OpenXTalk RC4 testing...

[tperry2x]

Please see my observations from initial testing of RC4 under Mac OS X 10.9 (yes, I know it's an old system - however I think it's important to see how it behaves on 'low-end' hardware too).

Please do not see these as criticisms Paul. I think what you have accomplished is brilliant, and it's good to see how this continues to improve over each iteration.

My findings are as follows:

[tperry2x]

Firstly, as Richmond has already pointed out - we have a functioning message box which correctly behaves with it's focus. It does not repeatedly flash or slow OXT to a crawl, so a huge thank you for that. This alone means the difference between OXT being useable on a mac and not.

[tperry2x]

01-runfirst.png (15.45 KiB) Viewed 12281 times

I ran the 'open this first' on the dmg, as I didn't want to go through the drudge of creating a meaningless account with Livecode. I'm guessing that each user would have to do this, as it saves in their respective home/preferences (I'm hoping the prompt to create an account can be fully pruned out next time around).

[tperry2x]

I next tested system dialogs, as I know from RC3 previously, they would have a dark infill (where the input text would be) and the buttons were previously the wrong colour (white text on a light-grey background).

Seems to look good in the IDE

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But slightly falls apart in the standalone as it loses the OXT default alert icon:

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[tperry2x]

When building a standalone, I get this grey inline banner (which if I remember, was Livecode's alert at prompting you to buy a license). The licensing text does not seem to be there, and at least there's a close button still...

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But if you are unlucky enough to click on this (by mistake), you get taken to:

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So, can this be removed entirely?

[tperry2x]

I'm very happy to see the default green LC icon has been replaced in the standalone, so that's great.
You can see here my previous point about the default icon in the alert box disappearing, but not a huge issue (as I could always specify "ask warning ..." if I wanted to have an icon. Would be good to allow the program icon as an option. Perhaps we could have the answer and ask dialogs aware of the program's icon as default.

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[tperry2x]

Weirdly enough, the backdrop was present at first run, even though the checkbox was off on the menu.
After toggling it, it behaved as expected with the checkbox showing as it should.
The default 'black' backdrop is a bit stark - only my opinion.

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I wondered if we could have the option of the Grey50 available on the background too (mockup:)

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You will also notice 'Dark Mode' is off, but is not using the light appearance in the preferences.
(I'm aware Dark Mode on MacOS didn't really become a thing until 10.12 wasn't it?) - so I guess this is using OpenXTalk's window colouring method rather than the OS's.

I should also mention that the message box also has the dark / charcoal colouration too, even though "Dark Mode" is off (and the OS doesn't actually support dark mode natively)

[tperry2x]

Opening the Resources window from the button on the toolbar (as a new user is likely to do), the initial window wanted to take me to lessons.runrev.com

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Upon choosing different sections from the drop-down menu, this seemed to work fine, but when I closed the Resources window:

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It would seem like this stack is not read-only.

[tperry2x]

Likewise, the tutorials currently redirect to:

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[tperry2x]

Lastly, something a casual new user would notice.
Looking at the sample stacks, they show only 4 items at a time when in the initial 'grid view', however you can see there's a total of 15 matches with no immediate way to see the others (without using the really small navigation arrows at the top), which could easily be missed be a new user.

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Clicking on one of these changes the view, and the other matches appear as you'd expect:

12-sample-stacks-no-open.png (252.32 KiB) Viewed 12280 times

So I can now scroll vertically to see the other matches, so there's a workaround even if it's a bit weird.

Downloading one of these stacks says "stack downloaded" in the status field, but then does not open and does not show a prompt to open the stack, so I don't know where it actually gets downloaded to.

[tperry2x]

You mentioned on the github releases page Paul, that you continue to remove duplicate files and un-needed items to keep the size of the app down. This is great to see (in fact, looks like you've shaved ~200MB off it since last time).

Is there any way to get the IDE builder to produce leaner standalones?

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I know this has been creeping upwards on each and every Livecode release, so I was wondering if there's any way to make it a bit more ruthless with what it deems necessary to include, which keeps the file sizes (and memory allocation?) down to a minimum?

Lastly, please see this as it's intended - just to help point out things I've found.
These seem to be trivial issues, and so far it's been rock solid and has not crashed on me. I'm pleased that it continues to function on my old iMac running Mavericks as well.

[tperry2x]

One more thing...
TerryL has been working on his OpenXTalk Lite (0.9) and has released some files for testing
viewtopic.php?p=3231#p3231

It was noted that it's still using the green Livecode icon (at least on Windows) on the window dialogs. (I'd assume everywhere).
As MacOS doesn't display icons on the window decorations, I wondered if you can also check for the presence of this green Livecode icon on the Windows and Linux builds of RC4 before they are built and change them to the OXT icon.

Many thanks for everything so far.

[richmond62]

I ran the 'open this first' on the dmg, as I didn't want to go through the drudge of creating a meaningless account with Livecode.

I wonder if there is not a way to build this into the IDE and have it 'fire' invisibly at startup?

[richmond62]

You will also notice 'Dark Mode' is off, but is not using the light appearance in the preferences.
(I'm aware Dark Mode on MacOS didn't really become a thing until 10.12 wasn't it?) - so I guess this is using OpenXTalk's window colouring method rather than the OS's.

OK: I'll turn 'Dark Mode' OFF on this iMac running MacOS12 and see how the IDE looks then:
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Stuck in 'Dark Mode' . . . Blast.

HOWEVER, oddly enough, the Prefs stack has started to behave:
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NOT that there appears any obvious way to toggle Dark/Light inwith the IDE.

[richmond62]

Likewise, the tutorials currently redirect to:

This is why in that "absolutely brilliant" rmCODE [cough, cough, cough] the 'Tutorials' feature was 'wented'.
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While my 'rmCODE' was, frankly, when push comes to shove, almost complete crap, fooling around making the thing did teach me all sorts of odd things, so, Paul, expect me to use rmCODE like a blunt instrument to make your life even more miserable than it probably already is having bitten off the OXT hard chew.

[tperry2x]

[I wonder if there is not a way to build this into the IDE and have it 'fire' invisibly at startup?

Seems like it would be fairly trivial to build in.
The "Open First.app" seems to be an applescript:

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As OpenXTalk is capable of executing Applescript itself, then it could run the exact same script at startup, or run an xTalk script to check for the presence of these files as needed.

[richmond62]

Code: Select all

This is why in that "absolutely brilliant" rmCODE [cough, cough, cough] the 'Tutorials' feature was 'wented'.

There is nothing quite as kinkily satisfying as quoting oneself.

I took the easy way out by hiding/disabling all the buttons that would lead people to 'embarrassing places':
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Top: My Hack.

Bottom: 'Virgin' LC 963.

[richmond62]

Here's a 'bug' that has been around in LC for yonks [just checked LC 8.1.10], and it would be lovely if it could be 'wented' [this is a verb I really want to encourage] in OXT:
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When grid spacing is set to 1 pixel the size field becomes empty.

[tperry2x]

Forgot to ask...
As I'm unable to run such an up-to-date version of MacOS here, can anyone confirm if RC4 works in MacOS 14 Sonoma?

[richmond62]

can anyone confirm if RC4 works in MacOS 14 Sonoma?

Give me 5 minutes while I turn my 2018 Mac Mini running the latest beta of MacOS 14 on, and I'll see what happens.