LiveCode 5.5 Features

[mwieder]

I tested with 5.5 and saved a simple stack with no code and just one field. Then tried to open that stack in 5.0.2. It refused to open the stack.

Yeah, that's my experience, too. Sean - are you seeing something different?

[shaosean]

I found that opening the file through double-clicking and drag and drop caused the corrupt stack alert, but using File > Open from within Rev allows it to open the stacks, but seeing as I have no bothered with any version of LiveCode, my testing has not been all that intensive..

[AtoZ]

Bernd,

Of course LiveCode can do whatever they want with their software, and I agree that in order to progress it may be necessary to change the software to the point that there is a split in the development path (legacy users vs upgraded users) -- Apple, and others, have had to do the same thing. BUT when doing this, the company should make abundant and prominent announcements of what the consequences are of upgrading (not relegate it to page 10 of the release notes, even if it is printed in red).

That way early adopters (and others unaffected by the upgrade, such as developers who only develop standalones) can upgrade right away (and in the process help the company debug the upgrade), while the majority can stay with the older version until such time as a enough users have upgraded to make a decent pool of users for the new system.

The system you use to deal with this, may work for you, but to my mind it is excessively complex and contrary to the notion that LiveCode is a programmer language for non-programmers.

[bn]

AtoZ,

I agree that it should have been stated more clearly that 5.5 introduces a new file format. And it should have been accompanied by sample stacks.

Though to be fair there are lessons that explain the new features.
http://lessons.runrev.com/

And I agree that it is cumbersome to deal with this all.

Just wanted to explain how I deal with this and why I think it is still worthwile.

Kind regards

Bernd

[AtoZ]

Bernd,

Thanks for the info about the 5.5 lessons. I wasn't aware that the lessons had been updated to include some of the new features. The lessons, along with the demonstration stack you linked to earlier in this topic, will be very helpful to me.

[Happyrever]

Because my licence ran out at version 5.01 and the previous licence arrangement where you got all updates for the year had been changed, I decided to download the trial version and see what the advantages were. To me, I mean.

My first point of interest was about printing using the inbuilt pdf feature. This is used a lot in my technical applications.
My existing applications(in 5.01) will not print this way using the 5.5 version, either cards or a field of text, these work perfectly with 5.01
A program that prints a page of mixed text and photos will print a couple of pages (using a simple repeat) but then fails to print the photo parts of subsequent pages.
This was acknowledged as a bug by Rev, but was never fixed. The process works if an external pdf or xps or normal printer is used. This was under 5.01
I had hoped 5.5 would have addressed this issue, but no, nothing works.

The point to all this is that developers with working software before 5.5 might need to spend a lot of time retesting if they modify the application in 5.5
There are no warnings I can see about the issues I mentioned and probably none regarding other changes either.

I am glad I had not invested further in the 5.5 update and thank Rev for changing the licence arrangement.
I am going to explore other multi-platform software tools and probably break away from Livecode.
My reasons for this are:-
The web based plugin was a failure and not likely to be developed further, yet Rev still charge for it, a great disappointment.
The fixation with cross platform development has stalled proper development of desktop platforms and just from my perspective, this is frustrating.
From what I can see, if you write desktop applications which will in the main run on windows, macs and Linux, then they are very unlikely to work on Android and IOS devices. Perhaps life would be better for both camps, if Livecode was optimised for desk tops as one product and handhelds for another. After all, they are priced separately.
Many of the text handling features in 5.5 can be synthesised quite well in the earlier versions of Livecode. From what I gathered from the example mentioned in earlier posts on this topic, if you needed them before 5.5, then you will probably prefer to continue to use the workaround you made do with. The coding looked a bit involved compared with the gains, particularly if you had already solved the problem another way.

[monte]

Hi Folks

If you need to go back to version 5 you can save your stack as the version 2.7 file format using the save as dialog. RunRev have made some major changes in the last few versions and it's great to see them moving ahead.

Cheers

Monte