Installing metacard on linux - cmd line or?

[Richard Gaskin]

Eric A. Engle wrote:

 > I wish to install metacard as I find the current UI bloated - it
 > often hangs even when given propercode, and really hate the fact
 > that new stacks and old stacks are incompatible. I am using ubuntu.
 > While I did find an engine and stacks, I do not know the sudo etc.
 > to try to install from a package. I did look on the Internet the
 > one thread I founded ended in a chortle about being outdated and
 > wasn't helpful. I have already searched the user list with no joy.
 > Are there repositories to add or such?

The MetaCard IDE is no longer being maintained.  I've used it with the 
LC engine as recently as v6.0rc2, but not since.

You can try your luck with this convenient installer Jacque put together 
for setting up MC:
http://livecodeshare.runrev.com/stack/590/MetaCard-Setup-2-02

If you're looking for older versions of the MetaCard engine, Mark 
Talluto used to maintain an archive at his company's site, but I can't 
find the URL for that now.  Perhaps he can chime in with that, but given 
how much OSes have changed since the MC engine was last updated I'd be 
surprised if it ran on any current version of Linux, Mac, or Windows.

 > I also wish to use the engine for CGI.

See above about availability and compatibility of the MC engine.

With the advent of LiveCode Server some years ago, and changes to the 
engine architecture to facilitate licensing changes around v2.7 or so, 
the Runtime engine no longer operates as a CGI engine by itself.

That said, any version of LiveCode can be used to build a standalone 
that can be run with -ui as a CGI.  In fact, all of the CGIs I use in 
propuction are standalones.  I use LC Server only to help others, but 
prefer the complete functional parity with running scripts in the IDE 
and on the server that I get by using standalones.

If you've done this before you know there are many conveniences included 
in LC Server that you need to write your own scripts for, like parsing 
incoming POST data and the like.  But if you already have those in place 
you can move your old .mt scripts into script-only stacks as libraries, 
changing "on startup" to "on libraryStack", and much of your code can 
remain unchanged.


 > Any help is appreciated.
 >
 > I would prefer not to discuss the merits or demerits of livecode.
 > I simply wish to install metacard, somehow.

Please consider the following only for the benefit of others, but as one 
of the former maintainers of the MetaCard IDE I feel obliged to note why 
the maintenance team has moved on:

Back during the acquisition of MetaCard by RunRev Ltd, many of us who 
had been using MC enjoyed it and saw no compelling reason to change our 
IDE.  With Dr. Raney's release of the MC IDE under MIT license, we 
formed a team to maintain it.  Much of that work was done by Klaus 
Major, Ken Ray, Jacque Gay, and myself, with many other contributors as 
well.

Over time, however, we found that the engine team was adding features 
faster than we could build UIs for them, so around v5.x we retired the 
MC IDE project.

Anyone with sufficient time and interest is welcome to carry the MC IDE 
forward, but Ken and I discussed this at length and for ourselves we 
felt our time would be better leveraged by crafting tools to make the LC 
IDE work more the way we want it to rather than to replicate everything 
in the LC IDE.  It's simply a lot of work, and much of it is quite good, 
so replicating it was a time sink we chose to avoid.

Given MC's somewhat sparse design, most of us who enjoyed it were able 
to only by building up our own tools around it.  Many of those, like 
Geoff's Navigator, now also work in LiveCode.

My own toolkit has recently been updated for LC v8, and while it relies 
on the LC IDE it does so with an unusual design that allows me to work 
very productively without ever seeing much of LC very often - the Help 
included in the plugin explains more:
<http://fourthworld.com/products/devolution/index.html>

All of this is just a long-winded way to get to a point that I feel is 
important for all of us, regardless of the UIs we enjoy working with:

A scripted IDE like LC's show allow infinite customization, so how we 
work with the engine is entirely up to us.  Vive le difference; "let a 
thousand flowers bloom", and all that.

But the engine is too expensive to replicate, so any deficiencies in 
performance or functionality need to be identified and submitted with 
clear recipes so they can be addressed.

OSes keep changing, and for the most part the engine team has been doing 
a good job keeping up with them. Mac is fast moving to a 64-bit 
requirement, and the Linux world has been predominantly 64-bit for a 
long time.   The current engine handles that quite well, along with v7's 
and v8's greatly improved GDK integration for us Ubuntu users (thanks 
again, Fraser!).

If you can modify your Ubuntu system to get an old MC engine to run at 
all, it likely won't look or behave well.

I believe it is a better investment of time to identify those specific 
areas of concern that make moving backwards seem attractive, and let's 
figure out the most expedient way to move those forward.

This way those specific concerns can be addressed, while you also get to 
enjoy the 2500+ fixes and enhancements that have been put into the 
engine over the last couple years.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com