The end of XTalk / LiveCode for me

[richmond62]

If this really is the "End" why are you still asking questions?

Probably, because you know LC is not at an "end", it is at its usual endless tortuous way of getting somewhere.

[dunbarx]

Mike.

Is Bernd's suggestion simply something you missed, and, what do you know, LC had it all the time? I am not trying to dissuade you from migrating away from LC, but I have often discovered that, what do you know, there was a native solution to a task that I either had to write for myself, or live without.

Craig

[MichaelBluejay]

Thank you, I didn't know about Metadata for text. The feature set of LiveCode is huge (and growing) and there's a lot I don't know about. (I couldn't find Metadata even when searching for that feature, because I didn't know what it was called.) Knowing about metadata sure would have saved me a lot of trouble when I was reordering lines of a list of note titles, where I needed an invisible ID to be associated with each line.

I'm still not planning to return to LiveCode, for these reasons:

• 9.6.3 doesn't run on my M1 Mac. (Won't launch.)
• I'm not paying $440/year to upgrade to a version that will run, just for some homegrown apps.
• Web apps are better with HTML/JS, because there's no massive LC engine to download every time.
• While I can embed metadata behind text in LC, with HTML I can *see* the metadata as part of the code (e.g., as element attributes or hidden fields).
• HTML tables are easy to work with. DataGrid is a royal pain.
• HTML tables scroll super fast. DataGrid scrolls super slow.

The advantages I can think of for LiveCode are:

• Changes are live as soon as you make them. No save file / switch from text editor to browser / reload page as with HTML/JS.
• Can make standalone apps.

I don't think I'll ever make a standalone app, but if I do, then I'd certainly use LiveCode.

[stam]

Thank you, I didn't know about Metadata for text. The feature set of LiveCode is huge (and growing) and there's a lot I don't know about. (I couldn't find Metadata even when searching for that feature, because I didn't know what it was called.) Knowing about metadata sure would have saved me a lot of trouble when I was reordering lines of a list of note titles, where I needed an invisible ID to be associated with each line.

I'm still not planning to return to LiveCode, for these reasons:

• 9.6.3 doesn't run on my M1 Mac. (Won't launch.)
• I'm not paying $440/year to upgrade to a version that will run, just for some homegrown apps.
• Web apps are better with HTML/JS, because there's no massive LC engine to download every time.
• While I can embed metadata behind text in LC, with HTML I can *see* the metadata as part of the code (e.g., as element attributes or hidden fields).
• HTML tables are easy to work with. DataGrid is a royal pain.
• HTML tables scroll super fast. DataGrid scrolls super slow.

The advantages I can think of for LiveCode are:

• Changes are live as soon as you make them. No save file / switch from text editor to browser / reload page as with HTML/JS.
• Can make standalone apps.

I don't think I'll ever make a standalone app, but if I do, then I'd certainly use LiveCode.

You are greatly underselling LCs capabilities but I hear you on the price aspect. While 9.6.3 may not run on your Mac you should check out the open source Fork maintaining this version - i have not, but I hear it runs OK.

I will have to openly disagree with you about the speed of the datagrid. It’s plenty fast. And it’s much easier to manipulate than html tables - obviously you have to bother to learn it…

But where LC shines is the backend of the app. There is a lot of code that is more laborious to do in JS.

I will agree that the html offering is not great but it’s much better in v10 with faster loading times and that’s being optimised further in the future. My main gripe with the web offering is that they haven’t done enough to make it widely accessible and easy to use… - they’ve only done enough to get it up and running.


But on the note of web development I’d recommend checking out XOJO. Surprisingly good for webapps and they include a library that makes it a doddle to work with usual databases. But it is commercial and is based on object oriented basic. Having said that you can test it for free, you just can’t build. Or check out the YouTube videos.

[dunbarx]

@Mike

...a lot I don't know about. (I couldn't find Metadata even when searching for that feature, because I didn't know what it was called

I have been there. Like any dictionary, one has to know how to spell a word before one can find it. With LC, you are not even sure what word you are looking for.

@Everyone. This is a common issue. The dictionary is pretty good, especially when you are close to what you are looking for, and then the "related" section is often a GodSend. ChatGPT almost found "metaData". I wrote:

In the program "LiveCode" is there any feature that can associate additional data with individual words in a text field?

Good question — this goes right to the heart of how fields work in LiveCode.
Short answer:
LiveCode does not have a built-in way to attach arbitrary “hidden metadata” directly to individual words in a field. A field holds text (plus style attributes like font, color, size, link state). It doesn’t have per-word property slots.

It was factually wrong about metadata, but this was v.3. Maybe v.5 does better?

Craig

[MichaelBluejay]

You are greatly underselling LCs capabilities...

Okay, I'm listening, what am I missing? To me, if I'm going web-based, I can't see why I'd want the bloat of LiveCode for no discernible benefit when HTML/JS is easy to code, lightweight, and runs fast. If I'm making a standalone app, then sure, LiveCode or one of its competitors.

While 9.6.3 may not run on your Mac you should check out the open source Fork maintaining this version.

Thank you, I didn't know about that. I found OpenXTalk and downloaded it, but it wouldn't launch either. Even if it did, I just don't have a use for it any more, I already ported my apps to HTML/JS.

I will have to openly disagree with you about the speed of the datagrid. It’s plenty fast. And it’s much easier to manipulate than html tables - obviously you have to bother to learn it…

My experience is different. Scrolling a 1000x1200-pixel, 6-column DataGrid on my old Mac (i7/4GHz CPU) is pretty slow. Maybe it would be fast enough on a new Mac, but HTML tables scroll like lightning on my old computer. I can't test DataGrid on my new computer because LC won't launch.

And yeah, I did put some effort into learning DataGrid for my old LC-based accounting app, because I had to, because it was the opposite of intuitive. I I found myself constantly shaking my head at DataGrid's crazy syntax. I felt that DataGrid's difficulty went against the whole "XTalk is easy" idea. HTML/JS was way faster to learn by comparison.

But where LC shines is the backend of the app. There is a lot of code that is more laborious to do in JS.

I'm sure that's true though I haven't run across anything in HTML/JS that I felt was a lot easier in LC. I know, for example, that LC can refer to "words" of text, which is convenient, but I don't really use that feature. What other kinds of things are easier in LC vs. JS?

[MichaelBluejay]

ChatGPT almost found "metaData". I wrote:

In the program "LiveCode" is there any feature that can associate additional data with individual words in a text field?

I asked something similar of the Google Search AI, but it too didn't come up with an answer.

[stam]

My experience is different. Scrolling a 1000x1200-pixel, 6-column DataGrid on my old Mac (i7/4GHz CPU) is pretty slow. Maybe it would be fast enough on a new Mac, but HTML tables scroll like lightning on my old computer. I can't test DataGrid on my new computer because LC won't launch.

Well that's not been my experience, even on my old Intel Mac (can't check again now as I'm abroad).
I do wonder if in fact you tested tableField rather than datagrid; the former has been proven to be slow when loading thousands of rows, the latter is orders of magnitude faster, and the new polygrid is even faster by an order of magnitude (polygrid comes with example stacks, one of which is a stack that compares tableField/datagrid/polygrid with large datasets). I should clarify that I only have experience of this for desktop apps. I haven't tested on web apps, because the whole web app process in LiveCode is not a great experience, but would not really expect a massive difference.

I have to put up my hand and say that I use different software for web apps. Specifically, I use XOJO - which makes it crazy easy to do decent database driven web apps, and have recently built a multiuser database app with an audience thousands of healthcare providers (already running and going public next month). I use XOJO because it's easy to produce professional looking interfaces coupled with fast and functional backend app - the whole thing took under 3 days to create to create and release this project.


Regarding your question that culminated in a discussion of metadata - metadata is a bad fit, unless you're using tableField (ie a text field), because you're not manipulating text, you're manipulating tables/tabular data, and you should use the right tools for the task.
Consider: With your HTML tables you are essentially adding a hidden key, so why would you not do the same with DataGrid (or PolyGrid/PolyList)?
You would just add as a hidden array key (or to put it simpler, a hidden column) so that data is always associated with the specific row and will always follow it around even if exported to other functions as an array.
In my opinion, metadata would be the wrong approach for what you are wanting to achieve.

And yeah, I did put some effort into learning DataGrid for my old LC-based accounting app, because I had to, because it was the opposite of intuitive. I I found myself constantly shaking my head at DataGrid's crazy syntax. I felt that DataGrid's difficulty went against the whole "XTalk is easy" idea. HTML/JS was way faster to learn by comparison.

I would argue LiveCode is hard - for developers used to other languages. But once you 'grok' it, it's the nicest and easiest language out there.
Until then, it seems really quite arbitrary and illogical (that was my experience when I picked up LC properly during the pandemic but I eventually saw the light ).

The same goes for the datagrid. Once you 'grok' the API, it's really easy to do it all... but there is a learning curve to get over. It's not the easiest, but I personally don't think it's that hard and in spite the new flashy table widgets (polyGrid and polyList) I always come back to the datagrid because of its versatility and genuinely useful API - in my mind it's a masterpiece
What I found helpful is a better LiveCode API documentation app - with a (paid) app called Dash (https://kapeli.com/dash). It greatly simplifies searching the datagrid API and is extremely useful for pretty much every possible programming language. I can't recommend highly enough, no matter which language you use.

I'm sure that's true though I haven't run across anything in HTML/JS that I felt was a lot easier in LC. I know, for example, that LC can refer to "words" of text, which is convenient, but I don't really use that feature. What other kinds of things are easier in LC vs. JS?

To use the example from the mothership's site:

LiveCode

Code: Select all

sort lines of theText descending by last item of each

Javascript

Code: Select all

theText = theText.split("\n");
theText = theText.sort(sort_item_3).join("\n");
function sort_item_3(line1, line2){
	line1 = line1.split(",");
	line2 = line2.split(",");
	if(line1[2] == line2[2]) return 0;
	else if(line1[2] > line2[2]) return -1;
	else return 1;
}

A more complex example: Walk a given directory tree and print files matching a given pattern (recursive, so it includes subfolders)

LiveCode

Code: Select all

function pathsForDirectoryAndWildcardPattern pDirectory, pWildcardPattern
 filter files(pDirectory) with pWildcardPattern
   repeat for each line tFile in it
      put pDirectory & slash & tFile & cr after tPaths
   end repeat
   
   filter folders(pDirectory) without ".."
   repeat for each line tFolder in it
      put pathsForDirectoryAndWildcardPattern(pDirectory & slash & tFolder, pWildcardPattern) after tPaths
   end repeat
   
   return tPaths
end pathsForDirectoryAndWildcardPattern

Javascript

Code: Select all

var fso = new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");

function walkDirectoryTree(folder, folder_name, re_pattern) {
    WScript.Echo("Files in " + folder_name + " matching '" + re_pattern + "':");
    walkDirectoryFilter(folder.files, re_pattern);

    var subfolders = folder.SubFolders;
    WScript.Echo("Folders in " + folder_name + " matching '" + re_pattern + "':");
    walkDirectoryFilter(subfolders, re_pattern);

    WScript.Echo();
    var en = new Enumerator(subfolders);
    while (! en.atEnd()) {
        var subfolder = en.item();
        walkDirectoryTree(subfolder, folder_name + "/" + subfolder.name, re_pattern);
        en.moveNext();
    }
}

function walkDirectoryFilter(items, re_pattern) {
    var e = new Enumerator(items);
    while (! e.atEnd()) {
        var item = e.item();
        if (item.name.match(re_pattern))
            WScript.Echo(item.name);
        e.moveNext();
    }
}

walkDirectoryTree(dir, dir.name, '\\.txt$');

JS is a very functional language, but for me, LiveCode is just easier, more succinct and more pleasant. I just wish their web offering was more like XOJO...