...and Livecode... where are we now?

Thu Oct 3 13:53:10 EDT 2019

Aha: it's "Mr Mouth", late to the party, but well furnished with virtual 
whisky and raxin up tae an unco raj state.

And, much against my inner inclinations I will put the following in 
English (although I have always viewed
English as a cold, sterile language, while Scots speaks directly from 
the heart);

All the "bull" (oops, that's American) about "Community" is bull, no 
more, no less.

The "good" folk at LiveCode Central cherry pick from the "community's" 
gripes/comments/feedback/ideas
to serve their ends, and exclude things that, while in many cases being 
extremely pertinent, do not serve
or further whatever goals they have set their eyes on.

As an ex-cult member (Yes, really) I know all about top-down systems and 
what the results are: never
either equable or effective. And, as an ex-cult member I know that the 
high-ups got there either by chance,
by extremely dirty politics, or because the guru "fancied the shape of 
their knees."

I spent an awful lot of time and energy working to release other people 
from a variety of cults; so my
understanding of the mechanisms of these organisations is fairly good.
-----

Now, as someone who pushed for years for LiveCode to release a truly 
free version of their fantastic language/
ide/programming package I was 100% ecstatic when the open source version 
was released.

I have NEVER bought into the "Community" crap: because that is what it 
is: crap!

There is a community insofar as many people who use LiveCode for various 
reasons help each other
with things they get stuck with: and that, as far as it goes, is super.

A "Community" as endlessly burbled on by LiveCode Central is a typical 
cultic system: "you come
up with bright ideas and we take what we like and what serve our 
interests and overlook what is
inconvenient."

Just recently I read about the British/English parliament (which has 
been called the "Mother" of parliaments)
described as the "Madam" of parliaments: presumably pimping its members 
and its voting public like nobody's business.

LiveCode, if it wants to keep its "Community" happy has to start 
treating its community of established
programmers/coders with respect and stop riding roughshod over its 
complaints and bug reports that have sat on record for donkey's ages 
without being addressed: or just "cut the crap" and stop mentioning the 
word "community" and all the rather fake attempts at cuddly-feely 
kissy-wissy stuff that isn't anything it is
stated to be.

Anybody with any sense of "smell" know that LiveCode have had to move 
from their "toney" offices up "there"
to somewhere scaffy down "there", and the reason is they have buggered 
up their public relations.

How come what is a wonderful language/ide/programming package that is 
ideal for High school kids is ONLY
used in a few schools in Scotland and a few wierdos (self included) 
elsewhere?

I contributed my "Widow's mite" to a LiveCode fundraiser and have seen 
that some of those promises have been entirely empty: so, why should I 
and many more, who have invested a lot of time and effort getting to 
know this language stump up anything further when we are treated with 
patrician disdain, total disregard for our suggestions, advice and so forth?

And who, forbye, had the idea that Filemaker was so damned important 
that everything else had to be put on standby?

After all, a trip to the Filemaker webpage tells us that (Wow! They've 
revived the name 'Claris'), this is a package
used on Macintosh computers only: well "f*ck me with a shovel", who uses 
Macintosh? about 7% of computer users in  what racists like to call "the 
civilised world."

I develop a program called "Devawriter Pro" with LiveCode for 
Sanskritists to digitise Sanskrit: I make about $200
a year on it (something to do with being an ex-cult member): I have 
absolutely NO illusions about it:
I'd make more selling my body round the docks in Aberdeen (might even 
have more fun). But, unlike
LiveCode, I don't rely on Devawriter to stock my fridge, and I don't 
have delusions of grandeur about it
being " Hari Nama, Hari Nama, Hari Nama, Kalyau, Kalyau, Kalyau nastyeva 
gatir anyataha" and kicking
the pants out of all the other programming suites out there.

A while back, Kevin Miller developed an innovative front-end to 
Metacard, and somewhere between that point
and now someone or other seems to have badly lost the plot.

On 3.10.19 16:31, Dan Brown via use-livecode wrote:
> I'm sure that LC HQ would have loved to solely preside over the language
> and a flourishing opensource and enterprise community that kept the lights
> on . Unfortunately that just hasn't happened since the kickstarter
> campaign. Without the LCFM  lifeline I think they may have ceased to exist
> in the medium term.
>
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 3, 2019 at 2:08 PM Mike Kerner via use-livecode <
> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>
>> poor comms don't make this better.  one good thing about LCG was that we
>> had bi-monthly updates.  this year, no comms.
>> i am less hopeful that the influx of new revenue will matter in the medium
>> term, because most of the effort will be on the requests that are tied to
>> the new revenue.
>> every time this has happened with any other tool we use here, we wait with
>> disappointment.  then at any sign of effort, we get excited, and then we
>> seep back into disappointment.
>> it's feeling like it's time to back-burner LC, too.  there is good energy
>> from about 50 people, but the mother ship is doing a poor job of managing
>> that energy.
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 3, 2019 at 5:56 AM Lagi Pittas via use-livecode <
>> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Tom,
>>>
>>> It doesn't take a Sherlock home to work out that if (I hope when!)  LCFM
>>> works out that the company will have
>>> an influx of "new blood" with the attendant large increase in yearly
>>> subscriptions.
>>>
>>> My very short post (cut down from my usual rants) was lobbing a tiny hand
>>> grenade in to arena, and see if someone at LCHQ
>>> bites and tells us something of consequence rather than "it's going well"
>>> or LC will be the better for all the new stuff they are working on.
>>>
>>> Surely if they have some extra money coming in they can have someone
>>> working on finishing all the (paid for) promises and milestones.
>>> (HH and Sean  I feel your pain - HTML5 anyone?). I'm reading between the
>>> lines but Trevor probably knows how well it's doing - but the rest of use
>>> are being treated like mushrooms.
>>>
>>> "Soon" can be years rather than months and weeks - and typically is
>> years.
>>> For example Filemaker has a precision of 16 to 400 digits. So that MUST
>>> have been coded for, will we get that retrofitted in the future .
>>> I'm not asking because I need 400 digits but you never know.
>>>
>>> Filemaker has data binding and field Validation.
>>>
>>>
>> https://fmhelp.filemaker.com/help/16/fmp/en/#page/FMP_Help%2Ffield-validation.html%23
>>> (I could do that in Clipper in 1985 with field masks). Yes I've rolled my
>>> own but their are things  better done as a standard in an LC library.
>>>
>>> When is the IDE that still crashes at least 4 times a day whenever I  run
>>> through more than 5 breakpoints in succession,going to get some love.
>>> What about the Script Editor being SLOWER than molasses - 4 seconds
>> between
>>> key presses.
>>> What about Sqlite engine/library, the 2D physics where we were told there
>>> was a working version over a year ago. The Sound on Linux. What about the
>>> raspberry PI version. I shouldn't need to go on.
>>>
>>> I want LCFM  to work like the next guy but please tell us what is going
>> on
>>> and  when.
>>>
>>> I'd rather base my decisions on facts rather than airy fairy words.
>>>
>>> Are more programmers coming on board or is LCFM the new shiny object?
>>>
>>>
>>> <RANT ON>
>>> Sorry for the Mr Angry tone , but I'm a little (make that very irritated)
>>> at the moment, as I  just got off the phone to the Bank where the Zombie
>>> script reader who asked me 8 (countem EIGHT questions) to get me past
>>> security
>>> and I was only phoning up to ask why my Card Readers hadn't arrived.
>>> People can have £70,000 taken out of their accounts with just a sortcode,
>>> name and account number and I am asked for 8 pieces of information to ask
>>> where the card readers  that were ordered nearly 3 weeks ago were!!!
>>> </RANT OFF>
>>>
>>> Regards Lagi
>>>
>>> p.s.
>>>
>>> Two Card readers turned up after my call. - Two more are on their way.
>>> Maybe if i look at downloads ther might be a version 10 Stable of
>> Livecode
>>> ;-)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, 2 Oct 2019 at 23:25, Tom Glod via use-livecode <
>>> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> We all need livecode the company to be stable and profitable, so if
>> they
>>>> have to temporarily focus on x to create long term viability, then they
>>>> should do it. Maybe just let everyone know what the plan is....and
>> maybe
>>> on
>>>> a release with multiple bug fixes such as 9.05 is important to
>> prioritize
>>>> it a little bit.
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Oct 2, 2019 at 3:17 PM Mark Wieder via use-livecode <
>>>> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 10/2/19 11:24 AM, Trevor DeVore via use-livecode wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I suspect that the quick updates to LiveCode FM are a sign that the
>>>>> launch
>>>>>> at the FileMaker conference generated a lot of interest and there
>> is
>>>> some
>>>>>> momentum building there. Perhaps they are trying to quickly fill in
>>> the
>>>>>> gaps based on that interest so that they can close more licensing
>>>> deals?
>>>>> If
>>>>>> that is the case and they can build that revenue source then it
>>> should
>>>>>> ultimately be a good thing for those of us who don't use LiveCode
>> FM.
>>>> It
>>>>> is
>>>>>> unfortunate that LC has to sit mostly idle for so long though.
>>>>>>
>>>>> Indeed. There are currently some 200 or so pull requests waiting in
>> the
>>>>> queue for action.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm encouraged by this:
>> https://github.com/livecode/livecode/pull/7185
>>>>> --
>>>>>    Mark Wieder
>>>>>    ahsoftware at gmail.com
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Tom Glod
>>>> Founder & Developer
>>>> MakeShyft R.D.A (www.makeshyft.com)
>>>> Office:226-706-9339
>>>> Mobile:226-706-9793
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>>
>> --
>> On the first day, God created the heavens and the Earth
>> On the second day, God created the oceans.
>> On the third day, God put the animals on hold for a few hours,
>>     and did a little diving.
>> And God said, "This is good."
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