The road to enhanced support for Cocoa, Unicode, GTK, iOS, and all the other
things that make up v7 has been a long one, and while it's not been without
difficulty this third point release seems very promising.
But don't take my word for it. I'm just a fanboy - you can safely ignore
anything I write. :)
Instead, enjoy this post I came across in the forums today for a fresh take on
v7 - excerpt:
So I got to try out LiveCode 7.0.3 today and I have to say I
am impressed, the engine is the fastest I've used since the
open source revamp began
<http://forums.livecode.com/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=23387>
His post is well worth reading, and in my thank you reply I also included some
details about that performance boost in 7.0.3 and an earlier change with
copy-on-write-only which may be of interest to those who've seen performance
issues in the past.
Looking ahead:
Right now RunRev maintains three versions, 6.x, 7.x, and 8.x. This is of
course more expensive than maintaining two, so it's in everyone's interest to
see a productive migration to v7 ASAP so we can have the team focusing on the
things we truly need rather than just patching the past.
"Version 6, we loved ya', but we gotta move on to the present."
But of course this needs to be truly productive, and that's where you come in.
In the past we've discussed isolated benchmarks, but as Peter Brett explained
here a few weeks ago, and Ben explained to me in more detail in our last
meeting, the changes in v7's core are so deep and pervasive that isolated
benchmarks are far less useful than we might think.
In some areas, given the larger amount of data and automatic encoding detection
for Unicode, we know some aspects of v7 will be slower.
But in many other areas, with copy-on-write-only and other algorithmic changes
under the hood, many other areas have become much faster.
So the real focus now is two-fold:
#1 Priority: Bugs
-----------------
If you're seeing a bug in v7.0.3 that you do not see in v6.7.3, please report
it ASAP.
Of course data-loss bugs will get priority, and bugs for which simple
workarounds exist may get a lower priority. But let's do make sure we catalog
any issues unique to v7 so we can all move forward with confidence.
#2 Priority: Performance
------------------------
Given the holistic nature of the changes in v7, the key here is to find
applications that are noticeably slower. If you have one, send it to support
AT runrev.com with a note explaining where the performance difference can be
found.
No need to worry about trade secrets and all that: RunRev regularly works with
very sensitive projects, and discards everything noted as such as soon as their
analysis is complete.
The main thing is that they see it, so if you see a noticeable performance loss
and are concerned about sensitivity of the materials, please at least write to
them describing the issue and your concerns and let's find a way to take care
of it.
I write this as an ardent fan of v6.7.x. It's been good to me, and it's
enjoyed a favored position in my Mac's Dock and my Ubuntu Launcher.
But as of today I'm migrating all new work to v7. I want 2D physics, GPU
rendering, stack views, and more, and those only take longer as long as the
core team is saddled with v6.x backports.
And for us Linux fanboys, much the enhanced GTK support we crave is already in
v7 (thanks, Fraser!).
If you have any other concerns about migrating your work to v7, let me know.
Probably best to discuss them here so we can all benefit, but if it's a
sensitive issue you can send me an email if you prefer and I'll do my best to
reply quickly.
--
Richard Gaskin
LiveCode Community Manager
rich...@livecode.org
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