LC for Raspberry Pi

[Richard Gaskin]

Mike Kerner wrote:

 > Pi is interesting to me because of what I can, in theory, build with
 > it, but for the same reason so are many other things.  Pi isn't going
 > to bring revenue to LC, IMHO, the way that some of those other tools
 > can...

Not directly, at least not short-term.  But as hh pointed out, in any 
given pool of users inevitably some will want a proprietary license.

And in the meantime, 100% of everyone using LiveCode participates in 
lowering the biggest impediment to sales, the "I've never heard of it" 
factor.


 > but being able to brag about being the easy-to-use IDE for PI would
 > be cool.

A lightweight IDE can be useful on other systems as well, such as older 
low-powered PCs.

For example, I've been putting off upgrading my laptop, and aside from a 
few of the more complex web pages for the most part it's quite fine.

Until I use LC, that is.  Script editing on that 1.6 GHz CPU is merely 
annoying, but debugging is prohibitively slow, taking at least 20 
seconds for each "Step Into".

Some years ago I started working in a lightweight debugger with Ken Ray, 
initially for the MC IDE but later it occurred to me that as a 
self-contained thing it would be useful in a standalone as well.
<http://fourthworld.net/channels/lc/libROSD.rev>

I turned that on and went back to debugging - smooth as silk, even on my 
old laptop.

Now I'm considering going back to making my own script editor, so I can 
get lean clean typing without all the CPU-hogging real-time formatting 
that slows down LC's Script Editor.

I can understand why the LC IDE so often errs on the side of 
completeness, and has such, shall we say, "thorough" code, to provide 
the many conveniences it does.

But on the flipside, I've discovered I'm not the only one who prefers 
raw typing, with formatting happening only when I explicitly invoke it. 
Removing auto-formatting and other "thoroughness" can make editing a 
breeze - the field object is, after all, quite nice.

And with debugging, I haven't traced out LC's code but it seems to be 
doing a LOT of work for its UI on top of the parts necessary for 
stepping through code.  Indeed, that was one of the reasons Ken and I 
separated the Script Editor from the Debugger, to allow for two 
different UIs, each dedicated to the task it supports.

The LC engine in v9 is satisfyingly performant in my experience.  A lean 
IDE that can really show it off would not only open up editing on the 
RPi, but also on older systems for which the official IDE is simply too 
cumbersome.

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