How can I refresh the dictionary?

[Simon Knight]

I am trying to sort out the inline documentation of a Library that is written in livecode builder. At the moment I have to quit Livecode inorder to force the dictionary to update to the latest version of the in line documentation.

There has to be a better way.

[richmond62]

At the moment I have to quit Livecode inorder to force the dictionary to update to the latest version of the in line documentation.

Is the inline documentation being updated so frequently that you cannot afford the few minutes to quite LC and restart it?

[Simon Knight]

Yes!

Have you tried writing inline documentation?!! I feel like I am crawling about in a dark room looking for an exit.

(If you answered yes then what reference did you read?)

[stam]

I got a lot of help with this from Bernd whey I released the TriState Switch script widget. Not LCB, but I think some similarities when generating the inline documentation. GitHub repo: https://github.com/stam66/tristate

I've kinda given up with this, as on working with another script widget and trying to include inline documentation, my dictionary now takes about 6 mins to load - every time... sigh (yes, even after restarts). I've got bigger fish to fry sadly...

[richmond62]

I didn't read any reference, and my inline notes are strictly notes-to-self: and somewhat terse:
-

-

-

-
And those 3 screen shots are from a single script in a single object.

Some 'prawn' at a "university" I attended was burbling on about if I were hit by a bus, I should leave notes for who ever inherited my code:

this, frankly, struck me as a load of old tosh: and, much more to the point was to insert inline guff for yourself: and as I have been mucking around with my Devawriter Pro for nigh-on 14 years they are extremely useful as, normally, I haven't a clue as to what I was thinking a month ago, and a whole lot less so a decade back.

[Simon Knight]

#Stam,
Thanks for the link to your tristate switch which looks impressive. 6 minutes to load the dictionary seems excessive.

#Richmond,
I think we may be at crossed purposes. I'm trying to get the dictionary instructions which are built from key words and phrases in the LCB code looking o.k.

[richmond62]

What I understand by 'inline documentation' are notes inserted inwith code as per my screenshots.

[stam]

#Stam,
Thanks for the link to your tristate switch which looks impressive. 6 minutes to load the dictionary seems excessive.

Yeah I don't know what I've done - obviously something wrong! - but have no bandwidth to troubleshoot this other widget... (this doesn't affect the tristate widget, that one loads just fine).

Hope that helps
S.

[Simon Knight]

Richmond
In the wonderful world of livecode builder there is the option of including the dictionary entries for the library or widget inside the livecode builder code. Unfortunately this is, I believe, in markdown format and also has to contain keywords followed by colons. The result in my case in much experimenting often with a poor result.

I say I believe its markdown but having just looked at Stam's Github it appears that html tags might be allowed. It true then I think its a new to me feature.

[stam]

Richmond
In the wonderful world of livecode builder there is the option of including the dictionary entries for the library or widget inside the livecode builder code. Unfortunately this is, I believe, in markdown format and also has to contain keywords followed by colons. The result in my case in much experimenting often with a poor result.

I say I believe its markdown but having just looked at Stam's Github it appears that html tags might be allowed. It true then I think its a new to me feature.

I'd be surprised if it was markdown - LCB probably predates the widespread adoption of MD, but it would definitely not be the first time I was wrong

[richmond62]

The wonderful world of LCB might be a reflection of the wonderful minds of those who invented LCB: so, surely, as they have not, yet, headed for the hills, they should be asked directly about that: even pressed to provide some sort of handbook so LCB doesn't look like one of those limited vocabulary languages prepubescent boys often make up.

[bn]

Hi Simon,

For exactly the problem you describe namely to shorten the time to write inline documentation for LCB (and LCS widgets) I amended tinyDictionary by an option to load the LCB, livecodesript file and see what the dictionary looks like. I feel with you writing inline documentation is finicky and a quick look helps tremendously.

I append my current version here.

In case you use tinyDictionary remove your older version and replace it by the new one in the Plugins folder. Otherwise put it into the Plugins folder.
You can configure it via Menu "Development" -> "Plugins" -> "Plugins Settings"

I think Brian Milby did something similar but I can not find it on his GitHub repository.


Then in the new version of tinyDictionary choose your file

Kind regards
Bernd

Edit: I made a mistake when choosing dictionary from .lcb files or .livecodescript files. LCB files where not available. Fixed in this version.
I also uploaded the current version to livecodeshare or "Sample Stacks"

This is the current tinyDictionary version.

[bn]

Hi Simon,

Here is a stack that searches all LCB files that come with LC and those in your extension folder in "My Livecode" folder.

I found it helpful to see how others have written inline documentation for LCB.
If you leave the search field empty and hit return it will report all handlers of all LCB files it can find in your setup.

Also I found it useful to search for LCB syntax which sometimes is close to LCS but has some subtle differences that throw an error.

Clicking on a line will open that line in the Script Editor which of course throws a syntax error but you can still read or copy from the Script Editor.

Kind regards

Bernd

[Simon Knight]

Stam. Its a form of markdown although the dictionary reader throws a fit at certain special characters such as the humble colon.

Richmond. Its worse than you think; much of the printed documentation is old and out of date. So much for the aspiration that a 1000 widgets would be created by Christmas 2017 (made at the Edinburgh conference is circa 2017). To be fair the general script is very much like livecode script but as Bernd says there are differences and oddities.

For example I wanted to modify a public handler inside the library extension I am working on. I modified an existing handler trying to pass in an integer but no matter what I tried it refused to build because of a syntax error. The integer was going to be used to switch handlers depending on which version of MacOS is being used. In the end I gave up and added a new handler just for the other OS versions. Its a kludge.

Bug https://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=24054 shows some of the other issues I have encountered. Not all RunRev's fault as Apple do so love depreciating commands and are not that quick to update their documentation.

Bernd. Thanks for both the stacks which I will experiment with. I look forward to seeing how others have formatted their dictionary entries. I had this curious display happen this morning while I was scrolling my most recent dictionary entry

Dictionary

All. How should I proceed ?

I have updated my library extension that reads calendar entries from the users calendar on MacOS. It should also work on iOS but I do not have any devices that run iOS. I have tested the library on Big Sur and Sonoma but again I don't have any other versions to test on. This is important because somewhere between Big Sur and Sonoma Apple changed their EkEventKit framework creating a new method to request permissions while depreciating the old (Sonoma now has two levels of permission for access to the calendar data). According to the documentation the change requires iOS 17 onwards to use the new ObjectiveC/Swift 'method'.

I don't think it is reasonable to test the library on all OS across Mac and iOS (let alone chip sets) so I am thinking of announcing that it exists and if anyone is interested then we can debug it together. It works correctly on my M2 machine and earlier versions worked on Big Sur.

I have no firm plans to use it myself and created it so that I could explore the Foreign Function Interface. I need to remove the kludge and I may look at adding code that adds events back into the calendar.

Thanks for reading.

[richmond62]

Richmond. Its worse than you think

If I thought it was just about LCB I wouldn't be in the process (long and painful) of jumping ship.

Not all RunRev's fault as Apple do so love depreciating commands and are not that quick to update their documentation.

Um, Well, Err . . . as LCB, just as much as LiveCode itself, is meant to be cross-platform, surely LCB should be written in some way that it can float "transcendentally" over whatever operating system it is being deployed on?