Controls on mobile apps - am I missing something?

[Richard Gaskin]

Mark Waddingham wrote:
> On 2016-06-30 21:25, Richard Gaskin wrote:
>> OS APIs change out from under the engine with expensive regularity,
>> and all the while, even as mobile enhancements would indeed be
>> valuable, there's a rather long list of other things we're asking them
>> to do as well.
>
> Hmmmm, at the end of the day, supporting iOS is (I would say) a great
> deal less work then attempting to support
> all-kinds-of-linux-distribution-under-the-sun as is evident by the
> unfortunate problems people have using LiveCode on many of the
> distributions with low 'market share'.

Interesting.  I hadn't thought about iOS there, but I suppose that's a 
part of it, even if a small one.  I was thinking more generally about 
the evolution of OSes, such as Apple's moves from 68k to PPC, Classic to 
OS X, PPC to Intel, Carbon to Cocoa, and 32-bit to 64-bit; and while 
Microsoft generally provides unusually good backward compatibility, the 
migration from MCI to the new media APIs has required some rework.

Each of the changes in OSes seem to be a reasonable move that improves 
the user experience.  But they do cost developers time and money to stay 
on top of.  So while it's easy for folks using LC to take for granted 
that most things just continue to work year after year, behind the 
scenes there's a good bit of effort going into it to make that happen.


> For example, the amount of time we have spent on trying to work out why
> the browser does not work on certain distributions probably exceeds the
> amount of time we have spent updating to support new iOS SDKs in the
> last six months - and it is still not resolved.

Indeed, which is one of the reasons I've been eager to see what we Linux 
users in the community can do to minimize the impact of those things.

The diversity of Linux distros is a key part of its growth, but it's not 
easy for any development team to support them all.

For example, I realize Steam is an unusually demanding app, but their 
system requirements for Linux go so far as to specify only one distro, 
and only one specific supported version of that distro.

LiveCode's needs are less severe than Steam's, but Linux is so diverse 
it seems reasonable to expect some limitations with the scope of 
official support from the core team for the many various distros.

Migrating some of that support overhead to the community seems 
achievable, and useful for everyone in allowing the core team to stay 
focused on things requiring their unique talents.

No one wants to see the team postpone critical work while addressing a 
font rendering issue on Hanna Montana Linux. :)
http://hannahmontana.sourceforge.net/

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