What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

Forum rules
A place to discuss and plan OpenSource xTalk (not exclusively LCC based) and Community Builds of LCC
Ask NOT what xTalk can do for you... get involved you DO have something to contribute, no matter your skillset!

Post a reply


This question is a means of preventing automated form submissions by spambots.
Smilies
:D :) ;) :( :o :shock: :? 8-) :lol: :x :P :oops: :cry: :evil: :twisted: :roll: :!: :?: :idea: :arrow: :| :mrgreen: :geek: :ugeek:

BBCode is ON
[img] is ON
[url] is ON
Smilies are ON

Topic review
   

Expand view Topic review: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

Re: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

by richmond62 » Thu Jan 23, 2025 7:44 pm

I forget the shitty situation of working for a state institution (21 years ago, in Scotland) (particularly in over-regulated Britain), and all I can recommend is that, some how or other, you find a way to be your own boss before the rot really sets in. 8-)

Re: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

by tperry2x » Thu Jan 23, 2025 7:18 pm

:lol: :lol: I do not think for a second that would even be an option. Unfortunately. However I'm probably able to get most of what I need off external drives. About half way setting things up so far.

Re: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

by richmond62 » Thu Jan 23, 2025 5:07 pm

Of course if you have a faster internet service at work . . . I don't know if it would be possible or permitted to take your new machine into school AND . . . might be worth asking your boss.

Re: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

by tperry2x » Thu Jan 23, 2025 4:06 pm

richmond62 wrote: Thu Jan 23, 2025 3:52 pm What a wonderful gift. 8-)
Yes, I'm hugely appreciative of it. It will no doubt help no end. I now just need to find time to sit down and install over 15GB of xCode-related shenanegans and all the dependencies for the compiling.... all over a 10MB/Sec connection... :lol:

Re: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

by richmond62 » Thu Jan 23, 2025 3:52 pm

What a wonderful gift. 8-)

Re: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

by tperry2x » Thu Jan 23, 2025 1:52 pm

micmac wrote: Thu Jan 23, 2025 1:41 pm Tom, did you get an ARM Mac?
Mic
No, I was very kindly donated an intel one - just paid postage.
The intel one is handy because I can use it to compile the engine source, but xCode should also allow me to compile the arm version - I just would have to compile as a "Universal 2" binary - which is what I'd probably want to do anyway (as I'm also interested in supporting as far back as is possible too). It actually fits my needs better than an Arm one, as I would not be able to test most of the stuff I need to - there's always the option of running QEMU on there and emulating an arm mac too - although there's quite a bit of setup required for that.

Re: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

by micmac » Thu Jan 23, 2025 1:41 pm

Tom, did you get an ARM Mac?

Mic

Re: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

by tperry2x » Wed Jan 22, 2025 7:44 pm

Yes, I mean - it'll probably use a heavily LCC inspired engine underneath. Although not a copy of - the plan there (as I crunch through the code) will be to look at how it's all put together, and see if I can get my head around it. I don't plan to owe LC anything for the engine as it won't be their work. The same way someone might look at a garden - appreciate it for what it is, then go and design their own.

This will also help with the Mac compiling process I'm sure. The first step is to work out the order it's doing (or trying to do) everything - then go from there.

A major piece of the puzzle fell into place this evening, as my newer mac arrived. So this means I can actually test on a newer version - something like Sonoma - and try and fix the menus in C++ while also adding any fixes along the way.

The new IDE won't be aware of revAnything or MetacardAnything - and I'm wondering just how much I try and provide a similar set of messages, or do I completely reimagine it so that it's a different animal altogether. I looked at the example Axwald pointed me towards, and the difference in the message watcher is quite drastic. (Why so many messages constantly for v9 compared to v7?) - No wonder v7 is so much more responsive.

These messages are all being fired constantly not by the engine, but by various frontscripts, backscripts and the revIDELibrary. I won't be including those (my rudimentary engine doesn't currently have any concept of frontscripts or backscripts) but I added the ability for it to save substacks of stacks yesterday. (small steps). :lol:

But then I'm only an extremely novice C++ coder, not at all up to speed like the pros. I only started learning C++ this time last year, and progress is slow because I've also got work and family commitments (blah, blah, blah - I know; boring) - but this is why I don't have as much time to spend in front of a computer as I otherwise could have, trying to backpedal and untangle things.

Having said that, I did find a real gem in that the C++ code can be cross-compiled into assembly - making the whole thing a lot faster. (I'm using the zig cross compiler for that bit, that I was going on about a long time ago). So although it's written in C++, the end result is a program/binary that is compiled in assembly - and it's fast. (The IDE can launch itself and load a stack - all in under 1 second) - but then it's a very stripped down, minimal form of itself.
I mean, we are talking going from an entire OXT Lite install which is almost 1.3GB uncompressed, down to something that's about 12MB in size. (adjust your expectations of what it's capable of relative to this) :lol:

I'm sure load time will increase as more is loaded into memory as the IDE loads. That's the bloat. Unavoidable bloat though. I don't see this being a quick process by the way, just to make that clear.

That's the long term goal - to recreate the engine, in the meantime, I'll continue tweaking OXT Lite I'm sure. Just that I hope to learn more about the inherited engine by going through this process.

Re: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

by richmond62 » Wed Jan 22, 2025 7:29 pm

LC did start to go off on an odd sort of tangent at the start of version 7 . . .

Probably because the powers that be (or, should we say 'the powers that WERE'?) got some obsessed with pumping out the next 'thang' they forgot that while installing solar panels on the roof you STILL have to sort out the blocked sinks, clean the toilets, and repoint the brickwork from time to time.
a completely alternative IDE
Well, at least you won't be making Dr Frankenstein's mistake: trying to build a man out of bits of a dead body: rather growing your won cells in your own agar! After all we all know what happened to Dr Frankenstein, and the beast he created.

Re: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

by axwald » Wed Jan 22, 2025 7:21 pm

Hi,
tperry2x wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2025 5:04 pm My future plans are to continue with a completely alternative IDE - (this is using no ".rev" and no ".livecode"/".livecodescript") files. I plan to have absolutely no association with LCC in the IDE.
One, suffixes are interchangeable. "Go stack myStack.mySuffix in new window" already works fine.

Two, when thinking about rebuilding the IDE I'd recommend to grab a LC Comm. v6.7.10/ 11 and have a look at it - it's WAYS less convoluted compared to the current versions, and, in my opinion at least, by far faster and by far less buggy. This may be a good starting point - after all, the IDE is basically stacks-only, right?

You may start to compare some basic things. Make sure you don't suppress anything in the message watcher, then have it record something simple like "move mouse from cd window into a button". Do it with v6, and then with v9/OXT. You'll see what I mean.

May be your OS doesn't allow you to run 32bit programs. In Linux this should be curable (adding required packets). Anyways, Win XP (dunno about 95/98) - latest Win11-64 will happily run any LC 6.7.10/11.

Porting a known working IDE to the new engine, or using it as a template, may make your job a bit easier. Maybe.

May ... bah, whatever, choose your "personal best wishes" ;-)

Re: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

by richmond62 » Sun Jan 19, 2025 11:42 pm

Of course it is: the work you have already done on the 'outer' bit is fantastic: now turning you attention to the "inner' part is amazing.

Re: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

by micmac » Sun Jan 19, 2025 9:18 pm

tperry2x wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2025 5:04 pm I want to focus my attention on compiling the engine and fixes there...
For the future that is certainly the most important thing. I hope the Mac one is included.

Mic

Re: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

by richmond62 » Sun Jan 19, 2025 7:22 pm

we joke
Some of us try to.

Some people write things which are ambiguous.

Re: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

by richmond62 » Sun Jan 19, 2025 6:29 pm

Many long years ago (1999) I worked at a University in the UAE, and I was issued with an Iomega JAZ drive that took disks with the unimaginable size of a Gigabyte . . . 8-)

Now I can pick up second-hand SATA 3 TB hard drives for 10 Euros!

Re: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

by tperry2x » Sun Jan 19, 2025 6:24 pm

Well, we joke - but the aim is that it would fit on one.
Rather than being 1.3GB+ :roll:

Re: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

by richmond62 » Sun Jan 19, 2025 6:18 pm

no need for internet access
So, I assume you will be sending it out by post on ZIP disks. 8-)
-
Iomega_ZIP100_Disk.jpg
Iomega_ZIP100_Disk.jpg (9.27 KiB) Viewed 2551 times
-
The ONLY slight snag I can see there is that my Iomega ZIP drive has a SCSI interface and I do NOT have a SCSI-USB converter
-
Screenshot 2025-01-19 at 20.16.52.png
Screenshot 2025-01-19 at 20.16.52.png (78.02 KiB) Viewed 2551 times
-
AND at that price it should be obvious I will be ordering 2.

Re: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

by tperry2x » Sun Jan 19, 2025 6:04 pm

richmond62 wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2025 5:16 pm
My future plans are to continue with a completely alternative IDE
Will you make that freely available?
But, of course. Free as in no money involved, no registration, no user telemetry, no subscriptions, no need for internet access, and the source code of the IDE available.
richmond62 wrote: Sun Jan 19, 2025 5:16 pm Oh, and while I'm 'here':
Until recently when the check update stack found no updates it "sat there" and told you so.
But now it vanishes in the blink of an eye, which is a bit odd as it does not give time for anyone to realise it has checked and foun there are no updates.
Please see the release notes page,
v1.09:
Tweaked the automatic updates. These can run in the background without disturbing the user if no updates are available.

Re: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

by richmond62 » Sun Jan 19, 2025 5:16 pm

My future plans are to continue with a completely alternative IDE
Will you make that freely available?

Oh, and while I'm 'here':

Until recently when the check update stack found no updates it "sat there" and told you so.

But now it vanishes in the blink of an eye, which is a bit odd as it does not give time for anyone to realise it has checked and foun there are no updates.

Re: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

by tperry2x » Sun Jan 19, 2025 5:04 pm

My future plans are to continue with a completely alternative IDE - (this is using no ".rev" and no ".livecode"/".livecodescript") files. I plan to have absolutely no association with LCC in the IDE.

I've been working on it in the background, but the gist of it is that it's a fresh recreation - (no patches-upon-patches) in the IDE. This won't be to everyone's liking - there's not going to be any support for loading builder syntax, or LCE extensions, but that's intentional. This is purely going to be a recreation on my own whims.

As such, I plan to step back from OXT Lite development slightly - I won't be able to give it as much time as I did, but it's pretty much as far as I can take it now anyway - without running up against legacy issues.
Anyone can pick up my progress from OXT Lite and carry on with it, simply by downloading the most recent version (1.10 as I write this), and applying any updates.

This doesn't mean I'm completely abandoning it. I want to focus my attention on compiling the engine and fixes there, as well as reimagining the IDE completely. I'll still update what I can on here with fixes if asked.

Speaking of which, there may be some more added later this evening, but the pace of my updates in OXT Lite will be reduced.

Re: What I'm adding, and what I'm planning next...

by tperry2x » Thu Jan 16, 2025 9:59 am

richmond62 wrote: Thu Jan 16, 2025 9:42 am As nutty as a fruitcake. 8-)
Yes, you can be as mad as you want with it.
Not sure why anyone would want it looking as wide as that, but it's down to personal preference I guess.
never-be-happy.png
never-be-happy.png (13.64 KiB) Viewed 2945 times
But this is what I mean when I say I'll probably never be happy with it. I'll have to modify those "paint tools" to be inline properly too at some point. Small steps though, because that tools stack is fairly delicate.

Top