revUp - Updates and news for the LiveCode community
Issue 153 | July 26th 2013 Contact the Editor | How to Contribute

Team Progress
Where are we at with our roadmap? How are the Kickstarter goals coming along? Ben gets you up to speed

By Ben Beaumont

I know all you Kickstarter backers are holding your breath, waiting for Next Generation and all those tasty stretch goals. If you think its all gone a bit quiet and we've gone away and forgotten about you... you couldn't be more wrong! Our dev team have been cracking on like crazy, and we've made huge amounts of progress. Here is some detail for you on where we are at right now.

Work in Progress

Graphics Library
Driven by Michael McCreary
We have been working for some time on moving LiveCode's 2D rendering to use Skia, an open source library maintained by Google. The initial purpose for this project is to facilitate the rendering LiveCode stacks at any scale (Resolution independence). It is possible that we'll also see some rendering performance improvements but we'll only know once the project is complete.

Progress report: This project is almost complete. The only remaining step is to hook in text rendering. The estimated release date of a test version for this is the end of August.


Michael McCreary

Resolution Independence
Driven by Ian MacPhail
The aim of this project is to take away the need to LiveCode developers to do extra work when creating an app that is required to run on devices with different screen densities. For example, developers who write an app for the iPad2 (1024x768) currently have to manually upscale their objects, graphics and images by hand to support the iPad3 (2048x1532). With resolution independence, LiveCode will perform all this scaling automatically as well as selecting the appropriate density of image from your app bundle. Users will be able to create an app at one scale and let LiveCode scale it up or down to meet to density of the screen of the target device.

Progress report: LiveCode can now display a stack at any scale on Mac and iOS! We are busy porting this to all platforms at the moment. The final step is to update the image object to select the appropriate density of image automatically.
The estimated release of a test version for this project is the end of August.


Ian MacPhail

Syntax
Overseen by Mark Waddingham, teamwork Ali Lloyd, Sebastian Nouat, Panos Merakos
The aim of this project is to re-work the way LiveCode handles language. This project involves updating large parts of the engine source code as well as preparing the way for some exciting new features like unicode, English like syntax for all engine functionality, consistent error messages, script editor auto-completion and much more!

Project progress: Looking at the roadmap online you'll notice we've broken the project up into a number of key stages. The team have done exceptionally well - three new members of the team, funded by you through the Kickstarter campaign, has given us a lot of momentum!

1) Syntax refactoring (99% complete)
2) Legacy script support (99% complete)
3) Test case writing (30% complete)
4) Error handling (Specified - work about to commence)
.5) Unicodification (Specified - work commenced)
6) Evaluator (Specification being finalised - work about to commence)
7) Parser / specs (Specified - awaiting resources)

Estimated release of test version (To Be Confirmed)

Mark , Ali... Seb and Panos need to send me their photos!

IDE
Prototyping Mark Waddingham, Design Ben Beaumont, Development Elanor Buchanan
The design of a new IDE and architecture is nearing completion. We are in the process of prototyping to gain a better understanding of what can be achieved to put the finishing touches on the design. Once this phase is complete, we'll be updating our roadmap so watch this space.

Mark WaddinghamBen BeaumontElanor Buchanan

Mark, Ben, Elanor

Heather Laine

About the Author

Ben Beaumont is Product Manager for RunRev Ltd.

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