[MC_IDE] Quick Poll

[Richard Gaskin]

On 3/31/11 9:10 AM, Shari wrote:
>> This is the point, it seemed to have had zero priority for anyone on
>> this list!
>
> Actually, some of us don't like to ask for things when we know that
> people are donating their time. We simply silently wait for things.

Hopefully we can all feel comfortable speaking up going forward.  A lot 
of long-time MC users have moved to LC IDE, so without input here 
there's no way for Klaus or Ken to gauge what's needed.

We're all family here - feel free to speak your mind on anything you 
need or even want from the IDE.

And feel free to propose anything you want to contribute yourself - it's 
open for that reason, to hopefully capture some of the collective talent 
and motivation from its users.

And if your ideas are too weird (as many of mine have been), you're free 
to modify the IDE however you need (which is how I've been scratching my 
weirder itches <g>).


> Now I am afraid to move forward because I keep seeing discussions on the
> Rev list about bugs in things that have been solid for a decade. I don't
> know if the whole Rev code was rewritten and is now not as solid as
> before, or if the discussions refer to special versions for iOs and so
> forth only. If you don't catch the beginning and jump into the middle,
> it's a bit distressing to see bug after bug listed.

I would take those with a grain of salt.  Well, some of them anyway. 
Best to look at each reported issue on a case-by-case basis and 
determine its merit and applicability to your work accordingly.

As one of the few people who has a habit of reading every outstanding 
engine bug report at least twice a year (I'm not just OCD, but so much 
of my job depends on knowing the ins and outs of the engine), I can 
safely describe a sadly large percentage of the stuff in the RQCC as 
merde:  duplicates, misunderstood features, RTFM, unreproducible bizarre 
edge cases that have affected no one else nor even the original reporter 
since, issues long since addressed, and issues long since irrelevant 
(you'd be surprised how many things are in there for Mac Classic, which 
even Apple stopped supporting long ago).

I've tried in many cases to prompt the OP to reconfirm the issue in a 
recent engine version and close or comment accordingly, but only in a 
few cases has this yielded any response.  Most of them sit there a long 
time, with my being unable to close them, the engine team unsure if they 
need to be closed, and the OP unresponsive.

Sure, software always has a certain number of errors per KLOC, and 
something as complex as LC has a good many legitimate bug reports 
against it.

But most of the show-stoppers have been addressed, so before random FUD 
on the list gets you down I would encourage you to take a good look at 
the specifics and determine how such an issue will actually affect what 
you do.

For myself, with dozens of products in development here, the number of 
bugs that are actually holding up any of our feature development is 
fewer than a dozen, and in every case I have plenty of other features to 
add in the meantime while I wait for those fixes.


> I know the standalone issue will revisit me soon as I'm working on
> something actively right now. I dread that moment.

If you can use LC for building standalones until after I'm back from the 
RevLive conference, I'll have you covered in MC on that.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
  LiveCode Journal blog: http://LiveCodejournal.com/blog.irv