exits on suspend (was Re: Davos Day 3)

[Ben Rubinstein]

Hi Todd,

This is great stuff, thank you for somehow finding time to write up your blog 
as well as everything else that you're up to!

Re the suspending issue...

The "${xxx}" syntax in the settings.plist is used by the standalone builder to 
mark where substitutions go, so it's a clue that there's code to vary that 
particular part of the file.

Looking at the standalone building script finds two relevant bits. Firstly:
>  -- MW-2011-03-10: Force this to true for now, until we can fix the engine
>  --put pSettings["ios,exits on suspend"] into tExitsOnSuspend

so evidently there used to be an option in the Standalone Settings to allow 
you the dev to control how the app behaved - but it was taken out because of 
an unspecified problem.

However the second relevant bit:
>  -- tExitsOnSuspend defaulted to true. We want this to be false to allow background audio
>  if tBackgroundAudio is true then
>    put "false" into tExitsOnSuspend
>  else -- false or empty
>    put "true" into tExitsOnSuspend
>  end if

so at some point the option for background audio was added to the Standalone 
Settings, and to support this exits on suspend is suspended!

Short form: there's a more convenient way to achieve what you want, without 
having to nobble the files inside the LiveCode app: just select the 
"Background audio (experimental)" checkbox in the Standalone Settings.

Other observations:

- it's getting close to five years since the original option was removed, a 
lot of things have changed since then in both iOS and the engine - maybe it 
could be looked at again?

- related, this request two years ago by Ken Ray
http://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=11845

- interestingly, when the stack is not set to exit to suspend, it does not 
appear to get any of the messages you might expect (i.e. 
suspend/resume[Stack]). AFAICT there's no way with this option for an app to 
tell when it has been suspended.  (Without this option set, the app gets 
shutdown/closeCard/closeStack; followed when reopened by 
startup/openStack/openCard).

Ben


On 26/01/2016 08:20, Todd Fabacher wrote:
> On day 3 we spent most of our time focused UI/UX issues with LiveCode. We
> created a desktop/ native mobile  scrolling lib. I see lots of post on this
> from beginners, we put put it into a substack. Take a look and let me know
> if there is a better way.
>
> Also, we can not deal with the suspending of LiveCode Apps on iOS when the
> user switches away, terrible UX. I almost just lost a client because of it,
> so I think we found a solution, not sure it is a best hack possible. Plus a
> few more UI issues and we started organizing the business logic.
>
> https://livecode.com/day-3-coding-world-leaders-at-davos/
>
> --Todd