Hello. New and can't find good baby steps

[Cybernicus]

Hi folks. I'm new. Can anyone point me to anything other than what's offered with Runrev to get into this very gingerly? Sorry if you see this kind of plea often but I didn't see a similar thread in my initial forays into this forum. I have found some of the samples jumping way over my head or going to places I don't need to quite go and it's frustrating me. I have some ancient experience with HyperCard and ToolBook but that was a couple of decades ago now. I've never been much of a programmer and just want to create a simple document with some fields and buttons. Thanks for any help.

[Klaus]

Hi Cybernicus,

welcome to the club

Maybe these stacks will help to get a "feel" for LiveCode?

http://www.runrev.com/developers/lesson ... nferences/
And this forum of course: Just ask a question and you wil get some help very soon

Best

Klaus

[Cybernicus]

Hi Cybernicus,

welcome to the club

Maybe these stacks will help to get a "feel" for LiveCode?

...Best

Klaus

Thank you Klaus. Most appreciated.

[dunbarx]

Oddly, what you are asking might best be addressed by getting the "bibles" on Hypercard.

HC is a subset (and progenitor) of LC, and though some methodologies are slightly different, 99% of what is there will serve you perfectly in "getting" LiveCode.

These are Danny Goodman's "Complete Hypercard 2.2 Handbook", and Winkler, Kamins and Devoto's "Hypertalk 2.2, the Book"

They are around, especially on eBay and other similar places. I think these are underutilized in teaching LC to newbies.

I have several of the Hypertalk books. Not sure why so many. They were comforting 20 years ago. I could let go of a few to anyone willing to pay the postage.

Craig Newman

[Cybernicus]

Thanks folks but I'm striking out. I ordered that HyperCard book from E-bay. But that will take some time. Some of the things I've encountered are when doing the sample lesson involving a video window it says enter the name of a quick time movie file. Well I went out and got some .mov files and runrev is not recognizing them. There's no little context-sensitive help functions to look to to figure out what some of these fields are looking for. Something as elementary as drawing a freehand polygon using the drawing tools created a problem I couldn't resolve and there was nothing in the manual on how to use those tools. I used to use HyperCard and Asymentrix ToolBook and I don't remember having this much problem just getting oriented to how cards and backgrounds work. I'm looking for a little more that the "hello world" lesson--maybe something like a Rolodex stack I could take apart. But most everything I'm finding in the way of a linear intro which will get me to experience the card function and the beginning of scripting is not here at all. Have i not looked in the right place? So many times I keep finding myself back at the Tutorial/Lessons screen which starts with the 8 Puzzle stack. It's poor. Very very poor. Thanks if you have any further ideas.

[witeowl]

I've found this rather handy: http://livecode.byu.edu/

[dunbarx]

Were you reasonably proficient in HC? Did you write scripts? I would not have suggested buying those books if I had known you were.

If so, you should have no trouble navigating and using tools. At the beginners level, the usual hurdle "getting" LC, coming from HC, is mainly about groups. Of course, LC is far richer and more powerful overall. But the comfort level should already be high with you.

If not, you will soon progress rapidly. Make an address book and add all sorts of gratuitous functionality to it. Were you able to do such a thing in HC? The early days are the hardest. They go away quickly. The address book will make you an intermediate in no time, if you survive the process.

That mov. tutorial might have one small issue with it that is breaking something. Why can't you use a freehand tool? What was the issue? Can you make a new button? Can you compose a handler in that button? Write back. The good news is that there is unlimited free and good natured support in this community. We will stand by you until you think you don't need us anymore. Hah.

Also, post to the mail list:

use-livecode@lists.runrev.com


Craig Newman

[Cybernicus]

Were you reasonably proficient in HC? Did you write scripts? I would not have suggested buying those books if I had known you were.

If so, you should have no trouble navigating and using tools. At the beginners level, the usual hurdle "getting" LC, coming from HC, is mainly about groups. Of course, LC is far richer and more powerful overall. But the comfort level should already be high with you.

If not, you will soon progress rapidly. Make an address book and add all sorts of gratuitous functionality to it. Were you able to do such a thing in HC? The early days are the hardest. They go away quickly. The address book will make you an intermediate in no time, if you survive the process.

That mov. tutorial might have one small issue with it that is breaking something. Why can't you use a freehand tool? What was the issue? Can you make a new button? Can you compose a handler in that button? Write back. The good news is that there is unlimited free and good natured support in this community. We will stand by you until you think you don't need us anymore. Hah.

Also, post to the mail list:



Craig Newman

Thanks for all your help. Here's my experience:

I attended NYC's "School of Visual Arts" in 1988 and took a class on "Interface Design". HperCard was the program they used. Like most courses I've had in my experience time ran out just getting people oriented to the tools and not really getting to being proficient with them. I experienced the same thing in drafting school years later taking AutoCad 2000. We never got to anything on the Z axis in a whole year. Anyway, with HyperCard I was able to get the tools down but I had no introduction at all to programming. I just copied buttons and fields and observed the basic programming lingo about how to move around but time was up and there was no treatment of any arithmetical functions. I got an A in the class however but I think the quality of my visual touches had a lot to do with that as I meticulously created art in other programs and used that instead of HyperCard nascent tools. I was however a PC guy as I worked for a major bank on Wall St. and Macs were for sandled Californians back then. LOl.

So, Paul Allen founded "Asymentrix" and they came out with the PC version of HyperCard called "ToolBook". I was able to adapt my little HyperCard knowledge to ToolBook and ToolBook looked just like RunRev. In my job I wanted to advance a policy of "proactive" information and knowledge management. Such a thing is still lacking today in most businesses. But what I did to try to get backing from upper management to illustrate what I was saying was to "virtualize" the skyscraper I worked in on the NYC Skyline. We occupied the first 16 floors of this building. I went around and got floor plans for each floor and created a "god's eve" view of the building from the sky down. You could click on buttons to see each floor and the building would shear off and show you all the departments. I used clip art and stuff to even depict file cabinets and what was in them. I wanted people to understand what they were seeing when they first saw the building from the sky downward so I created car and bus traffic going around the block around the building. I could not get the programming to work so I took some other stack that had motion in it and "made it work". Circumstances carried me away from all of this and I never had the chance to fulfill it. Now I'm trying to put together a working document which expresses my various ideas for a business. I'm tired of writing linear word files and having them be disassociated. I need a hyper text way to start assembling things so that they all stay linked. But I also want to eventually illustrate everything. I thought ToolBook was gone--it had been bought up and the last time I looked it was like a grand for a license. Low and behold RunRev is just like it but 23 years have gone by and it seems the documentation runs past some of the rudimentary things I need to refresh like cards relationships to backgrounds, how to simply program forward and backward with cards and so forth. It seems everything I'm looking at is "programming focused" and even at that it assumes you're oriented to programming (while still professing to be for the inexperienced beginner).

I'm seeing no little "question marks" that you pull down to see explanations of things like what you might expect in programs with "context-sensitive help". There are so many provisions for things on the various "inspectors" but nothing I can see to get explanations. Is there more to this when I buy the software rather than using the trial? Or is this it and buying a license will just continue the same functionality?

Thanks again. Jim

[Cybernicus]

I've found this rather handy: **********

Thant's turning out to be quite a find. Thanks a bunch.

ETA: This is covering exactly what I need. I'm getting the flow finally of how to control all the properties and what not. This software provides so much functionality without the hint of help that it is actually in its own way. But the lesson plan you provided has been just great in getting me at least off my knees and on my first baby step.

Thanks again.

[dunbarx]

OK.

Which book did you order? Danny Goodman is more important to start. Build that address book. You just have to. It is hard to start a real life project from the outset. You almost have to be a hobbyist for at least a while. The play is the thing.

Write often for advice.

Craig Newman

[Cybernicus]

OK.

Which book did you order? Danny Goodman is more important to start. Build that address book. You just have to. It is hard to start a real life project from the outset. You almost have to be a hobbyist for at least a while. The play is the thing.

Write often for advice.

Craig Newman

I ordered the Complete HyperCard Hand Book 2.2 Fourth Edition Danny Goodman

I got conformation today that it shipped. It was $5 plus $4 shipping. Not bad.

So, you're saying create an address book from scratch?

After doing that BYU lesson the other poster pointed me to I'm really getting the essentials down of how to manipulate properties and so fourth. But I'm not quite ready to code yet and need to cross that threshold with some more slow introductory stuff. One thing I've been trying to figure out is if you say, create a kind of personalized wallpaper for your company in another bitmap program and saved it as a jpeg, could you use that as a background in a stack that would be a background on every card? Trying that has been clunky and apparently Rev is set up more for creating everything internally. I want certain effects and flavor to what I do that I know how to get with Corel but not with Rev. Am I barking up the wrong tree?

[shaosean]

- create your image
- import your image
- open the inspector for the stack
- go to "Colours & Patterns"
- click the square in the first column for "Background"
- select "This Stack" from the "Image Library" drop down
- pick the image

Now all your cards (and sub-stacks) will have that image as their background.. You can hide the original image so it is not visible any more..

[Cybernicus]

- create your image
- import your image
- open the inspector for the stack
- go to "Colours & Patterns"
- click the square in the first column for "Background"
- select "This Stack" from the "Image Library" drop down
- pick the image

Now all your cards (and sub-stacks) will have that image as their background.. You can hide the original image so it is not visible any more..

Thanks but that didn't work for me. I followed everything you said but when I pick the image it didn't come into any of those boxes in the "This stack" function and nothing happened to make it the background. I added a card and it came up white. I tried double-clicking on the image and nothing. Any further ideas? Thanks.

[Cybernicus]

- create your image
- import your image
- open the inspector for the stack
- go to "Colours & Patterns"
- click the square in the first column for "Background"
- select "This Stack" from the "Image Library" drop down
- pick the image

Now all your cards (and sub-stacks) will have that image as their background.. You can hide the original image so it is not visible any more..

OK. I solved it. You have to go to "Image Library" from the "development" drop-down and import the image into the library in order for it to show up in that "this stack" group. Oye. I don't get how anyone is supposed to figure this stuff out without a manual or some decent help functions (unless it's ALL word of mouth here on the forum). Crazy.

[witeowl]

Oye. I don't get how anyone is supposed to figure this stuff out without a manual or some decent help functions (unless it's ALL word of mouth here on the forum). Crazy.

Hmm... Though it's far from complete, you have found these, including the user's guide/manual, right? (I will admit that finding all the hiding places of manuals/help/etc. has been a source of frustration for me. Worst of all, I think, is the semi-secret iOS release notes. Klaus gets frustrated that people aren't using them, but I honestly would never have found them at all if it weren't for him pointing it out to other lost users.)