[OT] Justified boast?

[Richard Gaskin]

stephen barncard wrote:

> to me: Native means "look and feel that appear on respective OSs, usually
> as a binary call to the OS's toolbox or libraries"
>
> obviously one's milage will vary with Linux.

I think the definition is somewhat subject to personal interpretation.

On Linux, Windows, and OS X, changes in the Appearance control panel 
which can affect controls are reflected in controls rendered in 
LiveCode, so clearly there's at least some dependency on the OS APIs.

But I also see that font metrics and text placement in LiveCode controls 
is sometimes off a pixel or so, at least in tab controls in OS X and few 
other cases.

I suspect the rendering of text for such controls is handled internally 
in the engine, perhaps using the OS to render the control itself and 
then overlaying the text in the control's compositing buffer before 
blitting it to the screen.

In RB, I would imagine that the tool doesn't require developers to use 
only the OS APIs directly, but provides some libraries for common 
behaviors.  Indeed, without such support its usefulness as a 
cross-platform tool would be close to NIL.

So it seems both LiveCode and RealBASIC use a mix of OS APIs and 
vendor-supplied code to allow their developers to build cross-platform 
apps radidly, leaving us with the question:

What is a "native control"?

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
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