Open Source Kickstarter Report Card

[Peter W A Wood]

Richard

> On 18 Aug 2015, at 11:36, Richard Gaskin <ambassador at fourthworld.com> wrote:
> 
> Peter W A Wood wrote:
> 
> >> On 18 Aug 2015, at 08:13, Richard Gaskin wrote:
> >>
> >> What usability standards do you feel are not well reflected in the
> >> current IDE, and if Kevin made you IDE Czar tomorrow what are the
> >> first three things you'd do to fix that?
> >
> > 1. Intelligent Code Completion (like intelliSense)
> 
> I keep hearing talk about that, but it's not on the Road Map and given the number of tasks in the queue it may be a long time before it shows up.

Any "new visual editor designed around today’s usability standards" would include this, even older ones like Delphi do. 

> > 2. Integrated Version Control
> 
> Looks like lcVCS is a more generalized solution than what LiveCode Ltd. is including with their Biz package, so we're on our way on that one.

Again today’s usability standards for visual editors would include git integration as a minimum, even for visually designed elements. Sure this would require LiveCode to add object state serialisation Of the IDE’s I know both Delphi and Xcode include object state serialisation. Vector graphics drawing tools do. Again it is something you would expect in a modern visual editor.

> > 3. Support of Multiple targets (like Xcode)
> 
> What are "multiple targets" in an IDE?

Very much as Monte said. Specifically would be the ability to define both test, debug and distribution targets. The test target would cause an automated test suite to run, the debug target would build and run a version including additional debugging code etc.

With LiveCode’s cross-platform credentials, it should be possible to select the iOS test target (one for each device), click-on run and your stack should be run in an iOS simulator. Similar for Android.

Again, I see these as features to be part of today’s usability standards.

The issue here is that the promise of a “new visual editor designed around today’s usability standards” is extremely broad. It means different things to different people depending on their context. I think it’s great from a marketing perspective, it has something to attract a lot of people, and it's horrible from a customer satisfaction perspective as most people will be disappointed when it doesn’t meet their expectation.

Regards

Peter