Suggestion: Non-Appbuilding Community Edition

[Alex Tweedly]

+1    Yes, speculation is fun, but probably not very useful :-)

On 06/09/2021 12:20, Andre Garzia via use-livecode wrote:
> Let’s take a step back for a second and realise as a community we lack many things that other programming language communities have. We do have a very healthy mailing list, forum, and occasional conference. We’re all friends, and many of us have known each other for decades. Those are things that many, if not most, programming language communities do not have. And yet we have not fostered many of the ancillary things that most communities do.
>
> * We have very few open source projects in the community, and the ones we have have very few contributors.
And I don't think they're well known, or advertised as willing (eager) 
to have new contributors.
> * We have not build anything like a package manager to help us share code around. The IDE built-in extension store, and code sharing features are extremely simple.

Yes, we need a package manager and helpful conventions (where are 
libraries found to download, where do they reside on your system, how do 
they 'require' other libraries, etc. )

Re "The IDE built-in ...": Do you mean "sample stacks" ?
Or is there another extensions store and code sharing feature I've missed?

If it is "sample stacks" then I would 100% disagree about it being easy 
to use. But I'll put those comments in a separate email so it doesn't 
obscure the point here.

> * We don’t have an ecosystem of tools and libraries around. We have some tools and some libraries.
> * We don’t have many people writing blogs, making videos, writing books, and fostering the community.
> * There are very few services and companies besides LiveCode Ltd offering products to the community.
>
>
> ....

> The question is, who here wants to build stuff?

I think that having a package manager, and some infrastructure would be 
a huge step towards encouraging many people to build stuff. I do believe 
that the effort that went into LC Ltd supporting widgets (store, naming 
convention, add to toolbar, integrate to docs, ...) could, even should, 
be applied to script-only libraries and stacks. Or - we find some way to 
do that as part under Livecode.org

I know I have a few libraries that I could make public - but I'd be much 
happier, and more likely to finish up doing it - if there were some 
guidelines or support for how libraries should be placed, documented, etc.

revdocs - is that still around somewhere ?

Or is there a better alternative ?

Thanks,

Alex.