reason his externals are only for iOS is not because of any favoritism but because Android does not permit easy integration with LC. It's more an OS limitation than a preference. They're working on a solution.

[Geoff.Macumber]

Thank you everyone for the responses.

However none of this helps my situation (or Paul's as per his response above). As Paul stated 81+% of all mobiles are android not iOS so I would think it should be a priority for any company to port solutions to android first and foremost. Disappointing considering the iOS version has been around for some time now. There is huge scope for apps on android with these sort of utilities to open up the market. I have been involved in projects for smart phones for a few years now and those for android always got priority because of its market share. I like LC but there are some wrinkles that need to be sorted before I love it!

I will try out the suggestions and see where I get.

Heather,
Any timing on LC infinite?

Regards,

Geoff Macumber.

[mrcoollion]

Probably 81 % of all livecode personnel have i-phones

[Geoff.Macumber]

It should be the market that dictates where product development heads and not the personal choices of livecode personnel

For example I am developing a solution for a company that has over 100 personnel in the field. All of their phones are android

Once this app is finished (almost done except for QR-Codes) I will be wanting to market it to 100's of other similar companies, and from my research, very few have iPhones except maybe the management of these companies. For the personnel in the field cheap is best. It is all to do with expense and cost for these businesses. Android based phones are cheaper than iPhones. That is why most of the market is android.

Is anyone able to tell me when mergZXing will be available on android?

Kind regards,

Geoff Macumber

[Geoff.Macumber]

Monte, if you are watching this post, would you be interested in beta testing with an app that will test the android solution to death

I would be very happy to oblige

Regards Geoff.

[Jamesplank]

Hi Geoff
I have a question for you if you don't mind.

Ive been away from live code for about 3 years. Finally gave up when I didn't see much happening on providing a remote debugger for mobile.
As I run a business I couldn't justify the length of time it took PLAYING with live code to make my apps work.

Now it appears a remote debugger is to be launched soon for the business edition. And this is great.

So Iam reconsidering giving live code another go to create android apps.
Coming back and the amount of time it will take me to come back up to speed is a commitment.

So.... How have you found the experience creating your app for a decent number of users who are mostly android?
Are you locked in because of your investment in time to live code versus going to newer tools?
Or, in your opinion is live code now a grown up product for commercial development of mobile apps?

A bit of a contentious question I know. Thanks for any light you may be able to share

Thanks

[Geoff.Macumber]

Hi James,

I'd better use a lot of PC for this!

I have been developing software for over 40 years now. I have used a myriad of different tools, databases, 4GLs, programming languages and assorted utilities to produce applications. IMHO I think that LiveCode is one of the better development platforms I've used although there are some wrinkles that need to be addressed.

Some of my frustrations are that it is not yet what I would call a completely mature product but it is very close. There are still quite a few things that need to be done either better or implemented. One very frustrating thing is that I know there are 3 or 4 times as many android phones out there than there are iPhones. However most of the LiveCode developers seem to have iPhones and so the development effort is slanted that way. Personally I think there should be a much more commercial outlook which would mean that the platforms that are supported with new stuff ought to be prioritized in order of market presence. I think that should mean 1) Windows/Linux; 2) android; 3) iPhone; and then the rest.

One of the very frustrating things I find is that the way the interrupts work it is possible to cause the IDE to freeze in such a tight loop that you have to abort the task which may mean losing some code. I used to use a thing called Revelation RevG and then Advanced Revelation (AREV) many years ago (about 25) and this never happened. it was a sensational platform except that it was DOS based. The database was a PICK style database. I wrote a 4GL called InfoWis which was a tool to port AREV and RevG to Prime Information, UniVerse, UniData and now openQM which are all PICK style databases that run on various flavours of Unix. It also never had the problem of a complete freeze. I find that PICK style databases are light years ahead of any SQL DB. They have been around longer, matured about 35 years ago and are much faster both in operation and for development. They also (especially openQM) have added some amazing functionality that makes them perfect for anything I develop. For example I can get over 53,000 transaction per second with tasks running within our server. Across the net I have achieved 2-300 per second.

In answer to our investment - yes, we are too far invested in LiveCode to start again with another platform. We are nearly ready to launch a new app which will run on Windows with phone apps running on iPhone and android (mostly android). I'm not sure about the UK but here in Australia the percentage is about 67/33 in favour of android over iOS. That's why I desperately need this toolset (mergZXing) to be available sooner rather than later on android. Our app for this first company will have over 100 users in the field using ALL android phones with a desktop app for their head office (2 or 3 users) and our cloud based database (openQM) running on freeBSD. It is a dynamite fast combination. After this first company for this new app we will be marketing to the 1,000's of others in the same field around the world. But we need android tools.

I just need mergZXing to work on android!!!

Lastly I would recommend that you could very easily re-kick start development using LiveCode faster than learning a new environment. There are some very nice new facilities now available. When we started we were considering Embarcadero as it can also use the same code base for multiple platform deployments but we chose LiveCode because we figured it would be a lot faster to get up and running and it was.

I hope this answers some of your concerns.

regards

Geoff Macumber, Melbourne Australia...

[Geoff.Macumber]

Just one more suggestion for those who develop the LiveCode platform.

Can I suggest a new flag in the IDE called "Turn quit OFF" so that when you have a quit in the wrong place you can never get in to fix it. If it were possible to make the quit command inoperable temporarily it would save lots of lost effort, frustration and new ways of stringing expletives together

Geoff Macumber

[Lagi Pittas]

Hi Geoff,

Looking at your mention of Embarcadero sounds like you were a Turbo Pascal/ Delphi user as well - I first used Turbo Pascal on my Apple ][ with the Microsoft Z80/CPM card so I'm long in the tooth as well

Anyway I haven't done any spelunking on this but how about this for an idea - i'm sure you would be upto it.

This is FreePascal/Lazarus/Delphi code for a QR scanner - originally for IOS but later on in the thread somebody modified it to work on Android.
http://www.tmssoftware.com/site/blog.asp?post=280

Why not use Scot Mcdonald's Pascal SDK to create an external for the Freepascal code.
http://www.runrevplanet.com/desktopexternals.html

KIndest Regards Lagi

[Geoff.Macumber]

Hi Lagi,

I had a quick look at the links you sent. Hmmmm!, I think this may be the answer I've been looking for. It would also open up lots and lots of other opportunities to add to the availability of tools to LiveCode.

It does mean that I will need to revisit Delphi/pascal again (Bugger!) and it has been since qay before the millennium people came into being - so a long time. Funny how you sometimes can't see the forest for the trees. I will be in touch later when I get a chance to have a deeper look.

For now though, thanks very much Lagi, I appreciate the idea. If I can manage to pursue it further I may just start producing some libraries for other things as well.

Regards,

Geoff Macumber (old fart!)

[jacque]

Just one more suggestion for those who develop the LiveCode platform.

Can I suggest a new flag in the IDE called "Turn quit OFF" so that when you have a quit in the wrong place you can never get in to fix it. If it were possible to make the quit command inoperable temporarily it would save lots of lost effort, frustration and new ways of stringing expletives together

It's already there. Click the Messages icon in the toolbar at the top. That turns off all messages so your scripts won't run. Then open your stack, remove the command, and turn messages back on again.