On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 9:43 AM, Mark Schonewille < [email protected]> wrote:
> It is only remotely related to the issue that is of my concern, but it was > suggested that one may connect to a server, such as PHP or OnRev, > specifically to keep essential parts of the code locked and hidden. First, > if I have to do this, it means that the obfuscation is insufficient and > again I might as well make the source available and I have no incentive to > buy a commercial license. Second, having to use another tool greatly > reduces that appeal of LC HTML5 and I then would rather use PHP and JQuery > for almost all web apps. > Mark et al, I will preface this by saying that HTML5 export isn't something I'm particularly interested in right now as my company doesn't have an immediate need. We already have our web products running using existing libraries. So I haven't been thinking about HTML5 too much other than how the campaign benefits RunRev going forward. I have also wondered whether or not people will pay for HTML5 output licenses. It seems to me that the primary (I'm not saying the only) people that LiveCode HTML5 output will appeal to will be people who don't need a commercial license. I'm thinking educators and company employees developing internal tools for a company (they don't need commercial licenses, do they?). The commercial developer has a lot of CSS/JavaScript tools and libraries available to them already and lots of programmers available that know these tools. Based on what I've read, the LiveCode HTML5 deployment won't necessarily be light weight which I think rules it out in many cases. While there will probably be small business that will pay for HMTL5 output from LiveCode, the question is whether or not there will be enough? Now, there is a scenario where I could see some potential benefit for commercial developers. What if LiveCode IDE became a front end for generating output for the client (HTML/CSS/Javascript) and the server (LiveCode)? A commercial app is always going to have their business logic running on the server itself rather than the client. Perhaps if LiveCode made it easy to create the HTML/CSS/Javascript front end AND made it easy to connect that front end to the server calls then you may have a business case. For the server code I'm thinking of a tree interface in the IDE that allowed you to build a tree representing the REST interface for the server calls. You would place your scripts in the proper folder of the tree thus creating the RESTful URI. You could then drag server script actions onto your UI elements right inside of LiveCode. An example would be dragging a PUT call to a server script that updated a database row onto the submit button of a form. Clicking the button submits the form to the server which in turn updates a data source. Or dragging a GET call to a server script that listed 25 items at a time from a database onto a button in the UI. You would essentially be developing your web UI and your server logic using the exact same language. That could be cool. One problem for me, however, is that currently the language is quite limited when compared to Ruby on Rails and PHP. With LiveCode you can't create custom objects in your code. When it comes to representing your own business logic you are limited to functions and commands. When you take the UI out of the equation (like you do with server side languages) I think it becomes even more important that the language be as expressive with your application specific objects as it is with the objects that are built in. PHP and Ruby allow you to do that. LiveCode does not. At least not yet. Once Open Language arrives, however, LiveCode will become much more interesting (in my view) as a web development language. With open language we will be able to define the english-like syntax for any objects that we need for the business logic in our own applications. That will be really powerful. Anyhow, just some thoughts as I don't fully understand how HTML 5 will generate revenue just yet. I know Kevin and the team have put a lot of thought into this and I don't doubt that there are a lot of people that want to use it. I'm just not sure how it will pay for itself going forward. -- Trevor DeVore Blue Mango Learning Systems www.screensteps.com - www.clarify-it.com _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
