[ANN] Release 9.6.6 RC-1

[panagiotis merakos]

Dear list members,

We are pleased to announce the release of LiveCode 9.6.6 RC-1.


Getting the Release
===================
You can find the release in your LiveCode account area or get it via the
automatic updater. To find the 9.6.6 RC-1 test release in your LiveCode
account, please scroll down to below the list of stable releases, to find
your available test releases.

Release Contents
================
LiveCode 9.6.6 RC-1 comes with several changes, including fixes for lots of
the bugs you requested in the recent survey:

New Features:
- iOS device safe area insets function
An iphoneSafeAreaInsets function has been added to enable getting the safe
area insets of the device the app is running on. These can be used to
adjust your app's user interface elements to avoid areas that are covered
by device furniture, e.g. the notch.

- Android adaptive icons
It is now possible to configure your Android apps to use adaptive icons.
To use adaptive icons, generate them using the Image Asset Editor in
Android Studio and
then choose the resulting res folder in the android standalone settings
pane.

- Android app query whitelist
Support has been added for specifying which other apps can be interacted
with via the intent and other (custom) URL schemes.
Since Android 11, by default, an app cannot interact with any others due to
changes to package visibility. You must now specify which apps you need
access to by adding their ids to the App ID Query Whitelist field in the
Android standalone settings.


Bug Fixes:
- Opening HyperCard stacks will no longer cause a crash
- Support for the system date and the system time has been added on Android
- A stack's rect will no longer become out of sync with its actual position
after being moved in the IDE on macOS
- A wider range of TrueType font files will now work on Android and Web
- Use of the term Tutorials have been replaced by the term Lessons
throughout the IDE
- When a runtime error occurs in a context where the script debugger cannot
run, the error dialog will be displayed rather
than failing silently
- Conversions between global and local co-ordinates are now correct on
multi-screen macOS systems.
- The welcome tutorial can now be started on first run via the Start
Interative Welcome button in the start center
- Starting a new tutorial will now close the previous tutorial's stack, if
present
- The performance of the script editor while typing has been improved
- Downloading large amounts of data using tsNet on Windows is now
substantially faster
- Invalid PDFs will no longer be generated when using the open printing to
PDF command on Windows using the 64-bit engine
- Script debugging will no longer fail to work intermittently when running
the IDE with pro features
- Scripts which run without locking the screen are no longer slower on
macOS Big Sur and later
- The drawing library now correctly handle gradients which are referred to
using an id containing - or _
- Key events will now work correctly after a modal dialog is shown from a
mouseUp handler in a grouped control
- The iphoneDeviceModel function now returns the correct model string when
run on an iOS/iPadOS simulator.
- Default buttons and progress bars will no longer cause unnecessary CPU
usage on macOS 10.10 (Yosemite) or later
- The byteOffset function will no longer cause incorrect results in some
cases nor cause a crash
- Scripts containing accented characters will no longer incorrectly report
being externally modified
- Using the print link command when printing to PDF on Windows no longer
causes a crash
- The copyright notices in the engine app bundle (macOS) and exe (Windows)
have been updated
- A significant memory leak in the browser widget on macOS has been
resolved
- POST data larger than 64kb is now parsed correctly by the Windows server
engine
- Audio-only players no longer consume excessive CPU when in Edit Mode on
macOS Big Sur
- WebGL content now displays in the browser widget when running on macOS
12.x (Monterey)
- The union (and other set operation) commands now throw an error if there
is no into clause and the target is not a declared variable
- Building iOS apps using Xcode 13.2 with the iOS 15.2 SDK is now supported
- Local file and content access has been re-enabled in the browser widget
and native control on Android
- Touch events now occur at the correct location when handled by objects
underneath a disabled Android scroller
- SVG elements with a stroke-width of 0 are no longer drawn with a hairline
stroke
- There is no longer a delay when opening the IDE menus on macOS
- Selecting a specific browser to test a web project against now works
correctly
- The overhead of using "do .." to evaluate long JavaScript scripts in the
browser widget on Android has been greatly reduced

For the full list of all fixes, updates and enhancements please see the
release notes:
http://downloads.livecode.com/livecode/9_6_6/LiveCodeNotes-9_6_6_rc_1.pdf


Known issues
============
- The Browser widget's native layer is not shown in some Linux distros with
Cinnamon window manager.
- The use of the Browser widget is not supported on Ubuntu 18.04 64 bit LTS
yet.


Required Software
=================
To build iOS apps with LiveCode you must have the appropriate versions of
Xcode as follows:

  - macOS 10.13.4: Xcode 10.1 - LiveCode builds iOS apps using the iOS 12.1
SDK
  - macOS 10.14.4: Xcode 11.3.x - LiveCode builds iOS apps using the iOS
13.2 SDK
  - macOS 10.15.4: Xcode 12.4.x - LiveCode builds iOS apps using the iOS
14.4 SDK
  - macOS 11+  : Xcode 13.2.x - LiveCode builds iOS apps using the iOS 15.2
SDK

There is a full list of working LiveCode/macOS/Xcode combinations here:
https://livecode.com/docs/9-5-0/faq/faq/

Note: Whilst we endeavour to release updated versions of LiveCode
supporting the latest Xcode/iOS SDKs as quickly as possible; we strongly
recommend disabling automatic update of Xcode or downloading the specific
version of Xcode required directly from the Apple developer portal and
installing it separately.

Important: From the start of April 2021, Apple is only accepting apps built
using iOS14.x SDKs. This means that, if you wish to submit apps to the
AppStore you will have to be running at least macOS 10.15 in order to be
able to install the necessary version of Xcode.


Feedback
========
Please report any bugs encountered on our quality center at
http://quality.livecode.com/

We have a forum available for discussing LiveCode at
http://forums.livecode.com


Have fun!
The LiveCode Team
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