IDE Question

[Jerryab]

Is there any other IDE for livecode. The LiveCode IDE really lacks ?

I have heard there is GLX2 and tRex but seem to be no longer available.

Any input ?

[FourthWorld]

I believe GLX is now open source - hopefully Mark Wieder can chime in here with details.

There's also the original IDE from before the acquisition of the engine by RunRev Ltd, MetaCard, which is also open source.

MetaCard's home is here:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MC_IDE/

I use MC (well, actually a heavily-customized fork of it) daily, but I don't necessarily recommend it to others. It's a bit Spartan in some respect, maintained for those of us who like to minimize the differences between runtime and development, but that also means fewer conveniences that the LC IDE offers.

And if you have plenty of time on your hands you can write your own IDE. But it's a lot of work - if you're interested in that sort of thing you may consider contributing to the MC IDE project so you won't have to start from scratch.

[mwieder]

GLX2 is availble for download at http://bitbucket.org/glx2/downloads and there's documentation at http://glx2.ahsoftware.net. It works in LiveCode and MetaCard environments. There are also various plugins available in revOnline to change how the IDE works. And you can, of course, write your own to further customize things. There are very few parts of the IDE that are locked down.

[dunbarx]

I have heard this before.

Can you say in a few lines where you find the LC IDE to be lacking?

Craig Newman

[mwieder]

...don't get me started...

too late... I'll keep it to a few, since I'm quite biased, no?...

The IDE is pretty primitive. It was OK ten years ago, but still dated then. Now it just looks very 20th-century (as do many of us <g>)
I won't get into the script editor disadvantages since most of those are handled by glx2. Or the tools palette, since PowerTools takes care of the deficiencies there. Or the debugger, since PowerDebug does the job.

Let's stick with the Application Browser.
The Application Browser doesn't handle groups well. And it's not easy to determine the hierarchy from the indentation. It should be possible to fold groups in the AB and expand them again.
Or allow for easy relayering. Ever tried to move a group lower in the hierarchy?
Or refresh itself consistently. I'm constantly having to hit the refresh button to get it to update.
Getting the properties of an object in the AB is a multi-step process, involving selecting the object in the AB and then bringing up the contextual menu and selecting the Property Inspector. I don't wanna talk about the Property Inspector.

All right... I'll talk about the Property Inspector... why is it so hard to change the contents of a text label? You have to select the label, open the Property Inspector, change the view from Properties to Content, select the current content, replace it with the desired content, then close the Property Inspector. A simple frontscript handler makes editing text labels a double-click away, and many of us have rolled our own. Why isn't this built into the IDE yet?

...ok... I'll quit
there's lots of room for folks who want to build plugin replacements for parts of the IDE. Richard Gaskin has some great replacement plugins as well - check GoRevNet from the menu.