Re: Suggestion: Non-Appbuilding Community Edition

[Andre Garzia via use-livecode]

Don’t know how many people here remember that they tried that approach with 
Dreamcard. I really like it, but in the end it didn’t work for the company. I 
see many members here in the list saying “what should be done”, “what would 
have worked”, and I wanted to remember every one that while speculation is fun 
and a healthy practice, it is not necessarily a representation of truth. We 
don’t know what could have worked, very few people here know the day to day 
managing of LiveCode Ltd to judge what are their best options. What people here 
can do is lobby from the user’s point of view, and yet I see a ton of people 
“playing CEO with these emails”, that is not productive IMHO.

Let’s take a step back for a second and realise as a community we lack many 
things that other programming language communities have. We do have a very 
healthy mailing list, forum, and occasional conference. We’re all friends, and 
many of us have known each other for decades. Those are things that many, if 
not most, programming language communities do not have. And yet we have not 
fostered many of the ancillary things that most communities do. 

* We have very few open source projects in the community, and the ones we have 
have very few contributors.
* We have not build anything like a package manager to help us share code 
around. The IDE built-in extension store, and code sharing features are 
extremely simple.
* We don’t have an ecosystem of tools and libraries around. We have some tools 
and some libraries.
* We don’t have many people writing blogs, making videos, writing books, and 
fostering the community. 
* There are very few services and companies besides LiveCode Ltd offering 
products to the community.


All items mentioned above are important regardless if LiveCode Community 
Edition is around or not. Without those things, it is very hard for any FOSS 
initiative to blossom. Without those things, it is very hard to make a 
programming language community feel vibrant and alive. We had eight years of LC 
Community Edition, and as a community we haven’t really cared to nurture it. 
Very few people contributed patches. We all loved having it, we were just not 
putting enough care into it. And that is how FOSS dies.

What is most important is that the Community Edition was not the on-ramp path 
to attract new users and then lead them towards a commercial license. What 
happened was the opposite, Community users stayed with the Community Edition 
and many paying users migrated to the FOSS offer. If the business model of LC 
was different, if they had structured it all differently, maybe it could have 
worked, but that is just speculation, we don’t know it might have failed in 
such manner that LC Ltd would be dead.

What I do know, and I know quite a lot about programming language communities, 
is that without more than just a mailing list and forum, you can’t have a 
vibrant community. Without a community that feels engaging and alive, you don’t 
get new users.

I’m happy paying for my license because I can see the value LC provides me, and 
how my money directly affects their ability to output quality stuff. I love 
FOSS, but I’d rather have a healthy LC Ltd around with the resources to keep 
building amazing goodies. We as a community can build all the cool stuff around 
the proprietary language, there is a ton of things we could have that would 
make this a more lively place. 

The question is, who here wants to build stuff? 

A
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9.6.4-gm-1 what?

[Andre Garzia via use-livecode]

So, I launched 9.6.4 today and got a notification to download 9.6.4-gm-1, this 
is not a version scheme that LC has been using before. I remember them being DP 
for developer previews, then becoming RC for release candidates, and then 
stable. I don’t remember Gold Masters in their versions, which I assume would 
be the stable version. 

Now, if I’m downloading 9.6.4-gm-1 now, what have I been running with 9.6.4? I 
though that was the stable version.

Oh, and the download page still doesn’t list past DP and RCs.

A
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Re: 9.6.4-gm-1 what?

[matthias rebbe via use-livecode]

The "old" download was build 15551 and had a problem with building HTML5 
standalones.

The new one is build 15552  which has that bug fixed.

See https://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=23317 


Regards,

Matthias



> Am 06.09.2021 um 13:26 schrieb Andre Garzia via use-livecode 
> :
> 
> So, I launched 9.6.4 today and got a notification to download 9.6.4-gm-1, 
> this is not a version scheme that LC has been using before. I remember them 
> being DP for developer previews, then becoming RC for release candidates, and 
> then stable. I don’t remember Gold Masters in their versions, which I assume 
> would be the stable version. 
> 
> Now, if I’m downloading 9.6.4-gm-1 now, what have I been running with 9.6.4? 
> I though that was the stable version.
> 
> Oh, and the download page still doesn’t list past DP and RCs.
> 
> A
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Re: Suggestion: Non-Appbuilding Community Edition

[matthias rebbe via use-livecode]

+1



> Am 06.09.2021 um 13:20 schrieb Andre Garzia via use-livecode 
> :
> 
> Don’t know how many people here remember that they tried that approach with 
> Dreamcard. I really like it, but in the end it didn’t work for the company. I 
> see many members here in the list saying “what should be done”, “what would 
> have worked”, and I wanted to remember every one that while speculation is 
> fun and a healthy practice, it is not necessarily a representation of truth. 
> We don’t know what could have worked, very few people here know the day to 
> day managing of LiveCode Ltd to judge what are their best options. What 
> people here can do is lobby from the user’s point of view, and yet I see a 
> ton of people “playing CEO with these emails”, that is not productive IMHO.
> 
> Let’s take a step back for a second and realise as a community we lack many 
> things that other programming language communities have. We do have a very 
> healthy mailing list, forum, and occasional conference. We’re all friends, 
> and many of us have known each other for decades. Those are things that many, 
> if not most, programming language communities do not have. And yet we have 
> not fostered many of the ancillary things that most communities do. 
> 
> * We have very few open source projects in the community, and the ones we 
> have have very few contributors.
> * We have not build anything like a package manager to help us share code 
> around. The IDE built-in extension store, and code sharing features are 
> extremely simple.
> * We don’t have an ecosystem of tools and libraries around. We have some 
> tools and some libraries.
> * We don’t have many people writing blogs, making videos, writing books, and 
> fostering the community. 
> * There are very few services and companies besides LiveCode Ltd offering 
> products to the community.
> 
> 
> All items mentioned above are important regardless if LiveCode Community 
> Edition is around or not. Without those things, it is very hard for any FOSS 
> initiative to blossom. Without those things, it is very hard to make a 
> programming language community feel vibrant and alive. We had eight years of 
> LC Community Edition, and as a community we haven’t really cared to nurture 
> it. Very few people contributed patches. We all loved having it, we were just 
> not putting enough care into it. And that is how FOSS dies.
> 
> What is most important is that the Community Edition was not the on-ramp path 
> to attract new users and then lead them towards a commercial license. What 
> happened was the opposite, Community users stayed with the Community Edition 
> and many paying users migrated to the FOSS offer. If the business model of LC 
> was different, if they had structured it all differently, maybe it could have 
> worked, but that is just speculation, we don’t know it might have failed in 
> such manner that LC Ltd would be dead.
> 
> What I do know, and I know quite a lot about programming language 
> communities, is that without more than just a mailing list and forum, you 
> can’t have a vibrant community. Without a community that feels engaging and 
> alive, you don’t get new users.
> 
> I’m happy paying for my license because I can see the value LC provides me, 
> and how my money directly affects their ability to output quality stuff. I 
> love FOSS, but I’d rather have a healthy LC Ltd around with the resources to 
> keep building amazing goodies. We as a community can build all the cool stuff 
> around the proprietary language, there is a ton of things we could have that 
> would make this a more lively place. 
> 
> The question is, who here wants to build stuff? 
> 
> A
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Re: Suggestion: Non-Appbuilding Community Edition

[Alex Tweedly via use-livecode]

+1    Yes, speculation is fun, but probably not very useful :-)

On 06/09/2021 12:20, Andre Garzia via use-livecode wrote:

Let’s take a step back for a second and realise as a community we lack many 
things that other programming language communities have. We do have a very 
healthy mailing list, forum, and occasional conference. We’re all friends, and 
many of us have known each other for decades. Those are things that many, if 
not most, programming language communities do not have. And yet we have not 
fostered many of the ancillary things that most communities do.

* We have very few open source projects in the community, and the ones we have 
have very few contributors.
And I don't think they're well known, or advertised as willing (eager) 
to have new contributors.

* We have not build anything like a package manager to help us share code 
around. The IDE built-in extension store, and code sharing features are 
extremely simple.


Yes, we need a package manager and helpful conventions (where are 
libraries found to download, where do they reside on your system, how do 
they 'require' other libraries, etc. )


Re "The IDE built-in ...": Do you mean "sample stacks" ?
Or is there another extensions store and code sharing feature I've missed?

If it is "sample stacks" then I would 100% disagree about it being easy 
to use. But I'll put those comments in a separate email so it doesn't 
obscure the point here.



* We don’t have an ecosystem of tools and libraries around. We have some tools 
and some libraries.
* We don’t have many people writing blogs, making videos, writing books, and 
fostering the community.
* There are very few services and companies besides LiveCode Ltd offering 
products to the community.






The question is, who here wants to build stuff?


I think that having a package manager, and some infrastructure would be 
a huge step towards encouraging many people to build stuff. I do believe 
that the effort that went into LC Ltd supporting widgets (store, naming 
convention, add to toolbar, integrate to docs, ...) could, even should, 
be applied to script-only libraries and stacks. Or - we find some way to 
do that as part under Livecode.org


I know I have a few libraries that I could make public - but I'd be much 
happier, and more likely to finish up doing it - if there were some 
guidelines or support for how libraries should be placed, documented, etc.


revdocs - is that still around somewhere ?

Or is there a better alternative ?

Thanks,

Alex.


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Sample stacks / revOnline [was: Re: Suggestion: Non-Appbuilding Community Edition]

[Alex Tweedly via use-livecode]

In the main thread, I mentioned that I found revOnline (aka "Sample 
Stacks"), but didn't say how or why. Here the answer to that ...


It has:

- no differentiation between 'libraries' and 'examples'

- it has no support for script-only stacks, which is surely the way most 
libraries will be done nowadays.


- a left hand scrolling box with ~90 'categories', in no particular 
order, no grouping


- grid vs list view - list shows you a list, which is basically the same 
as a 1-wide grid rather than 2-wide, plus a larger view of some random 
other item (OK, it's not random - it simply doesn't update when it should)


- updates when you click on the picture - but gives no cursor hint that 
you can do that


- a drop-down list for sort order - which isn't sized adequately when 
you first open revonline


- a 'search' box which must search something, but I don't know what. 
There is a sample stack called "Compare stack scripts", and which is 
tagged as "compare" - but isn't found if you search for "compare".


- and I usually find things via "browser + google" (or similar) and the 
stuff in samples stacks isn't visible that way.


H - maybe I've just found my next project :-)

Alex.


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Building stuff

[David Bovill via use-livecode]

It’s a good question - what to build with regard to the sort of tools and 
components a vibrant developer community expects. I only know about examples of 
open source communities, and though I’d be interested in exploring how such a 
coding community might work with alternative closed licensing schemes - the 
only example that I know of would be music licensing - so I’ll stick to open 
source examples.

Andre mentions the following list:

1. Package Manager
2. Tools and Libraries
3. Community Evangelism
4. Business Model - Ecosystem of Companies

I think that should be a good list to start with. Challenge accepted.

I’m on family holiday now, pulled a back muscle showing off to the kids, and 
applying for investment to help develop the above. PS if anyone would like to 
help get involved please drop us a line.

Here are my introductory notes on each of the four points, specifically with 
regard what to build:

Package Manager
Trevor’s Levure framework, seems a good starting point. I independently 
developed a similarly structured set of tools, which complements Levure (same 
folder structure) - so it seems natural to modify my tools a bit to enable them 
to work with Levure.

However this is not exactly a package manager. I’ve explored the idea of using 
an existing package manager, and simply interfacing with it like I currently 
interface with git and GitHub - using shell and Api commands. Right now I think 
deno is a better fit with LiveCode but that would need a bit more research 
before taking the plunge.

So in terms of building. I’d like to release my git and GitHub libraries and 
IDE integration tools and work out the best way to integrate them with a proper 
package manager by writing and researching options (point 4 - evangelism).

Tools and Libraries
In terms of building, Id like to release libraries distributed on GitHub and as 
part using the package manager - however initially basic above. Need to 
consider whether to change the licence from GPL to MIT in order to fit with 
Livecode Ltd’s new approach (this relates to Business Model below).

In terms of early action - that means organising existing open sourced code 
based in one place and linking that to the other components.

Community Evangelism
It’s important to make this fun, and inspiring. I’ve been working on a 
podcasting environment built using LiveCode community edition - and reaching 
out to interesting projects and speakers within and outside of the community 
would be a key party of that.

To make this interesting enough to developers and an audience outside of the 
existing community, my focus would be on Open Language and the history (and 
future) of literate programming language.

There is a great deal of free culture (ccby4.0) licensed content available and 
linking this to the existing LiveCode Dictionary in a more accessible form of 
documentation can provide a valuable resource that can help build an active 
community.

So in terms of doing and making - I’ve reached out to a couple of communities 
to help with this “documentation project” around literate languages, and well… 
we’ll see where the interest goes.

The documentation will be published to the three “wiki” communities - federated 
wiki, TiddlyWiki and Massive Wiki as json and markdown files that each 
community can contribute too. JavaScript will be a significant part of this I 
suspect.

Business Model
This aspect is one of the most interesting. There is currently a lot if change 
and opportunity in new business models around code and language design. I 
believe we should discuss these. Seek investment and apply for funding.

I would love to see an independent community effort to create an Open Language 
Foundation that would help finance the ongoing development of Open Language. An 
open rather than closed discussion of these possibilities I would see best done 
as part of the podcast / evangelism.

I hope some of these ideas appeal, to members of the list here. I’m personally 
committed to this path as I work on a new literate language, and had been 
developing much of the above to start by November this year anyway - so it 
seems a waste more to release.

📆    Schedule a call with me
On 6 Sep 2021, 12:22 +0100, Andre Garzia via use-livecode 
, wrote:
> Don’t know how many people here remember that they tried that approach with 
> Dreamcard. I really like it, but in the end it didn’t work for the company. I 
> see many members here in the list saying “what should be done”, “what would 
> have worked”, and I wanted to remember every one that while speculation is 
> fun and a healthy practice, it is not necessarily a representation of truth. 
> We don’t know what could have worked, very few people here know the day to 
> day managing of LiveCode Ltd to judge what are their best options. What 
> people here can do is lobby from the user’s point of view, and yet I see a 
> ton of people “playing CEO with these emails”, that is not productive IMHO.
>
> Let’s take 

Re: Suggestion: Non-Appbuilding Community Edition

[Kevin Miller via use-livecode]

The direction is broadly the one we are following, however we are always open 
to tweaking things.

With regard to the conversation on free starter kit/ non-standalone building 
etc, I'll copy what I said on the forums:

We have dabbled with a number of low cost /entry level offerings in the past. 
There used to be a starter kit that allowed only a certain number of lines of 
code per object. We had non-standalone building products e.g. 
DreamCard/revMedia. None of these models have worked well for a long list of 
reasons - indeed they caused huge issues for us. This problem is much harder to 
solve than you might think. Will we continue to refine our entry level 
offering? Yes definitely. Specific suggestions in this area are welcome, 
particularly directly to me rather than on here.

A number of you quite successfully outlined a number of the problem we had with 
these various models in the past. I'm not going to go into it further, but 
thanks to those that contributed.

Kind regards,

Kevin

Kevin Miller ~ ke...@livecode.com ~ http://www.livecode.com/
LiveCode: Develop Yourself

On 04/09/2021, 17:48, "use-livecode on behalf of Tom Glod via use-livecode" 
 wrote:

David, thats an interesting model to bring up.
I wonder how much of this new direction is considered to be etched in
stone, and how much is up for tweaking still.  Very happy to see signs that
the team is listening to all the feedback.






On Sat, Sep 4, 2021 at 10:37 AM David Bovill via use-livecode <
use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote:

> The clearest example of a free-forever development licence which you pay
> for when you wish to release your app is obviously Unity 3D. I remember
> when this project was a small developer community supported by a company
> and community of keen early adopters. I asked then why Livecode Ltd didn’t
> adopt a model close to that - sure there are differences between the game
> market and Livecode’s market but still?
>
> So the question here is why not do the same here - keep a free-to-develop
> “trial version” without the compilation framework and tools. I’m curious 
to
> the reasoning. The cynic in me would say that the assumption is that there
> are too few developers in this (non-game) market who would need the
> compilation / stand-alone-builder functions - so while game developers and
> companies might pay for commercial Unity 3D licenses - that is not true 
for
> Livecode developers? I don’t / like / buy that argument - so I would love
> to here good reasons or not adopting a Unity 3D style licensing model?
>
> 📆Schedule a call with me
> On 3 Sep 2021, 15:07 +0100, Kevin Miller via use-livecode <
> use-livecode@lists.runrev.com>, wrote:
> > What I liked about your email to me Tom was that it was extremely
> specific. You had just a handful of issues you considered absolutely key
> and offered to Zoom to show that to me. I look forward to scheduling that
> once I finish getting unburried __
> >
> > Kind regards,
> >
> > Kevin
> >
> > Kevin Miller ~ ke...@livecode.com ~ http://www.livecode.com/
> > LiveCode: Develop Yourself
> >
> > On 02/09/2021, 22:59, "use-livecode on behalf of Tom Glod via
> use-livecode"  use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote:
> >
> > Lagi,
> >
> > I wrote to Kevin earlier and gave the exact same advice. those exact 2
> > points needing to be addressed.
> >
> > Give long trial, fix the most obvious IDE issues ASAP.
> >
> > Without those two things how is any new developer going to join the
> > platform?
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Sep 2, 2021 at 5:34 PM Lagi Pittas via use-livecode <
> > use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Trials of 14 days or even 30 days are a waste of time. I can install
> > > something and use it for a couple of days - then life / work gets in
> the
> > > way
> > > so It sits on the computer for 31 days and then times out.
> > >
> > > You then have to waste your time and the companies to get an 
extension,
> > > and by the time they answer
> > > you get cheesed off and remove the program.
> > >
> > > The BEST trial is the one that lasts for 30 actual executions or 6
> months
> > > (whichever comes first).
> > >
> > > This stops the clever SOD who decides to keep it running without
> exiting
> > > for 6 months but it times out anyway.
> > > Even better if he keeps it on for 2 days it counts as "executing"
> twice so
> > > it will last 30 days.
> > >
> > > This means I have 30 days over a 6 month period to really test it
> without
> > > rushing.
> > >
> > > The people who would game the system are the people who won't be loyal
> > > customer anyway, so not giving a worthwhile trial period handicaps
> those
> > > who want

Re: Sample stacks / revOnline [was: Re: Suggestion: Non-Appbuilding Community Edition]

[Kevin Miller via use-livecode]

Upgrading this could be a very useful project. There is a lot of content in 
there but it has the issues you list.

Kind regards,

Kevin

Kevin Miller ~ ke...@livecode.com ~ http://www.livecode.com/
LiveCode: Develop Yourself

On 06/09/2021, 14:11, "use-livecode on behalf of Alex Tweedly via 
use-livecode"  wrote:

In the main thread, I mentioned that I found revOnline (aka "Sample 
Stacks"), but didn't say how or why. Here the answer to that ...

It has:

- no differentiation between 'libraries' and 'examples'

- it has no support for script-only stacks, which is surely the way most 
libraries will be done nowadays.

- a left hand scrolling box with ~90 'categories', in no particular 
order, no grouping

- grid vs list view - list shows you a list, which is basically the same 
as a 1-wide grid rather than 2-wide, plus a larger view of some random 
other item (OK, it's not random - it simply doesn't update when it should)

- updates when you click on the picture - but gives no cursor hint that 
you can do that

- a drop-down list for sort order - which isn't sized adequately when 
you first open revonline

- a 'search' box which must search something, but I don't know what. 
There is a sample stack called "Compare stack scripts", and which is 
tagged as "compare" - but isn't found if you search for "compare".

- and I usually find things via "browser + google" (or similar) and the 
stuff in samples stacks isn't visible that way.

H - maybe I've just found my next project :-)

Alex.


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Re: Suggestion: Non-Appbuilding Community Edition

[Keith Martin via use-livecode]

> On Sep 6, 2021, at 12:22 PM, Andre Garzia via use-livecode 
>  wrote:
> 
> I’m happy paying for my license because I can see the value LC provides me, 
> and how my money directly affects their ability to output quality stuff. I 
> love FOSS, but I’d rather have a healthy LC Ltd around with the resources to 
> keep building amazing goodies.

As the meme goes: This!
This is bottom line stuff: the health of the company is paramount. If that 
fails we all lose.

k
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Re: Suggestion: Non-Appbuilding Community Edition

[Bernard Devlin via use-livecode]

On Mon, Sep 6, 2021 at 3:08 PM Kevin Miller via use-livecode <
use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote:

> We have dabbled with a number of low cost /entry level offerings in the
> past. There used to be a starter kit that allowed only a certain number of
> lines of code per object. We had non-standalone building products e.g.
> DreamCard/revMedia. None of these models have worked well for a long list
> of reasons - indeed they caused huge issues for us. This problem is much
> harder to solve than you might think. Will we continue to refine our entry
> level offering? Yes definitely. Specific suggestions in this area are
> welcome, particularly directly to me rather than on here.
>

Those of us who've been around since the days of Metacard knew this. It was
precisely why I haven't chimed in with "what LC should do", because I know
they've been prepared to evaluate so many different approaches.  Many years
ago the Ambassador from Fourthworld said: "it's their company to run, I
concentrate on running my business". I tried weeks ago saying that to
whiners on the forum, but it made no difference.  Even after Kevin posted
the remarks below days ago, they are still playing CEO (as Andre so pithily
puts it).

To those who were repeatedly whining I pointed out: we don't have the data
that LC Ltd has, they know what has worked/failed, they know what marketing
has worked/failed; and they have more interest in the success of LC than
any of us customers have, so we should respect that and support them in it.

Some of the whiners won't listen to reason. I got to the point where I gave
up trying to debate these issues, for no sooner had I reasoned why some
claim they'd made was wrong and a week later they were back making the same
claim.  It is annoying to see people who've never sold so much as a piece
of fruit constantly running down the company whose products they use.

LC is a very unusual development tool, virtually in a class of its own.
Communicating this uniqueness (and why the unique properties are so
important) to novices and even very experienced developers is a challenge.
With Xojo or B4X you can say "this is a cross-platform relative of Visual
Basic", and people who've had even a little programming experience in the
past 30 years will understand what they are dealing with. These days I'd
guess that 95% of Apple users don't even know the meaning of "Hypercard" or
"Applescript".  There's simply no frame of reference.  Twenty years ago I
gave a programming colleague a copy of The Hypercard Book and the Metacard
starter kit. With book in hand she said she couldn't get her head around
Metacard and gave up (and she'd been using RAD tools for a decade).  I got
her to try Revolution a year or two later, and she still couldn't
understand it.  She ended up becoming a Filemaker developer.  I've come to
the conclusion that the only option is videos that demonstrate apps being
constructed, this might at least appeal at a superficial level. I can't
think of another way to start to indicate what the tool is like. I think
this might be worth some investment.  In fact, in a discussion recently I
cited the idea of a high quality video showing Andre's calculator example.
I think I wrote to Heather about this some weeks ago.

Regards, Bernard
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Re: Suggestion: Non-Appbuilding Community Edition

[Lagi Pittas via use-livecode]

Hi Bernard,

I could be called one of the whiners but I have paid my indy licence since
the kickstarter and the business Upgrade (until a year ago - Incase I
needed it - I didnt).

My biggest "whine" is not the ending of the open source initiative - it's
the fact that OUR biggest competitors (XOJO and B4X) have non expiring
licences and at least a non time limited "trial" version.

B4X went open source not too long ago and only charges for the IOS version
and a nice donate $10, $20, $40, $100 on each page.

No people can't be bothered to get in-touch to pay unless some itch was
just scratched - Have sent money for free stuff that I have used only once
when they got me out of a sticky situation..
I use paypal whenever I can so I don't have to get involved with entering
CVS or other "screening" make it easy and people will pay - "Don't make me
think".

Calling people parasites because they want the open source to continue (but
with better differentiation) is not constructive.

I think they should have open sourced the Linux , Windows and NOT the
mobile and only allowed sqlite in the open source versions.

You can do everything but when you want to get serious you have to pay.

If the Mobile was (of teh top of my head) priced like Xojo and the "lite"
version two without expiring so it is in livecodes interests to add value
yearly rather than fix old or regressive bugs
then people would renew yearly if there was a discount for an unbroken
subscription.

The starter system is easy (very easy)

The full lite version (windows, Mac or Linux)  with a limited binary size -
big enough for kids and schools to write useful programs but not so you
could write a full sales purchase nominal ledger
(see BBC Basic for  windows)

You could have not a nag screen but a text link in the bottom right corner
with a link to a page saying 50% discount (or whatever) for first year.

The suggestion Kevin gave that people would share stacks to run ignores the
fact that somebody wants the banana (the App/stack) and must install the
Gorilla (2G installer).

Anybody who would bother is the type who doesn't value their time so isn't
going to buy anything however cheap.

The future is the kids and the only way of capturing them is to make it
easy for them to send out a link to a program they wrote to friends and
family to show off what they did.
Make the binary big enough so that a side scroller can be written but such
that they would have to balance internal and external graphics.

A arter system does can be limited to 1 printer,  output to 1 pdf file per
session/ run / 18-20MB windows binary (at least it should be able to run
many of the programs written as games on the samples site)

But the biggest "limitation" and the best advert is the link to livecode
on the screen for a gui project and a 3 to 5 second popup for a
console type program.

The biggest error livecode has made all these years is not creating a
"working" storefront that doesn't look like it has been totally given up on.

Look at the addons created for XOJO  - and XOJO makes money on those


https://xojo.com/store/
https://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/

I still prefer livecode for a lot of reasons but I could easily jump ship
(as I have non expiring licenses for both of these ) two of which I
purchased this year - just because.

Regards lagi


On Mon, 6 Sept 2021 at 16:05, Bernard Devlin via use-livecode <
use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 6, 2021 at 3:08 PM Kevin Miller via use-livecode <
> use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>
> > We have dabbled with a number of low cost /entry level offerings in the
> > past. There used to be a starter kit that allowed only a certain number
> of
> > lines of code per object. We had non-standalone building products e.g.
> > DreamCard/revMedia. None of these models have worked well for a long list
> > of reasons - indeed they caused huge issues for us. This problem is much
> > harder to solve than you might think. Will we continue to refine our
> entry
> > level offering? Yes definitely. Specific suggestions in this area are
> > welcome, particularly directly to me rather than on here.
> >
>
> Those of us who've been around since the days of Metacard knew this. It was
> precisely why I haven't chimed in with "what LC should do", because I know
> they've been prepared to evaluate so many different approaches.  Many years
> ago the Ambassador from Fourthworld said: "it's their company to run, I
> concentrate on running my business". I tried weeks ago saying that to
> whiners on the forum, but it made no difference.  Even after Kevin posted
> the remarks below days ago, they are still playing CEO (as Andre so pithily
> puts it).
>
> To those who were repeatedly whining I pointed out: we don't have the data
> that LC Ltd has, they know what has worked/failed, they know what marketing
> has worked/failed; and they have more interest in the success of LC than
> any of us customers have, so we should respect that and support 

Re: Suggestion: Non-Appbuilding Community Edition

[Alex Tweedly via use-livecode]

On 06/09/2021 19:07, Lagi Pittas via use-livecode wrote:

The biggest error livecode has made all these years is not creating a
"working" storefront that doesn't look like it has been totally given up on.

Not sure that's the "biggest" - but yes, I agree it looks unloved.

Look at the addons created for XOJO  - and XOJO makes money on those


https://xojo.com/store/
https://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/


I see a lot of add-ons (for an awful lot of money) for things that come 
built-in with Livecode.


(tongue in cheek) Maybe LCLtd should have the same add-ons page as Xojo, 
but each of them says


   "$0   already included"

Alex.

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Re: Suggestion: Non-Appbuilding Community Edition

[prothero--- via use-livecode]

Folks:
I’ve been following this thread and have a few thoughts I decided to share.

Interestingly, I don’t see Android support for XOJO. Hmm….

In my case (I have a Commercial license), I am really happy that version 10 of 
LC will be improving the web software. I’ve been thinking about diving into 
that realm, but have a couple of projects I’m pecking away at, for now. I also 
like the idea of improving the access and documentation of code libraries. 
Seems odd that audio recording is still not supported on Apple OS’s.

I’ve programmed in several languages, including Fortran, Pascal, Basic, 
Hypercard and Lingo (maybe others I’ve forgotten about). For me, the “English 
Language” coding claim is over-sold (“put 3 into x” vs "x=3” doesn’t thrill me 
either way). Once I get beyond the “Hello World” part of LC, it goes well 
beyond English language. If thens, Switch, for next, global, arrays, etc are 
common in all languages. To do anything beyond elementary requires digging into 
the docs. However, the multi-platform, iOS, Android capabilities and the 
fabulous way interface items (buttons, fields, etc) are easily built, is huge. 
I also appreciate that the app building procedures have gotten a bit more 
straightforward, with community help. I love that I can load an iOS app 
directly onto my phone for testing.

I use Livecode for my personal projects and one that is pretty big that I give 
away for free. It’s one of my hobbies and a way to, in a small way, pay back 
for the significant money I received from the National Science Foundation to 
develop educational software and strategies during my pre-retirement years. I’m 
happy to pay for my perpetual commercial license. I’m interested in education. 
I’d love to see a well documented framework that can be built on, that connects 
livecode projects to course management systems and has options that can be 
included to perform basic classroom tasks. Education would be the focus.

Best to all livecoders,

Bill Prothero

> On Sep 6, 2021, at 11:53 AM, Alex Tweedly via use-livecode 
>  wrote:
> 
> 
> On 06/09/2021 19:07, Lagi Pittas via use-livecode wrote:
>> The biggest error livecode has made all these years is not creating a
>> "working" storefront that doesn't look like it has been totally given up on.
> Not sure that's the "biggest" - but yes, I agree it looks unloved.
>> Look at the addons created for XOJO  - and XOJO makes money on those
>> 
>> 
>> https://xojo.com/store/
>> https://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/
> 
> I see a lot of add-ons (for an awful lot of money) for things that come 
> built-in with Livecode.
> 
> (tongue in cheek) Maybe LCLtd should have the same add-ons page as Xojo, but 
> each of them says
> 
>"$0   already included"
> 
> Alex.
> 
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William A. Prothero, Ph.D.
University of California, Santa Barbara Dept. of Earth Sciences (Emeritus)
Santa Barbara, CA. 93105
http://earthlearningsolutions.org/


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Re: Suggestion: Non-Appbuilding Community Edition

[Bernard Devlin via use-livecode]

Actually I wasn't particularly addressing you. For one thing, I'll wager
you've got hundreds of posts on the Forum.

On Mon, Sep 6, 2021 at 7:09 PM Lagi Pittas via use-livecode <
use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote:

> My biggest "whine" is not the ending of the open source initiative - it's
> the fact that OUR biggest competitors (XOJO and B4X) have non expiring
> licences and at least a non time limited "trial" version.
>
>
Xojo and B4X are not my competitors. I am not LC Ltd. If you think these
technologies are so interchangeable I don't know why you're persisting with
the one that runs "like treacle".  I don't have a license for either of
those Basics.  And if you see them as "our competitors", why fund the
competition.  Very strange IMO.  LC fits into my philosophy of software
design at a specific location (I have never even tried to run it inside a
webserver, there are better technologies for that).

Your biggest whine is that the IDE "runs like treacle", even on beefy
hardware.  I asked for evidence of this, because in 20 years on non-beefy
hardware I've never seen it.  I'm still waiting to see what problem you've
got.  No-one else appears to recognize your complaint.


> Calling people parasites because they want the open source to continue (but
> with better differentiation) is not constructive.
>

People who  wanted open source to continue had 8 years of opportunities.  I
used to muse every time Panos sent out an email with "easy fixes to the
documentation"  hmm, how many of those who contribute nothing financial
to this project can even be bothered to spend some time fixing some
documentation.  Clearly most people wanted open source so they could spend
their time and money on other things than supporting the technology with
either finance or money.  Within a couple of months of InterBase opening
their source code and entirely new database project was born. Not so with
Livecode.

What word do you use for people who take and take for 8 years then have a
hissy fit when they are told they aren't getting any more freebies because
their freebies have just been a drain on resources.

The starter system is easy (very easy).
>

LC is the business of LC Ltd. It's not your business. It's not my business.
Please feel free to look back over my posts in the last 20 years to see
where I've told them how to run their business. The one time I did contact
Heather, was to draw her attention to one of the whining threads on the
Forum, and to pull from it a trio of suggestions for improvement.  But I
did this in private rather than create lots of public whining with which to
put off potential/actual users.


> The future is the kids and the only way of capturing them is to make it
> easy for them to send out a link to a program they wrote to friends and
> family to show off what they did.
>

I very much doubt this.  There are dozens of less impressive technologies
than LC for kids to learn. "Worse is better", and all that. IMO the idea
that we need to "think of the children" is a myth. I've seen this topic of
Livecode and Education discussed for 20 years.

As there are some on this list who have been around even longer than I, it
seems like we should have an answer to this question: how many people have
you encountered here or on the Forum who learned about LC through formal
schooling (school or university) and are using it in later life?  In my
case it is zero. I cannot recollect anyone on this mailing list or on the
Forum who has stated that this was their introduction to Livecode.

If it turns out that there is no such person, then there's little point in
LC Ltd worrying about the idea that this is a channel that brings in new
long-term users (as those on the Forum claim). The only reason for
providing any version aimed at those in education should be the money such
a thing would bring in as an end in itself.


> The biggest error livecode has made all these years is not creating a
> "working" storefront that doesn't look like it has been totally given up
> on.
>

*De gustibus non est disputandum.  *I think there's very, very little wrong
with Livecode.com.  What is it that you have tried to do with their website
that you couldn't do?  Maybe you don't like the font, or the text, or the
graphics, or whatever.  But such generic criticism is of no help and is
just barking at the moon.

IMO the most important thing for them to add to the website is a few short
(hi-res) videos showing some apps being developed in LC.  That was one of
the few *specific and constructive points* I made (in private) to Heather.

Regards, Bernard
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Re: Suggestion: Non-Appbuilding Community Edition

[Lagi Pittas via use-livecode]

Actually their link is not correct - press on the extras icon - Monkeybread
does some awesome addons
and keeps them upto date.

Some are included put some go way past both the builtin XOJO and LC
"widgets"


Another company's software I used for visual Foxpro and Delphi over the
years was

https://www.chilkatsoft.com/

Look at all the languages they support and livecode isn't on there - they
still support Foxpro which hasn't been developed for 15 years.


ASP, C, C++, C++ Builder, C#, DataFlex, dBase, Delphi, Electron, Excel,
FoxPro,

Java, Mono, Node.js, Objective-C, Perl, PHP, PowerBuilder, PowerShell,
PureBasic, Python, Ruby, SQL, Swift, Tcl,

VB.NET, VB6, VBScript, Xbase++, xHarbour, Xojo

The question is why Livecode isn't there?

Lagi




On Mon, 6 Sept 2021 at 19:54, Alex Tweedly via use-livecode <
use-livecode@lists.runrev.com> wrote:

>
> On 06/09/2021 19:07, Lagi Pittas via use-livecode wrote:
> > The biggest error livecode has made all these years is not creating a
> > "working" storefront that doesn't look like it has been totally given up
> on.
> Not sure that's the "biggest" - but yes, I agree it looks unloved.
> > Look at the addons created for XOJO  - and XOJO makes money on those
> >
> >
> > https://xojo.com/store/
> > https://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/
>
> I see a lot of add-ons (for an awful lot of money) for things that come
> built-in with Livecode.
>
> (tongue in cheek) Maybe LCLtd should have the same add-ons page as Xojo,
> but each of them says
>
> "$0   already included"
>
> Alex.
>
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-- 
KIndest Regards Lagi
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