Cross Platform Font Layout - current workarounds

[J. Landman Gay]

On August 25, 2020 7:47:00 PM "Sean Cole \(Pi\) via use-livecode" 
<use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>

> The projects deadline was Monday morning, which was completed. It doesn't
> take away from the fact that next time I will face it all again because LC
> won't fix the fundamentals. They don't live up to their promises. They LIE
> (Jacque won't accept it, but they make many claims on their site and to me
> in person that simply are proven false). I'm just tired of people making me
> out to be irrelevant and any claim I make to be false.

I don't think you're either irrelevant or incorrect, I only object to the 
disrespect you've shown for people who work hard to bring us the tool we 
love and depend on. Any bugs you found are certainly based in fact, as 
you've shown. But there are much better ways to express discontent than 
what we've seen here. I also understand that you are battling some personal 
issues that may be out of your control, for which I am very sorry. But you 
can't expect warm replies to rants that are hurtful to the very people who 
attempt to help. Remember when we were worried about you and took up a fund 
to help? You got mad at us for that too.

As for "code once, run anywhere," I've recently completed two apps in four 
different flavors. I did not need to make any adjustments between the Mac 
and Windows apps, or between the iOS and Android apps with one exception 
for the native scroller on Android. And because the two products were 
siimilar in many ways (one inspired the other,) I could re-use about 70% of 
the desktop code to create the mobile apps.

Two mobile apps with identical code bases, except for native Android scroller:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1517450678
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.friendshippress.wordathand

Mac and Windows apps with identical code bases:
https://thinkingstrings.com/interactive-explorations/  (click product 
titles to see screenshots)
And the mobile versions:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thinkingstrings.tsmobile
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1496668393

There is one more thing that differs between Android and iOS apps, and 
that's native appearance. Your font issue is similar to this. My mobile 
products each contain a handler I call "setupUI" which adjusts the 
appearance of all controls to conform to the platform's GUI. It sets the 
properties of all buttons, fields, text, etc., whatever is necessary to 
make the app look as expected for the OS. It's a long handler and I add to 
it as I do the initial layout. Then I run the handler manually from the 
message box before doing the build for each mobile platform. This is all 
cosmetic work, and I don't consider it part of the code base because it 
isn't what runs my apps. It just makes them look right. It's an automated 
way to switch between iOS and Android appearance, with the advantage of 
allowing me to flip between the two GUIs quickly during developent.

I generally don't need to do that for desktop apps, because LC handles most 
of the GUI issues for me. The fact that you've found an edge case is 
probably why you're so angry; we get spoiled because we take it for granted 
that LC is going to do it all for us. The link Mark gave us explains the 
reason (and though the author is working with HTML, the reason behind the 
problem does apply to LC as well. It isn't as irrelevant as you thought.)

--
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com