livecode script on github

[idnoia]

i am new member and livecode script my second language after python.
why is livecode script not registered as a programming language?
how do we register a livecode script as a programming language on github like xojo.

anyone have any suggestions?

[stam]

That's a really good point.

As you point out, 'XOJO' (which is probably LiveCode's closest competitor in real terms) shows up as a language. LiveCode (or given how often 'livecode' or 'live code' is used in other contexts, LiveCodeScript) really should be registered as a language. But personally I have no idea how this is done.

Also telling is that if using Dash on Mac, or if on Linux/Windows, Zeal, to view documentation, XOJO shows up directly as a language, whereas James Hale's docset can only be found in Dash if drilling down to 'user contributed docsets' and I don't think that's even possible with Zeal, the little i tested it.

This comes down to marketing I guess, or lack thereof.
But it does have real impact on people trying to into the the language, who haven't been using LC for decades.

To the moderators and more experienced users: should this be an 'enhancement request' on the bug system? or just email support?

[FourthWorld]

To the moderators and more experienced users: should this be an 'enhancement request' on the bug system? or just email support?

What is required to "register" a language at GitHub?

[stam]

To the moderators and more experienced users: should this be an 'enhancement request' on the bug system? or just email support?

What is required to "register" a language at GitHub?

to quote myself from the preceding post: i have no idea how that's done
Had a cursory look in GitHub, but it did not become clearer...

I also don't know what is required to make LiveCode an official language for docsets for Dash etc.

However XOJO has managed both of these feats (and pretty much guaranteed this did not come from the user base), so can't see why LiveCode can't. Might be something for the marketing person/team to look into?

[FourthWorld]

To the moderators and more experienced users: should this be an 'enhancement request' on the bug system? or just email support?

What is required to "register" a language at GitHub?

to quote myself from the preceding post: i have no idea how that's done

The question would seem better suited for someone who is neither you nor me.

[andresdt]

Apparently it's not that difficult
GitHub indicates it uses the open source Linguist Library to determine the file language for syntax highlighting and repository statistics.

https://github.com/github/linguist
https://github.com/github/linguist/blob ... IBUTING.md

[PaulDaMacMan]

Apparently it's not that difficult
GitHub indicates it uses the open source Linguist Library to determine the file language for syntax highlighting and repository statistics.

https://github.com/github/linguist
https://github.com/github/linguist/blob ... IBUTING.md

Yes that's correct, in the past I have looked into pull request for adding LCS / LCB to GitHub's awareness, without any success.

[FourthWorld]

Apparently it's not that difficult
GitHub indicates it uses the open source Linguist Library to determine the file language for syntax highlighting and repository statistics.

https://github.com/github/linguist
https://github.com/github/linguist/blob ... IBUTING.md

I'm unclear on how that's used. Are you saying Github should be automatically picking up LC traces using that tool, or that everyone who wants their code tagged needs to be running that tool, or something else?

[PaulDaMacMan]

Apparently it's not that difficult
GitHub indicates it uses the open source Linguist Library to determine the file language for syntax highlighting and repository statistics.

https://github.com/github/linguist
https://github.com/github/linguist/blob ... IBUTING.md

I'm unclear on how that's used. Are you saying Github should be automatically picking up LC traces using that tool, or that everyone who wants their code tagged needs to be running that tool, or something else?

https://github.com/github/linguist/blob ... a-language

In most cases we prefer that each new file extension be in use in at least 200 unique :user/:repo repositories before supporting them in Linguist.

I don't think there's anywhere near enough LC users that are using GitHub

[andresdt]

Apparently it's not that difficult
GitHub indicates it uses the open source Linguist Library to determine the file language for syntax highlighting and repository statistics.

https://github.com/github/linguist
https://github.com/github/linguist/blob ... IBUTING.md

I'm unclear on how that's used. Are you saying Github should be automatically picking up LC traces using that tool, or that everyone who wants their code tagged needs to be running that tool, or something else?

Once you push changes to a repository on GitHub, the Linguist does its thing with a low-priority background job that will go through all of the files to determine the language of each file.

https://dev.to/katkelly/changing-your-r ... ithub-5gjo

[bwmilby]

Probably a good reason to use ScriptTracker for binary stacks posted to GitHub. This would increase the number of livecodescript files posted there with very little work on the developer (I.e. no need to convert to SOS/behaviors).

[stam]

Probably a good reason to use ScriptTracker for binary stacks posted to GitHub. This would increase the number of livecodescript files posted there with very little work on the developer (I.e. no need to convert to SOS/behaviors).

Thanks for providing this Brian - i've yet to use it, but am planning to
Arguably functionality should be part of the IDE; all major IDEs have version control (usually git) built in.

But the problem runs deeper; there are hundreds of LC repos on GitHub already but it's difficult to find these as 'livecode' has been coopted by the programming community to mean something very different, hence searching for 'livecode' provides a raft of projects using a huge variety of languages.
Practically all liveCode repos either don't include language detail, or are listed as C,C++ or HTML.

Increasing the number of repos in this context will not, i suspect, bring LiveCode any closer to being recognised as a language automatically.

It seems that GitHub uses an open source tool called Linguist to determine the project's language.

From their repo: Language Savant. If your repository's language is being reported incorrectly, send us a pull request!

This means the mothership needs to take action for this.
Probably would be helpful to include differentiation in the name - LiveCodeScript is the most obvious choice, to avoid confusion with all the projects with the term livecode and livecoding in them, which probably outnumber the actual liveCode repos.

But this isn't anything the users can sort out; it needs to come from LiveCode inc.

[PaulDaMacMan]

From their repo: Language Savant. If your repository's language is being reported incorrectly, send us a pull request!

This means the mothership needs to take action for this.
Probably would be helpful to include differentiation in the name - LiveCodeScript is the most obvious choice, to avoid confusion with all the projects with the term livecode and livecoding in them, which probably outnumber the actual liveCode repos.

But this isn't anything the users can sort out; it needs to come from LiveCode inc.

That's not correct. Anyone can do a pull request. It seems it's just the opposite, this isn't anything the LiveCode Inc. can sort out. For the pull to be excepted more LiveCode users need to upload .livecodescript files to GitHub repos for their system to scan. Once they've determined there's enough LCS (and hopefully .lcb files too someday) files/repos then they will add it to the official git language list. At least that's how I understand it.

[stam]

That's not correct. Anyone can do a pull request.

Anyone can do a pull request; but should everyone do this? Why is it not up to LiveCode inc to sort out?

Let's compare with XOJO which the most similar to LiveCode, both in terms of cross-platform offerings and in terms of user numbers:

I'm pretty sure there are not more XOJO projects on git than there are LiveCode on git, yet XOJO is recognised as a language (keeping in mind that to use the text version of projects, you have to pay a premium to XOJO for the 'Pro' version, so the actual text/nonbinary files are a small subset of what's on git, and i remain unconvinced that not using script-only stacks is the reason).

When it comes to Dash docsets, XOJO is recognised out of the box as an official language yet LiveCode is not, and relies on James Hale's 'user contribution' which means it's not easy to load. This is not down to how many users use Dash, because again i'm willing to bet that it's roughly the same numbers.

I'll put good money on a bet that this is down to XOJO's marketing team and not down to users 'uploading projects'.
To put things in context, even their CEO posted comments on this very forum not so long ago, because they do take their marketing seriously (it's just everything else with their product and conduct i dislike )

At some point it may be good for LiveCode users to stop blaming themselves and appoint responsibility where it's due.

[AndyP]

I did a little digging, and searching on github there are>

https://github.com/search?p=10&q=extens ... &type=Code
70,973 code results for .rev which where the former extension name Revolution used before being renamed to LiveCode. Most of these are however Recovery volume files that have been created by RAR file compression and nor Revolution files.

These files now have no relationship to the current LiveCode and are binary and will not be scanned by github so can be ignored!

https://github.com/search?q=extension%3 ... &type=Code
2,223 code results for .livecode files, again not all of these are actual LiveCode files and many are for single line entries as part of the RosettaCode data project.

The files that are true Livecode files are binary and will not be scanned by github, so these too have to be disregarded.!!

https://github.com/search?q=extension%3 ... &type=Code
3,256 code results for .livecodescript most of these are true LiveCode livecodescript files.

So we are left with the livecodescript files. These are text only so will be scanned by GitHub in respect of popularity.

As far as I can determine there are only about 30 repositories on github with .livecodescript files, which falls well below the 200 repositories required to be considered as a language listing in github.

So in conclusion what we need is a concerted push for more repositories containing livecodescript files.

I haven't worked out to search github to spit out the number of repositories which uniquely contain livecodescript files which would be very useful as the searches above all give the number of repositories as 0.


Edit: Yikes! I just realized that my repository does not contain .livecodescript files, but it will in another 10 minutes