LiveCode Forums.

My PC keeps me cloistered away from the outside world. In an effort to reducing my hours as a hermit, I was wondering if there was an IDE for the iPad that would allow me to take my LiveCode apps-in-progress when I get time off for good behavior?

If there is none for the iPad, is there another mobile option for Windows? Would this create any LiveCode IDE licensing issues?

Thanks.

I doubt there will never be a full IDE for any iOS device, because of Apple's restrictions on what is allowed into the app store. Your best tablet bet is probably something like the Surface Pro, or some other full Windows tablet, though since the IDE is not optimized for a touch interface it will probably still be pretty clunky without a keyboard cover.

Your best bet over all is probably a small notebook - I find that the IDE runs well on my mid-2011 Macbook Air. Something like that whether it's windows or OSX is probably your very best bet.

The challenge with designing an IDE for tablets is that tablet apps have only a single window, so the entire IDE would need to be in a group embedded in the stack it's working on. Tricky stuff, that, but for Android devices there's nothing stopping anyone from trying if they have a lot of time on their hands.

Oh, and to answer your licensing question - as far as I know the commercial license allows you to have multiple copies around, on whatever platforms you want, so long as only 1 instance is in use simultaneously per license.

And of course, as long as you aren't working with protected stacks the community version is identical and has no limitations whatsoever.

edgore wrote:Oh, and to answer your licensing question - as far as I know the commercial license allows you to have multiple copies around, on whatever platforms you want, so long as only 1 instance is in use simultaneously per license.

And of course, as long as you aren't working with protected stacks the community version is identical and has no limitations whatsoever.

That is very good news! I have had a commercial license which is good since I hope my apps might put some beans on the table.
This really opens up the feasibility of getting aforementioned, notebook. If I do get my coding to a mobile platform as well as my dungeon-bound PC, is there mechanisms which will keep both *.livecode files synced or will I have to copy them back-and-forth manually?


@All - Thanks to everyone for the replies! Creates some provocative thought.

PS - You folks are great!

Is there a way to synch *.livecode files (programming projects) between a desktop and laptop or do I have to do this manually?

Thanks.

I use Ubuntu One for syncing files between my systems, the cloud service from Canonical that offers 5GB for free, with modest costs for additional space if needed.

It's similar to DropBox in many respects, but is available for more platforms (Ubuntu One of course supports Linux in addition to Mac, Windows, Android, and iOS).

Unlike the free version of DropBox (at least last time I used it) with Ubuntu One you can easily choose specific folders for syncing in addition to the always-synced "Ubuntu One" folder. I sync a few project folders as well as my LiveCode Plugins folder so I always have those files up to date on all the systems I work on.

If you sign up for the free 5GB account with this referral link both you and I will get an extra 500 MBs added onto our accounts for free:
https://one.ubuntu.com/referrals/referee/3401205/

If you don't want the extra free space you can sign up at the home page:
https://one.ubuntu.com

Hi Richard,

I guess it's "manual," eh?

Anyway, I signed up for the extra 500MBs. Thanks.

Well, it's "manual" only in the sense that LC itself doesn't include a file syncing subsystem. Using any of the widely available tools like Ubuntu One and DropBox turn it from "manual" into "I set it up once and now I don't ever need to think about it."

File syncing is one of those things that seems simple until you start working on it, and very quickly the need to maintain manifests and make a lot of decisions about how to handle things like deletes, moves, and simultaneous changes come into play. Personally, I'm glad that RunRev sticks to making software development tools, and leaves file syncing to those who specialize in it.

Rsync is a great solution if you're good with shell scripting, but the convenience of tools like Ubuntu One, coupled with the safety of an off-site backup, make it a clear winner for me.

Thanks for signing up - I just got a happy email notifying me of the extra 500 MBs.

Richard,

I'm not up on Ubuntu One and Dropbox. You make it sound like I can setup UO/DB data folders as if they were on my local machine. Is this true?

Ubuntu One, DropBox, and similar services are a combination of off-site backup and syncing: a copy of the contents of shared folders is stored in the cloud, while local copies on all subscribed machines are periodically synced with the cloud, so that changes to any file on any of them propagate to the cloud then to the other subscribed machines.

I started with my LiveCode Plugins folder, because I'm constantly refining my toolkit and it was difficult to keep manually copying files to a thumb drive and then onto the next machine I'm working on.

But after I started using Ubuntu One I discovered that it also has handy features like optionally uploading every picture I take with my smartphone camera (DropBox has that feature too), so now all my pics are on three different computers in addition to my phone, and safely backed up up in the cloud as well.

Ok, thanks for the heads-up. I'll give it a whirl and report back if I get stumped (which I don't expect.)

Hi,

It's actually quite an easy task to write a small utility/plugin to do a lot of the basic synching tasks through Dropbox and such. I have an semi-automatic backup tool that drops a copy of my projects into multiple cloud storage locations for safety.

I use Dropbox, Box, Cubby and Copy.

'Copy' is a new one that currently does an extra 5 Gb free whenever you refer people. Here's the referral link which will give you extra space compared to the basic 15 Gb Free. https://copy.com?r=CFM4Ff

The amounts of free, relatively safe and secure, online cloud storage is getting huge now. But I have lost some data with Dropbox in the past (a whole folder just vanished - not deleted, but completely forgotten!!) So I now use multiple of them for a safer option.

Hope that helps a bit.
Dave

SugarSync also has free accounts, allows you to select any folder to sync, as well as providing a common always-shared folder. It also does automatic camera uploads from a mobile device (as does Dropbox.) So they all sound pretty similar.

I'm currently using Dropbox, SugarSync, and Google Drive. They all do much the same thing and they're all free. By dividing up my files into three different services, I haven't had to spring for a paid account yet on any of them.