Native widgets; bug fixes

[Pomo]

Hello all,

I have been assessing LiveCode for iOS/Android development, and was just about to give up on it when LC 8 DP1 was released in the nick of time. Unfortunately, my first simple iPhone standalone app (in LC 7) resembled, not to put too sharp a point on it, a settings dialog from Windows 3.1. So I was completely thrilled to see the five iOS-like widgets introduced. I think these widgets and the ability to create them will ultimately take LC a long way forward.

Here are a couple of perhaps naive questions:

1) These widgets are emulated in LCB during development. Are they somehow converted to the native iOS widgets when built as a standalone?

2) What is the best way to report bugs and/or offer the code for fixes and improvements? For example, there's a little bug in the Navbar widget where it fails to use the selected vs. unselected icons. And I'd like to be able to set the color of the switchButton to other than green.

Thanks for helping to orient me.

Doug

[LCMark]

@Pomo: 8 is still in its early stages from the widgets point of view, however as you have seen yourself they are hopefully going to be a huge boon to both platform-specific apps and cross-platform ones alike.

At the moment all widgets are emulated - indeed we intend to provide all the common widgets from all platforms with emulated native-looking theme switching capability (and eventually with the ability for you to define your own themes).

We also intend to wrap the corresponding native controls on each platform in a way which will also be switchable - however this will mean some will have 'lowest common denominator' customisable/functionality so that you can use native elements in exactly the same way on all platforms (and so you can use the same code). (A good example of where emulated might be better than native in some cases - your color of switch button is a good example - I don't think you can do that witha native iOS switch, but in an emulated theme we can of course provide that flexibility).

Which you choose to use in a given case will very much depend on your use-case, but we want to ensure that you have the choice.

In regards to bugs/enhancements then the first place to start is to file individual reports in the LiveCode quality centre. If you want to help out then that's great - we have a community contribution process (being an open-source project) centrered around our GitHub repositories using a standard pull request mechanism. You can find out more about this on our community pages.

[Pomo]

LCMark:

Thanks for your reply. I will certainly check out community contribution pages.

One immediate goal is to write a "Time Picker" in iOS and bring it up in a LC window. Can you tell me whether this is possible in practice (not the Xcode part, the LC integration)? I do see that LC translates option menus into iOS pickers, so there must be some interface that allows an iOS view to appear in or over the LC window.

The LCB docs mention "foreign handlers". Are these in a usable state yet for the above task? Are there any docs, tutorials, or examples of how to create and call a foreign handler?

Alternatively I see the Externals SDK described in the LC User Manual. Is this SDK suitable for accessing iOS? I did manage to find the SDK; however all the User Guide's links for tutorials lead to a generic resources page, while the tutorials page contains nothing pertinent. Can anyone help me find the info I need to get started?

BTW, the iOS switch's on, off, and thumb colors can all be set. But I think the emulation+theme approach will present much thornier problems than adding a few more properties. Just try to find any app built with Java/Swing that can pass as native.