Mike Kerner wrote:
> Pi is interesting to me because of what I can, in theory, build with
> it, but for the same reason so are many other things. Pi isn't going
> to bring revenue to LC, IMHO, the way that some of those other tools
> can...
Not directly, at least not short-term. But as hh pointed out, in any
given pool of users inevitably some will want a proprietary license.
And in the meantime, 100% of everyone using LiveCode participates in
lowering the biggest impediment to sales, the "I've never heard of it"
factor.
> but being able to brag about being the easy-to-use IDE for PI would
> be cool.
A lightweight IDE can be useful on other systems as well, such as older
low-powered PCs.
For example, I've been putting off upgrading my laptop, and aside from a
few of the more complex web pages for the most part it's quite fine.
Until I use LC, that is. Script editing on that 1.6 GHz CPU is merely
annoying, but debugging is prohibitively slow, taking at least 20
seconds for each "Step Into".
Some years ago I started working in a lightweight debugger with Ken Ray,
initially for the MC IDE but later it occurred to me that as a
self-contained thing it would be useful in a standalone as well.
<http://fourthworld.net/channels/lc/libROSD.rev>
I turned that on and went back to debugging - smooth as silk, even on my
old laptop.
Now I'm considering going back to making my own script editor, so I can
get lean clean typing without all the CPU-hogging real-time formatting
that slows down LC's Script Editor.
I can understand why the LC IDE so often errs on the side of
completeness, and has such, shall we say, "thorough" code, to provide
the many conveniences it does.
But on the flipside, I've discovered I'm not the only one who prefers
raw typing, with formatting happening only when I explicitly invoke it.
Removing auto-formatting and other "thoroughness" can make editing a
breeze - the field object is, after all, quite nice.
And with debugging, I haven't traced out LC's code but it seems to be
doing a LOT of work for its UI on top of the parts necessary for
stepping through code. Indeed, that was one of the reasons Ken and I
separated the Script Editor from the Debugger, to allow for two
different UIs, each dedicated to the task it supports.
The LC engine in v9 is satisfyingly performant in my experience. A lean
IDE that can really show it off would not only open up editing on the
RPi, but also on older systems for which the official IDE is simply too
cumbersome.
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World Systems
Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
____________________________________________________________________
ambassa...@fourthworld.com http://www.FourthWorld.com
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