On 2015-10-10 22:12, Richard Gaskin wrote:
Weirdest: Replace the IDE with the best of community components --------------------------------------------------------------- Like the "Weirder" option above, this would be independent of the product build, but would open the door for anyone to do whatever they want. Bjornke's BVGDocu could replace the Dictionary, Peter's lcStackBrowser could replace the App and Proj browsers, your GLX2 editor could replace the Script Editor, etc.
...
It's like the thing I like most about Linux: although people in the Linux world enjoy arguing about darn near everything, the fact is there's actually little to argue about since the system is so flexible and has so many components available there's no reason why everyone can't have exactly what they most desire.
The obvious option (which is the one we have been working towards in the LC8 IDE) is that the IDE becomes a 'framework'. It provides well defined extension points, well defined APIs for building IDE components, and a well defined mechanism to ensure that changes flow properly so all components are kept synchronized.
The IDE framework has to be the arbiter which ensures that two distinct IDE components (which could be written and maintained by people who never speak to each other) can happily co-exist with each other in an end-user's install.
In particular, this means that IDE components *cannot* patch random parts of the IDE (as they might conflict), and any points within the IDE which might be usefully customized (e.g. adding extra buttons to revMenubar) need to be explicitly exposed in a well-defined way.
Now a lot of work has been done towards this, but at the moment if you want to play with it you have to do a bit of digging around in the libraries which are emerging (revidelibrary, revideextensionlibrary etc.) and the revised components which use these new APIs. Admittedly we aren't quite there yet as it does take time to introduce good abstractions into code which did not have them before (well, not ones which were suitable for a more step-back and provide the ability for anyone to extend point of view at least).
Warmest Regards, Mark. -- Mark Waddingham ~ m...@livecode.com ~ http://www.livecode.com/ LiveCode: Everyone can create apps _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
