RELEASE: LiveCode 6.5.0 DP1

Benjamin Beaumont ben at runrev.com
Thu Sep 12 14:30:09 EDT 2013


Dear List Members,

We are pleased to announce the release of LiveCode 6.5.0 DP1.

*WARNING*: This is a DEVELOPMENT release (alpha). It's purpose is to put
new features into the hands of the LiveCode community for testing and
feedback. Please backup your stacks before opening them.

This is an exciting release for two reasons.

1) It is the first release containing some of the internal engine
refactoring made possible by the kickstarter campaign.
2) Includes a number of engine contributions from community.

A very big thank you to all those who have contributed up to now. We know
how much effort is involved in working on the LiveCode engine.

*Release Contents*
- 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
- Resolution Independence
- Xpath functions
- Resolving object chunks does not throw an error for long chunk references.
- Standalones now set default font settings the same as the IDE.
- Getting \'the short name\' of an object returns the abbrev id if the name
property is empty
- 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.
- Setting the image filename to empty unsets the image text and vice-versa
- Inconsistent rounding of floating point values.
- Scrollbar properties not returned in correct format.
- 0 bug fixes

Full details of everything in this release and how to use them can be found
in the release notes here:

http://downloads.livecode.com/livecode/6_5_0/LiveCodeNotes-6_5_0_dp_1.pdf

*Resolution Independence*
Resolution independence is that name we gave to a project that aimed to
make it easier for LiveCode developers to write mobile applications. Mobile
devices come is a variety of sizes with varying screen densities (retina /
standard devices / 5 densities on android devices). Up till now, developers
have been required to scale up/down all assets in their application in
script. This is no longer the case.

This developer preview contains the first of two parts of the solution.
LiveCode apps you write that are deployed to high/low density devices are
now scaled up/down automatically. LiveCode will even look for high
resolution image assets in your application package.

Note: A word of caution. In this first DP, only density is taken into
account. Applications will not be scaled up/down to fill the screen of the
device on which they run. This is coming in DP2 with a project title
'Fullscreen scaling properties.

The first step to supporting resolution independence was to completely
refactor LiveCode's graphics layer. This involved writing and integrating
an entirely new 2D graphics library that allows for scaled drawing. In
addition to 2D graphic rendering, the library also handles text and image
rendering. As such, nearly all aspects of LiveCode's drawing routines have
been touched. Since all of the updates are internal, the end LiveCode
developer should see no major changes: Where possible, we've tried to match
previous behaviors as closely as possible. However, in the early DPs, we do
expect some rendering irregularities.

You can help by testing this dp in a number of ways:

1) Open up existing project and pay careful attention to how it is
rendered. If you notice differences between this DP and preview versions of
LiveCode, take screenshots of the app running in both versions and submit
them as a bug at quality.runrev.com along with your app. As usual, if the
project is sensitive we can contact your directly after the bug report has
been filed. Our aim is to ensure that apps look the same in LiveCode 6.5 as
they do in previous releases.
2) Test the resolution independence features. The easiest way to do this is
if you're on a Mac. Create an iPhone sized stack 480x320 and run it in both
the iPhone and iPhone Retina simulators. You shouldn't have to do anything
to your application to make it run perfectly in both simulators. If your
stack has images, include high resolution versions, named correctly (see
release notes) in the copy files.. these will be automatically substituted
when the application run in the retina simulator.

*Downloads*
http://downloads.livecode.com/livecode/6_5_0/

We hope you enjoy trying out the new features.

Warm regards,

The LiveCode Team



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