Achilles Heel of Livecode

[Richmond]

I, frankly, cannot be bothered by animated GIF images.

My experiments over the last 5-6 with a series of images used as the 
*backGroundPattern*
of a graphic object has shown that if one animated at 25 images per second
(and this is what I might term the "Mickey Mouse rate" as it was 
probably worked out
by Disney and/or his contemporaries) it looks like movement and does not 
*jerk*
unless the images have been badly prepared.

That is, of course, only on desktop machines as I have only dipped my toes
very tentatively into mobile devices.

What is the ultimate difference for the end-user (i.e. the person who is 
watching an animation)
between that sort of animation and what Brahmanathaswami means by Smooth 
Scrolling?

The only real downside of flashing a series of images with a graphic 
object frame
(that I am aware of) is in terms of physical storage (a lot of images 
stored off-screen)

Richmond.


On 3.12.19 4:50, Tom Glod via use-livecode wrote:
> You are completely right.
>
> I just quoted a job...and knowing that the customer is going to ask me
> "where is the smooth scrolling?"..... i skipped over livecode entirely and
> quoted it using flutter....knowing I have no explanation or chance to give
> the customer the experience they expect.
>
> Your point exactly.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 2, 2019 at 9:32 PM Sannyasin Brahmanathaswami via use-livecode <
> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>
>> @ richard
>>
>> I love LiveCode, use it every day, probably till the day I die, if I not
>> meditating, singing or swinging kettle bells, and have invested in every
>> offer presented by Kevin since you "turned me on Metacard" when I used
>> Supercard and was looking for bigger solutions, and even bought into
>> Revolution before it signed the agreement with Scott Raney -- I think that
>> was circa 1990 when you sent that email.  And now I have business license
>> "for life"  and I have a lot of respect for the team and what they try to
>> do on some many platforms
>>
>> Having said that, I have been ranting on and off the past ten years, about
>> the Achilles Heel which is the "busted ankle" in Livecode.  Simply this:
>>
>> Smooth Motion Graphics.
>>
>> "We shouldn't be scripting scrollers,"
>>
>>   is merely a "symptom" of a larger problem/gap/haitus in vision for the
>> future.
>>
>> Now you and I and plenty of old timers know that, e.g. the "my app" could
>> not be duplicated by some other language or "HTML5" without spending 10
>> times the $ and time. I've been told that
>>
>>   "Oh sure we could do that on "React/Elm/[or any other language]"
>> (SivaSiva app) but... uh, we could not make that Word Puzzle thing you did,
>> and that Module (stack) you made would take five time the money and effort
>> work. But, ours will look so professional!"
>>
>> So why will "The Other Thing" look "So Professional?"
>>
>>   Simple: scrolling, easing, bouncing, smooth scrolling, ken burns effects
>> and cool transitions.
>>
>> I am not talking "animation" perse. Just the above. And scrolling is at
>> ground zero of these "effects" .  It one thing to know, after 20 years of
>> HTML, web work, PHP, Javascript, that Livecode "will be the best tool for
>> this project in order to bring it to completion in 1/5 the time"
>>
>> It's totally another thing for LC to stand alongside other languages to be
>> tested by newbies who are
>>
>> a) content producers want to develop apps - photoshop, illustration,
>> Sketch expert...--  huge market there, but they have high production
>> values, expectations on the "look/feel" of the first card they make. Much
>> of which could be easily fix by tweaking the IDE.
>> b) a complete newbie e.g 17-year old whose been using a phone for three
>> years, and the app he sees "do cool stuff"  but he can't make his LC app
>> "do cool stuff"
>> c) old school programmer who is tired of the horrible world of JS, PHP,
>> C++ and wants to have "fun" building solutions.
>>
>> All three markets have no idea what LC can do. They test drive it, and the
>> Achilles Heel kicks in: nothing appears to "work smoothly" (we can't even
>> run an animated GIF in LC while doing any else on the phone) and they are
>> on to other languages.
>>
>> Kevin said in an interview in California, that he wanted LiveCode to be in
>> the top ten languages... until we fix the Achilles Heel in the "look and
>> feel of what you produce" in Livecode, it will never happen. For every 50
>> who register for a trial, I really wonder how many actually "sign up",
>> maybe 1-3? They are who see the potential for doing "in house tools/behind
>> the scenes software"  that don't really care how it looks...
>>
>>   I hope I am wrong...or wish that in 2 years, I will be "wrong"
>>
>> BR
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> We shouldn't be scripting scrollers.
>>
>> If the control we placed on the card scrolls, it should scroll.  Doesn't
>> matter if it's Mac or Windows or Linux.  Shouldn't matter if it's iOS or
>> Android.
>>
>> Manually typing an interaction overlay is bizarre savagery better left
>> for those with a typing fetish than developers who want to be productive
>> using visual development tools like LiveCode.
>>
>> That this has not been addressed in the product -- even as so many of us
>> have scripted libraries to take care of this automatically in script --
>> has always been concerning.
>>
>> And as we approach the 10th anniversary of iPhone, that this has never
>> been taken care of, or even put on a road map, the concern has grown.
>>
>> Vision, anyone?
>>
>> #UserExperience
>> #EmbraceVisualProgramming
>> #xTalksRule
>> #SomeoneHasToSayIt
>> #WhyIsNoOneSayingIt
>>
>>
>>
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