LC MISTAKES

[Monte Goulding]

Hi Joe

On 02/02/2013, at 10:42 AM, Joe Lewis Wilkins <pepetoo at cox.net> wrote:

> 1.  I had little problem with the initial cost to sign up for Revolution; but, very soon I discovered that it was going to be MUCH more expensive for the "H/C" accustomed user to adopt. I'll talk about this more, later on.

The GPL version will be a free entry point for anyone.

> 2.  Though I certainly appreciated the multi-platform aspects and a few other "tweaks"; I was flabbergasted to discover that RunRev had mangled the H/C framework by eliminating the Background layer in stacks, providing a very clumsy alternative method, so that the millions who could be adopting it from H/C would have to re-implement most of their legacy stacks. It just wasn't the same Object Hierarchy  any more. I tried to be upbeat with the articles I wrote on MacInstruct about Revolution, but Revolution just wasn't a better H/C. What RunRev did later in transitioning to LiveCode is a totally different issue. The damage had already been done.

Hmm.. background groups in LiveCode are far more flexible than HyperCard's implementation. Now with the shared group option we have many possibilities that just couldn't have been done in HyperCard.
> 
> So.... what should have been done? I realize that one of the Steves would be a hard sell; but, in some manner, Apple needed to get behind Revolution. We needed some really deep pockets, such as Woz to endorse Revolution so that the price for Revolution would be like H/C - you bought it once. Then it should have been developed to perfection as Revolution, probably up to the Intel Mac level and "bug-free". Once Macs switched to Intel CPUs, a totally new line could begin that would have been LiveCode. At this point Revolution should then have been bundled (free) with all new Macs and PCs, providing an option to down-load the new LiveCode Platform for a nominal, layered fee of some amount that users knew they could count on for new major - releases; knowing in advance that they would be able to use these as fully functional and reliable should they elect not to continue with the new releases. 

I'm not sure I understand the point of this. If apple wanted to support an xTalk wouldn't they have continued HyperCard?  I'm 100% positive that RunRev have been trying to get more support from Apple the whole time. Don't blame RunRev for the lack of support. 

LiveCode is a direct continuation of the Revolution product. It was just a rebranding.

> 
> I realize that, in hind-sight it is fairly easy to see where things "might" be going; something that most of us would not have been able to anticipate in the moment, but the future of LC should have been better scripted so that RunRev was ALWAYS producing identifiable products that were capable of performing predictable applications; so the users ended with a list of products instead of an endless string of unreliable prodcts with a single name. Yes, there would be nominal charges for each new level, but the user would know that without the new "product", he/she could stop at any point. I know I'm glossing over many of the obstacles that might have been encountered, but I'm sure you all get my point. 

Just a bit ;-)

If we can get support for the kickstarter then the future of LiveCode is infinite. The source will be there for anyone to take in any direction they want. Anyone wishing to have more input into the direction of the platform and it's future should whole heartedly support this campaign. Anyone wanting a more robust and bug free platform should whole heartedly support this campaign. Anyone wanting more rapid feature development and better platform support should whole heartedly support this campaign.
> 
> I feel confident that that a well structured plan similar to this would have brought a great many into the fold. I want my background layer back. Not going to happen, I know. (sigh)

Well... I guess with LiveCode going GPL someone that feels the same way could re-implement groups to only be a single background layer on a stack... I wouldn't recommend it though because you would lose so much.

--
Monte Goulding

M E R Goulding - software development services
mergExt - There's an external for that!