Stack data i/o question

[mbossiere]

Fascinating. I scripted my own personal tools for 22 years with HyperCard and adopted LC seriously 2 years ago and have come to appreciate many more modern features. I was aware of thew existence of custom properties but not really what were for. Now I know, and will explore this much further. Clearly a lot of dimension there. With HC I used to resort to external text files or simply storing in btns or flds in comma or tab-delimited formats.

My scripting has gotten quite involved in various projects over the years but I've been thinking more and more how I might make my personal stacks available to myself via my iPhone or Android tablet. I did pick up InterActive Software's AirLaunch a couple years ago but to be honest have not even tried it (I know! Why??) The only "distribution" type of app I ever made (with LC) was a tool I made for the sales team at a dealership I was doing web work for, which was a standalone which accessed daily-changing advertisement copy from a shared Dropbox folder I set up for the purpose. It worked very well, and I was very pleased to be able to make this work on their WIndows XP systems.

Btw, is it a difficult thing to make a (sandboxed) iOS app that can read and write to an authorized Dropbox account or general ftp location? This 'live' stack construct as explained to me by you and others here has many ideas popping into my head.
thx

[sturgis]

The sandboxing will have to be answered by someone else i'm afraid. I've done lots of personal playing with LC in windows, linux, mac, and android, and in the ios simulator to some extent, but I just don't want to have to deal with apple, and pay money for something that is hobby level for me.

For me, the entry point for android is both easier and cheaper. I've already created and distributed a couple special purpose apps in town here to help some friends out, and its pretty simple. I know them, they know me, so the whole trust issue is pretty much moot.

I have to admit, i'm STILL tickled with livecode. I've done things with it that I couldn't have done using other development tools. Not so much that I can't learn them, but I'd much rather spend my time figuring out how to solve a problem, rather than figuring out an obtuse language BEFORE I can work on solving my problem. Way back I developed some things with perl, as well as a web based php purchase order tracking system for internal use, some stuff with Real Basic (now XOJO).. Real basic is actually pretty decent, but.. Once I had my first few ah HAH moments with livecode (then revolution) I never looked back.

LC lets me focus on what I want to do, and the language itself is understandable enough that it mostly gets out of my way. Not entirely of course, and there are things that need to be understood to get efficiency out of code (like when to use a "for each.." loop rather than indexing loop) but for the most part, I just think through the problem and go. I also find that typing in the code, then READING it again the next day, helps me see inefficiencies, or logic errors that would be harder for me to spot in other languages.

[SparkOut]

Thanks. In my haste I didn't even look at the standalone settings or think much of them. You are exactly correct. Now I'm curious to know, why are Custom Properties suggested for keeping data? I find that data "put" normally in a fld will be saved just as readily. Is it just as good?

Storing text data in a field does not have a very big overhead but the engine's work is made greater for the rendering operations it needs to do, even if hidden or offscreen. If you store binary data in a field, it can cause huge delays as the screen renders, both when the card opens and when it redraws. For data not meant to be displayed, a custom property is often preferable.

[dunbarx]

You are going to love custom properties, and not know how you lived without them.

Craig