New(?) Idea for Standalones

[Richard Gaskin]

Roger Guay wrote:
 > Has anyone thought of building a “legal” and “blessed" app for
 > Mac, WIndows and Linux that would open standalones for for each
 > of those platforms? Why put each of us through the agony (and
 > expense) of shifting/changing requirements to be able to easily
 > distribute standalones? Just as Microsoft Word is required to
 > open .doc files why not have something like LCreader app open
 > .livecode files


Applications can have documents, and with many apps the documents are 
interactive media.  The LC engine has been supporting the ability to do 
that since the beginning.

A stack can open another stack file equally well whether you run that 
stack in the IDE or as a standalone.

You make just one standalone set up with the libraries and UI you want 
to present to your audience, and allow it to open anything you want 
folks to run with it.

The Standalone Builder even provides a place to assign a document type 
for your app's files.


There are many reasons it would be problematic to make one generic 
"player" for everyone's stack files, mostly user experience but also app 
store restrictions, and additional technical requirements for any devs 
using it to keep stacks playing nicely together.


But you can make just one standalone and run anything else you make with it.

Most of the work I've done over the years does exactly that. We deliver 
new stuff all the time, but we don't bother updating the installed app 
but maybe once every could years as OS/engine needs change - we do it 
all with stack files as documents to the app.

In fact, for the last decade or so I've gone one further: users don't 
even need to deal with documents, at least not directly.  The standalone 
pulls them down over the web.

Modern, cloud-driven, just like Adobe, Microsoft and others are heavily 
invested in.  Only it's easier in LC, as easy as "go stack <url>".

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