Reworked Tool Palette

[richmond62]

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Does anyone have any idea how this might look?

[ClipArtGuy]

If the response to my recent complaint about the "new visual editor" is any indication, I'd say it's going to look almost exactly the same as the old one.

[FourthWorld]

Probably. They wrote "reworked", not "redesigned". I'm guessing mostly internals to allow the window to be more readily extensible.

[richmond62]

I'm guessing mostly internals

Phew! That's a relief.

[bogs]

If the response to my recent complaint about the "new visual editor" is any indication...

IF the complaint and response were in a public place, link? I somehow missed it...

[richmond62]

my recent complaint about the "new visual editor"

Err: where IS the "new visual editor" that you complained about?

It would be quite interesting to see.

[ClipArtGuy]

I was just being snarky. I probably should have said "lack of a new visual editor". You can see my original complaint in this thread.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=31657&start=15

[bogs]

AHA!!

Now I remember

[richmond62]

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Not for me an interface that takes over the whole desktop: how would I be able to do the "app. dance" then?

[FourthWorld]

blah.png
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Not for me an interface that takes over the whole desktop: how would I be able to do the "app. dance" then?

Exactly. They heard you, and decided not to go that direction.

[richmond62]

decided not to go that direction

Quite apart from ALL the other extremely clever stuff,
the interface that does NOT hog the whole desktop is,
I believe, one of LiveCode's greatest strengths.

If an app takes over the whole GUI it should be a fully automated agent-led system, and NOT a RAD-IDE.

Any "Reworked Tool Palette" should be exactly that, a reworked Tool Palette, and nothing else.

LiveCode (or 'Runtime Revolution' as it was then called) produced a reworked Tool Palette
when it moved from RR 1.1.1. to RR 2, and all subsequent RR/LC versions have really
featured variations on that design, which is, getting quite long in the tooth.

My 5 stotinki (smallest unit of currency over here in Bulgaria) is that, maybe,
a series of dockable palettes might not be a bad idea.

[bogs]

That is interesting. I've worked with a number of rad IDEs (as I suspect many others have) before coming to Mc/Lc. By far, the most common layout is a 'unified' style, i.e. a single window that contains your files, toolbar(s), events, properties, etc.

Of course, in a non rad IDE I suspect the most common interface is your local text program

I've never seen one that takes over (or "hogs") the entire desktop, they are all resizable to whatever size you would work with it, the app your working on at the time sits inside an area (usually in the center), and you use scrollbars to see the whole width/height of the app your working on if it is larger than that area.

The 'hybrid' style you mention was probably best done by Borland's Delphi, which up until D2k was a series of individual palettes like Lc by default, but you could 'dock' certain parts together, properties/code/events for instance.

Lc is the first I ever came across that doesn't act like either of the above exactly in that you can't dock any part of it, but since the evolution of this environment started with Hc, I suspect that to be the most likely reason. I could be wrong though

The part that strikes me funny is, if you enable the backdrop (which gives Lc a more similar appearance to the 'unified' style), unlike every other IDE out there, you can't limit the size of it, so in effect it *does* take over and hog the whole desktop. When I initially turned it on, and found out it couldn't be resized to just the area behind the palettes, I immediately turned it off again and never looked at it further

The backdrop as currently implemented also presents some very irritating annoyances, such as having to alt+tab to get the main menu or other parts of the IDE out from in back of it, something that should *never* happen.

The picture they came up with certainly would be more familiar to just about everyone else. Me, I still like the way Delphi, which was again non standard in layout, worked the best so the current (well, past in fact I guess) arrangement just happens to work for me because of that.

Edit - Just for a point of reference, here is one set of IDEs listed in popularity similarly to how the Tiobe lists languages.

No surprise Ms's Vs is at the top of the heap

The one thing they all have in common? Single window interfaces.

[FourthWorld]

Why the single-window paradigm works well for other systems but not LC is something that's been discussed often.

Rather than re-write that again, I did a quick search - see notes about single-window IDEs in these posts:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=31657&start=15#p172439

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=15270&p=76271#p76271

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=10957&p=51005#p51005

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=21851&p=112222#p112417

[richmond62]

OK, OK, OK . . . the grumbles about the backdrop that blocks the whole GUI need addressing . . .

Here's a fairly crappy stack that will always be the width of the revMenuBar stack and
have its left side inline with the revMenuBar stack, it will also "hang down" to where ever
the bottom of the revTools stack is.
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BackDropper.livecode.zip

(204.26 KiB) Downloaded 202 times

[bogs]

Why the single-window paradigm works well for other systems but not LC is something that's been discussed often.

It sure has been I did point out that I find it could be an interesting option as shown, but not necessarily how I would go in use, right? I find the multiple palettes fine for use myself.

The quality report link was a new one for me, thanks for that. Fascinating read.

OK, OK, OK . . . the grumbles about the backdrop that blocks the whole GUI need addressing . . .

Here's a fairly crappy stack...

Heh, I've made a few of those myself, as I think that (for anyone that actually wants that look) it is a better solution than the backdrop. The only real reason I can see for using the backdrop would be in a kiosk type program or similar.

I've hit the same roadblock yours displayed initially, at least here on 'nix -

Whoops...

I was able to resolve the issue, but the effort wasn't (imho) worth fixing some of the other issues. I might revisit it at some point later.

For me, when I work on something, I am always referring back to files on my desktop and I have other things that need to be easily visible outside of the IDE (cameras, for instance). For those reasons, the backdrop as currently implemented is a non starter, but that is ok because as I mentioned previously, the individual palettes work out great