I'm trying to rally the troops...

[Richard Gaskin]

larry wrote:

 > Over a year ago I wrote to RR and suggested they allow the user to
 > add notes directly to the LC dictionary. (for private viewing)
 >
 > I understand why they need to approve notes that are added for public
 > viewing.
 >
 > But there are literally HUNDREDS of times where I have to figure
 > something out that is NOT documented in the dictionary.  A recent
 > example: I had trouble with the cursor disappearing once I compiled.
 > Happily, Jacqueline answered the question in here for me.  What I
 > want to do is go to the dictionary and make my OWN note about that
 > under "cursor" - since I don't have a photographic memory and because
 > LC for me is a hobby and not a profession, I will sometimes go months
 > without using it.  It's too difficult to remember everything.
 >
 > Sure, I could make a spreadsheet with "cursor" in column 1 and my
 > notes in column 2 - whatever.  But that seems like a pretty dopey
 > solution.
 >
 > I hope some of you will agree with me that this feature would be VERY
 > useful and a great timesaver.  Then let's rattle the LC cage.
 >
 > Thanks for listening.

On the contrary, thank you for writing that.

One of the things that I especially like about it is that it's achievable.

I suspect rattling RunRev's cage would introduce a wait on something 
like this, because at the moment they have an army of Kickstarter 
backers to whom they need to fulfill their promises.

But what you're talking about is quite doable without them - maybe the 
cage we should be rattling is our own.

There are a few ways this could be done:

A. Update the IDE's Dictionary to include this

B. Replace the IDE's Dictionary with something else that includes this 
and perhaps much more

C. Make an separate Notes stack that integrates with the Dictionary

All of these are doable, but I wonder if C may the easiest, since A 
requires coordination with their own ongoing changes and we don't yet 
have a GitHub-like setup for IDE elements, and B is a lot of work and we 
could expect some might still prefer the one included in the IDE.

Option C could be built at any time by anyone, freely shared, and 
perhaps with additional features added by other members of the 
community.  And being separate from the IDE itself it would maintain a 
healthy "separation of concerns" that often bogs down projects that 
don't stay mindful of such things.

While poking around in the IDE I discovered a nifty command:

    revDocumentationGo <liveCodeToken>

e.g.:

    revDocumentationGo "securityPermissions"

So quickly opening the Dictionary from a given Note card is a one-liner.

For making the creation of Notes easier, I'll bet there's a handy way to 
obtain the token currently displayed in the Dictionary, so you could 
just click a "New" button and it would fill in the token name for you.

All that's needed is for someone to take this on.  Once it gets started, 
others would likely pitch in to help.

Option B may also be good if you could start with one of the existing 
Dictionary replacements, like Björnke's if he's up for that.


Many of us still think of LiveCode in terms of a proprietary product, 
but the open source thang is more than just a gimme for educators and 
in-house developers:

RunRev's open source initiative seems a very earnest effort to liberate 
the world with a really fun programming language; the Commercial Edition 
licenses are just a means to that end, keeping the pro devs in their 
audience happy with a proprietary license option and commercial-quality 
features, and enough money coming in to keep the whole effort going.

The more time I've spent with open source projects, the more I've come 
to think of them as an "us" proposition, an opportunity for partnership 
between a vendor and their community to continually improve the software 
experience.

Projects like the one you've proposed may well serve as a good example 
of this new dynamic, exploring ways to make the best use of resources 
both within the company and within the community.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
  Follow me on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/FourthWorldSys