Remote debugger vs other issues in targeting

Pyyhtiä Christer christer at mindcrea.com
Fri Feb 10 12:40:50 EST 2017


The forthcoming Remote Debugger will definitely be of value in targeting LiveCode apps to the devices.  However, there are areas, especially in catching issues taking place in (nearly) real time, which I - and don't know how many others - have met as the most problematic ones.  Not all of the apps won't meet these, if developed to be "contained", that means working without external or file communication.

The examples having caused excessive headache to me include the following.

-  what happens in communication with the apps library purchasing options like subscription;
-  what happens with user clicks - there is a place for an Application Note how to make it correctly, for example to avoid double clicks received;
-  user entry into the fields, including the use of del key;
-  where did your PC (Program Counter - I belong to those ancient machine code programmers) get lost with chained subroutine / handler calls or continuous wake-up's (send to handler after...) and what was done to your global variables in what order;
-  why does the exact same user behaviour, for example with Samsung SGS 4 or 6 or Sony Experia Tablet produce different route of actions as entries are of different code, and
-  what is the correct way of handling character sets with different devices' I/O and setups (like kb automatic text correction). 

The list is not exhaustive.

The problem escalates if you build a system using back-end server software (which thanks to LiveCode On-Rev is very, very easy and efficient), and use the file services and external communications from within. There even seems to be slightly different behaviour between the selected target devices with exactly same source code, how it is sent and received forth and back.  Getting expertise in every version turn.

This is not a manifest against the Remote Debugger, vice versa. Unfortunately could not extract from the demo if the headaches above could be addressed by the new functionality.

I would be interested to hear of any experiences from the user community tackling problems like described above.

thx

Christer Pyyhtiä
MindCrea Ltd
christer at mindcrea.com





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