RELEASE: LiveCode 6.5 DP2

[Benjamin Beaumont]

Dear List Members.

We are pleased to announce that LiveCode 6.5 DP2 is now available.

Warning: this is not a stable release. Please ensure you back up your
stacks before testing them.

If you do not wish to be notified of test releases, uncheck the appropriate
boxes in the Updates section of your LiveCode Preferences.

Release Overview
The focus of LiveCode 6.5 is resolution independence. The purpose of the
release is to provide mobile developers with the ability to write an
application which run more seamlessly on all mobile devices.

The solution coming with LiveCode 6.5 can be broken down into two core
parts:

1) Density Independence (DPI independence) (Released in 6.5 DP1)
Modern mobile devices come in a variety of screen densities which is
measured in the number of pixels that are packed into in an inch of the
screen (PPI). The purpose of the higher density screen in to provide a
crisper picture rather than more screen real estate. The iPad and iPad
Retina are a good example of this. Apps look exactly the same on both
devices, except on the iPad, the app looks crisper.

LiveCode now scales your app depending on the density of the device it is
running on. Text and graphics are scaled automatically and if made
available by the developer, LiveCode will choose higher resolution images
when running on high density devices. A LiveCode developer can now create a
stack that is 1024x768 which will run perfectly on both iPad and iPad
Retina without any changes.

2) Fullscreen scale modes
Mobile devices also come in a wide variety of form factors. Pre 6.5,
LiveCode developers had to scale their apps up/down manually to fit target
devices. In 6.5 we’ve added a new property “fullscreenmode” that allows the
developer to tell LiveCode how they would like their app to be scaled when
run on a mobile device. Options include:

- empty (default) - the existing behaviour - the stack is resized (not
scaled) to fit the screen.
-“ exact fit" - scale the stack to fill the screen. This will stretch the
stack if the aspect ratio of the screen does not match that of the stack.
-“ show all" - scale the stack preserving aspect ratio so all content is
visible. Some blank space may remain if the screen & stack aspect ratios do
not match.
-“ no border" - scale the stack to fill the screen preserving aspect ratio.
If the stack & screen aspect ratios do not match, the left / right or top /
bottom extremes of the stack will not be visible.
-“ no scale" - the stack will not be scaled, being centered on the screen
instead.

For full details of the options available please see the release notes.

This solution will not suit every app. If geometry is important for your
applications layout scripting will still be required. All apps will benefit
from the density independence release in DP1.

Release Contents
- Full screen scaling mode.
- PCRE library updated to version 8.33
- libUrlSetSSLVerification now supported on mobile platforms
- Resolution Independence
- Server graphics support
- New global property colorDialogColors
- Integration of revFont external
- Enhanced \'filter\' command
- Text Measurement
- The optional *recursively* adverb has been added to union and intersect
commands
- Xpath functions
- 19 bug fixes:
—- 11310 - Italic fonts clipped on right hand side on iOS
—- 11309 - Text clips for certain fonts on Mac
—- 11297 - Setting the color of a graphic effect resets its opacity
—- 11283 - Italic fonts are not rendered on Mac.
—- 11259 - Ensure caseless comparison works on Linux Server
—- 11241 - Non-3D borders are always black.
—- 11227 - Android native controls are positioned incorrectly.
—- 11221 - Field background pattern not working.
—- 11179 - Images with an angle other than 0 are not drawn.
—- 11178 - Import from paint always fails.
—- 11176 - MouseDoubleUp messages are not sent on Linux.
—- 11174 - Conical spiral XY and sqrtXY gradients render incorrectly.
—- 11068 - Resolving object chunks does not throw an error for long chunk
references.
—- 10995 - Standalones now set default font settings the same as the IDE.
—- 10981 - Getting \'the short name\' of an object returns the abbrev id if
the name property is empty
—- 10980 - Setting the filename of an image which already has a filename
causes the property to be unset and \'could not load image\' in the result.
—- 10977 - Setting the image filename to empty unsets the image text and
vice-versa
—- 10964 - Inconsistent rounding of floating point values.
—- 6720 - Scrollbar properties not returned in correct format.

Test Stack
For those who are interested in playing with the features we have uploaded
one of our test stacks. It is an updated version of Galactic Gauntlet, a
game produced to help us test a previous version of LiveCode. This stack
has been modified to open at a fixed size of 1024x768. The fullscreenmode
has been set to “exact fit”. The game is scaled by the new features to run
fullscreen on any device.

http://downloads.livecode.com/livecode/6_5_0/galactic_gauntlet_RESINDI.zip

Future Releases
We now consider LiveCode 6.5 to be ‘feature complete’. Our next release of
LiveCode, which we expect to be RC1, will focus on performance optimisation
across the new graphics architecture.

Testing
You can help test LiveCode 6.5 in one of two ways:

1) Test with copies of existing projects looking for visual differences
between the stack running in 6.5 DP2 and older LiveCode releases. Stack
rendering has completely changed in LiveCode 6.5. Everything from 2d
graphics, graphic effects, text and even controls themselves. Please report
these visual differences with the stack and a screenshot of what you are
seeing in 6.5 and the previous release you’re testing with.

http://quality.runrev.com

2) Test out the resolution independence features on your own apps where
applicable, or create new apps.

_____________________________________________

Benjamin Beaumont . RunRev Ltd

LiveCode Product Manager
mail : 25a Thistle Street Lane South West, Edinburgh, EH2 1EW
email : ben at runrev.com
company : +44(0) 845 219 89 23
fax : +44(0) 845 458 8487
web : www.runrev.com

LiveCode - Programming made simple