LC Server style survey: co-mingle code w/HTML?

[Rick Harrison]

Hi Richard,

I regularly mix both .lc scripts and HTML.

I liked the original LC Web-Plugin with the exception
of the very scary download message that was forced
upon us all without any option to tone it down a bit.
Once the mothership decided to abandon it, it was
doomed.  It was still great for in-house work though
even in that state for a time.

Then I was disappointed when the LC server came out
that I couldn’t use Desktop LC code in the server the
same way that I used to be able to do with the
LC Web-Plugin.

I find now that I can mix both .lc scripts and HTML
in the same web format file.  It can be a pain sometimes
changing from double quotes to single quotes. 
Sometimes I have to build up my database calls
with more statements, and concatenations than
I’d like to, but at least it all works now.

CMS are interesting, but I usually find that whatever
it is that I want to do, the proper add-on I’m looking
for just doesn’t exist as I tend to want to do things that
aren’t normal everyday kinds of applications that
everyone else wants to do.  Every job I do tends to
ends up being a custom one.

I thought all the hype about Wordpress and LC
working together sounded interesting.  Then
On-Rev wrote us that note saying that we were
the ones that would be held responsible for
ensuring that Wordpress was always up to 
date on our accounts or we could lose our
accounts.  (I thought maintaining up to date
versions was supposed to be the job of
On-Rev as good care takers.)  Oh well, I was
glad I had decided not to go that route so it
wasn’t a problem for me at all.

I just love the way new things are announced
as the latest and greatest, and then a few
months or a couple years later abandoned.

The change over time of everything in the 
computer world is way too fast, and as a 
result unstable.  That is why we don’t have
true artificial intelligence yet.  Every time when
it looks like some breakthrough might occur,
someone decides it’s time that everyone go
through a forced update that screws up all
one's carefully crafted code.  They break it!

Have you noticed now many companies are
saying they have developed an AI that does
task XYZ.  What they have really done is
write a program that is better than the
previous version of what they made.  That
is not AI.  I suppose perhaps they are calling
it that to either get more funding, marketing
attention, or both.

If artificial intelligence ever did evolve it would
have the same problem.  Update……Update..
Update..Update.Upda.Up.U.ding.ding..g..
Godlike thinking power achieved..ding update..
No time to spend doing anything except..update ding!

Oh sorry, I guess you didn’t ask for a rant. Update ding! ;-)

Cheers,

Rick


> On Dec 5, 2017, at 1:18 PM, Richard Gaskin via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
> 
> I have some tools I developed for server apps, which allow me to develop and test both client and server within the same local LC IDE instance. As you can imagine, this has improved development efficiency by orders of magnitude.
> 
> It's much a much more xTalk-like way of working, and once you use it having to be tied to a server for every little test feels like building a ship in a bottle with tweezers while wearing a blindfold.
> 
> When I started making these tools I was using standalones exclusively for server work, partly because it reflects my habits gained from using LC as a CGI for many years before LC Server existed, and partly because I have no need to co-mingle code in HTML like PHP does, except a few cases where the merge function works quite nicely.
> 
> Thinking about this more recently, it seems these tools need not be limited to server deployments using standalones, and may be modified to provide the same server emulation for deployments that will use LC Server.
> 
> However, because the desktop version of LC has no means of executing LC Server scripts (due to the HTML wrapped around any code), the ability to enjoy such a fluid workflow is limited to those server apps where the .lc scripts contain only directives to load standard LC Script libraries.
> 
> That limitation fits my own work, including current work for one client. But does it fit yours?
> 
> How many of you using LC Server rely on its PHP-like model that encourages mixing HTML with LC code?
> 
> Or maybe the better question might be:
> 
> How many of you have server systems that already separate HTML from server code like most non-PHP solutions do, or could affordably transition to that model if it could simplify your development workflow significantly?
> 
> Side question for the dev team if they see this:
> 
> Would it be reasonable/affordable to add some means of enhancing desktop LC so that it can at least parse and attempt to execute LC scripts embedded in HTML?  I can emulate environment variables and the like, but the incompatibility between LC and .lc has been a real development bottleneck.
> 
> -- 
> Richard Gaskin
> Fourth World Systems
> Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
> ____________________________________________________________________
> Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com
> 
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