mergExt Acquisition

[Monte Goulding]

> On 19 Feb 2016, at 12:04 PM, Roger Eller <roger.e.eller at sealedair.com> wrote:
> 
> I agree with you, Clarence.  The words "cross platform where appropriate"
> leaves it unclear just how much or how little will be ported.  I expect if
> it is difficult to do it will remain iOS only.

I believe the goal will be to make them as cross platform as feasible and use widgets where we can. It may involve some significant API changes. There’s definitely some things which aren’t available on iOS though. For example, mergSocial relies on a framework that isn’t there in Android. We can workaround this by making cross platform Facebook and Twitter externals/extensions but that’s not a port of mergSocial. Every time this has been raised I have made it clear that the main thing I needed was a client that felt it was important enough to their business that things be cross platform that they would pay me to do it. Well I have that now as it’s clearly critically important to LiveCode. There was and still are a couple of technical hurdles to jump for some things like maps on android but we can get there I’m sure.

Having said all that I always saw the role of mergExt to be twofold. Features that probably shouldn’t be put in the engine to avoid bloating it which may or may not be cross platform. Things like barcode reading, camera controls & maps I think fit there. Then there’s things that are OS bling. These might be unique APIs like the Social framework or Touch ID. I have a little from column A and a little from column B. Column A should lend itself to porting. To get equity from column B we might look for more bling from Android and other platforms. I did this in my Android external experiments in the excellently named mergPopToast command.

I probably should say though that Kevin’s plans might be different from mine and he’s directing this show now ;-)

Cheers

Monte