Forum and Asking Question and Getting Answers

Getting into LiveCode for iOS? Ask your questions here.

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david37ni
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Forum and Asking Question and Getting Answers

Post by david37ni » Sun Nov 03, 2013 4:35 pm

I am quite dismayed the amount of times I have asked simple questions like how do you achieve a tab bar or a ui table view without native controls the amount of times my questions have gone unanswered. This is ment to be a open source community where thanks to run rev we now have an open source product where one learns from others I don't see much of that going on in these forums. Allot of companies seem to run when they get kick started funded and then neglect their forums.

No point in taggin your tool as the one stop shop for mobile development when you cant even just drga and drop a control without allot of styling while true xcode does take allot of work to get used to the controls all standard should have beens supported in live code from the launch if targeting mobile development.

I contact your support and their suggestion was to buy the commercial i fear thats just pressure being put onto people to purchase the full version if you dont have mobgui we cant tell you how to do it and their seems to be allot of dismay with mobgui customers on these forums that the developers are not returning emails and what not of customers I dont fancy shelling out 350 quid and get no support for a product.

I think that runrev need to have more people on the forum answering questions not just leaving it to the community. Which is turning into a stack-overflow generation not willing to share what they have learnt with other users to better live code

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Re: Forum and Asking Question and Getting Answers

Post by dave.kilroy » Sun Nov 03, 2013 5:43 pm

Hi David37ni and welcome to the forum

Learning LiveCode is hard work - perhaps doubly so if a person expects a full suite of iOS native controls and to be able to use drag-and-drop for everything. Did you really think LiveCode would be able to equal Apple's own Xcode at dealing with Apple's own native controls?

If iOS native controls are essential for your projects then it sounds like you should choose Xcode - at least for your projects for which this need is true.

LiveCode as a software development tool has different strengths and weaknesses when compared to Xcode, Visual Studio etc - and if you decide that LiveCode is your "least-worst option" then surely you will realise that to achieve proficiency in it you will have to invest hours of learning and practising (as with any tool).

There are a lot of generous people on this forum who will give up their time to help you learn LiveCode (because we like it and we like others to know and use it too). And the more specific you can be with your requests on the forum, rather than making general points - the more you will find people will be able to help you.

So, there are a lot of LiveCode lessons and tutorials here http://lessons.runrev.com and here http://livecode.com/developers/tutorials/ - I suggest you get stuck in - or start making some [simple] stacks on your own - and when come up against a brick wall post the specifics here on the forum - we all know those brick walls and will help you with yours :)

Kind regards

Dave
"...this is not the code you are looking for..."

david37ni
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Re: Forum and Asking Question and Getting Answers

Post by david37ni » Sun Nov 03, 2013 5:49 pm

I have been doing this but what i mean they dont have comparative examples if live code as a way of doing a tab bar their should be a lesson on this if it has a way of doing a grid should have a lesson even xamrian goes by this approach. I just believe thie leasons are not off real world value ie saving a form to database uploading images wihtin a form app these are the sort of things need to be taught

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Re: Forum and Asking Question and Getting Answers

Post by dave.kilroy » Sun Nov 03, 2013 6:35 pm

Hi David

Yes you are right - resources to help learners are scattered around in a rather higgledy piggledy manner and does indeed need to be pulled together into a single monolithic system with explicit information on which version of LiveCode an article refers to, whether it has been made redundant by RunRev developing some new feature (or fixing a bug) - and in general stuff can be spread around lots

However - there is great news in that you will usually be able to find what you need if you do a Google search with "LiveCode" in front of the thing you are looking for 'tabs' or what ever. For an example of this visit http://newsletters.livecode.com/novembe ... etter4.php to find out how Larry Walker does it.

One good place to look is http://livecodesupersite.com/tutorials.html (newly created by a fed-up learner) - but there are lots and lots others - just start googling (remember to sometimes use "RunRev" to find older search results)

Then there is the dictionary within the IDE (not to be sneezed at) then there is revOnline which you can access from within the IDE by clicking on 'User Samples' in the toolbar

After a while you'll get to know where things are (not ideal, they should be easier to find I grant you) - but you'll find it easier and easier to progress the more that you put in...

Once again, welcome!

Kind regards

Dave
"...this is not the code you are looking for..."

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Re: Forum and Asking Question and Getting Answers

Post by jacque » Sun Nov 03, 2013 7:27 pm

In response to your tab button question, see "menuMode" in the dictionary. There is an explanation there as well as a sample handler.

It's true you wouldn't have known to look that up; that's where we come in. I didn't reply to your original question because I was pretty sure someone else would. I shouldn't have made assumptions.

I have found that between the User Guide and the dictionary, almost everything I need to know is covered. The lessons and tutorials expand on this basic knowledge, but those would be the first two places to look when you wonder how to do something. I found a brief discussion on tabbed buttons in the User Guide on page 112. A tabbed button is technically a type of menu button and behaves like one, so reading about the menu button interface in the User Guide will also help.
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw dot com
HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com

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Re: Forum and Asking Question and Getting Answers

Post by FourthWorld » Sun Nov 03, 2013 7:50 pm

jacque wrote:In response to your tab button question, see "menuMode" in the dictionary. There is an explanation there as well as a sample handler.

It's true you wouldn't have known to look that up; that's where we come in.
The docs aren't too bad here. Searching the User Guide for "tab" turns up some useful tips, and searching for "tab" in the page that comes up when I select Tutorials from the Help menu leads me directly to this handy step-by-step lesson:
http://lessons.runrev.com/s/lessons/m/4 ... ab-buttons

The challenge with documenting something as broad as LiveCode for an audience as diverse as it enjoys is trying to anticipate the very many different ways people search for information, and providing appropriate lookups to help those unique predispositions.

david37ni, to better understand how the community may be able to ehance the findability of learning resources, can you tell us how much of the User Guide you've read, and what other resources you may have explored before posting your question here?
Richard Gaskin
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Re: Forum and Asking Question and Getting Answers

Post by dave.kilroy » Sun Nov 03, 2013 8:25 pm

The other thing I try to do is to keep in mind that the thing I'm searching for may well have a different name and to almost treat the dictionary and other sources as a Roget's Thesaurus and stay alert for different-name-for-same-thing situations
"...this is not the code you are looking for..."

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Re: Forum and Asking Question and Getting Answers

Post by FourthWorld » Sun Nov 03, 2013 8:37 pm

dave.kilroy wrote:The other thing I try to do is to keep in mind that the thing I'm searching for may well have a different name and to almost treat the dictionary and other sources as a Roget's Thesaurus and stay alert for different-name-for-same-thing situations
That's exactly why I keep asking learners who complain about the docs for specifics of how they attempted to find their answers - what search terms are they using for what concepts, and where are they searching?

Sadly, less than 5% of the time I ask for those specifics are they ever given, significantly reducing the likelihood that we'll be able to create an index which can anticipate their unique predispositions.
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Re: Forum and Asking Question and Getting Answers

Post by dave.kilroy » Sun Nov 03, 2013 8:53 pm

Richard, such is life

Robert M Persig in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" described the problem of someone looking for a engine motorcycle part in a manual only to discover it was listed under 'drivetrain' - I don't believe he supplied a solution except for the searcher to stay mentally flexible.

That's it! Everyone who is trying to learn LiveCode should use a Zen approach to searching for ... the answer :)
"...this is not the code you are looking for..."

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Re: Forum and Asking Question and Getting Answers

Post by FourthWorld » Mon Nov 04, 2013 3:23 pm

The "drivetrain" example is actually a good one: with a good index that maps that term to other relevant terms the user might search for, it would become possible to find what's needed without having to read the entire volume.

One of the search engines I built for a client is for a medical decision support system, and makes extensive use of a synonyms table so we can accurately account for the breadth of nomenclature used in that area of practice to help users find relevant content even in cases where the term they're searching for doesn't appear in the content at all.

A similar synonym index could be added to LiveCode materials, but attempting to guess at all possible search terms would make it prohibitive.

A more evolutionary approach which incorporates what we learn from actual use cases can help deliver a laser-accurate synonym table - provided folks who express difficulty with the learning material are willing to spend a few seconds letting us know the terms they were searching for.

Another practice we've adopted with the Web version of this medical decision support system is to review the logs of all terms searched, which among other things tells us which terms yielded zero results. By reviewing these periodically we can learn which terms people use to search for, and add those to the synonym table.

While that sort of passive crowdsourcing can help with Web-based systems, unconnected systems like the User Guide PDF and the Dictionary included in the product can't deliver that info, so we have to rely on users to provide guidance.
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Re: Forum and Asking Question and Getting Answers

Post by dave.kilroy » Mon Nov 04, 2013 3:51 pm

Richard your synonym search engine sounds pretty good

I should think your second option of synonym's from search logs would involve a lot less nagging and may be the only feasible approach - but if we pitch it right to those using the search then we might get buy-in, and therefore better results (which people would want)

The other thing that would be fantastic would be some display of antonyms - again I'm thinking of Roget's Thesaurus where sometimes seeing the opposite of what you are searching for can lead to new insights and approaches - but I can't for the life of me think how this could be done except as some horrible manually created and maintained table

And then what would be the absolute icing-on-the-cake would be some way of recording search terms with end-points or next actions along the lines of "customers who viewed this product went on to ..."
"...this is not the code you are looking for..."

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Re: Forum and Asking Question and Getting Answers

Post by dave.kilroy » Mon Nov 04, 2013 3:54 pm

Actually, scratch that idea about antonyms - it would be completely impractical - what is the opposite of "tabs" or "visual effects"?
"...this is not the code you are looking for..."

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Re: Forum and Asking Question and Getting Answers

Post by FourthWorld » Mon Nov 04, 2013 5:16 pm

Yes, antonyms may be problematic in this context, but that sort of adventurous thinking is very valuable - keep it coming.
Richard Gaskin
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