Quality, reputation, and improving both (was Re: text copied form LC generated PDF, WTF?)

[Mark Wieder]

On 2/20/20 11:56 AM, Richard Gaskin via use-livecode wrote:

> On the forums we see a another, with surprising frequency:  when the 
> behavior of a script is not understood, the poster will sometimes 
> surmise that the cause is somehow file format corruption. Many cases 
> turn out to be just syntax errors, and IIRC few or none of those have 
> turned out to be file format corruption.

So here's one for you: As I've mentioned before, I don't use 9.6dpx for 
anything serious. I've been working with LC9.6dp2 lately to see if my 
stacks still work with the latest builds and I've been coming up with 
interesting results.

At least twice now I've been editing scripts with two tabs open in the 
script editor. After dutifully saving my changes I close the IDE and 
relaunch to ensure a clean slate. I see that my stack crashes horribly 
because the script I was editing has been saved into the wrong object 
(the other script I was editing). Luckily backups saved me.

I have two different corrupted stacks after editing them (one of the 
corrupted stacks is your 4wdevolution stack - happy to send it your way 
if desired). Again backups saved the day. Made the same changes to the 
stack and it works fine.

One of my stacks that behaved properly in LC9.5.1 consistently crashed 
my distro's desktop manager in LC9.6dp2 (any edition), having to be 
restarted. I just spent two days trying to figure out if I was doing 
something wrong or something changed in LC itself, and it turns out to 
be a combination. The cef browser code has changed enough that just 
instantiating a browser widget is enough to cause havoc, so I now 
sidestep some previously-working code and hope that still works when we 
get dp3.

Yes, I realize that these are dp releases and shouldn't be considered 
stable, but it's gotten to the point where I don't know whether problems 
I come across are bugs in my code, bugs in the latest LC build, or 
upcoming changes to The Way Things Work.

-- 
  Mark Wieder
  ahsoftware at gmail.com