Create Progress – the Three D’s

It was great seeing so many of you at our live Webinar, where we provided a report on the latest LiveCode Create progress. For those of you who couldn’t take part live, here is the recording.

The three main areas we’ve made major strides in are Documentation, Deployment and the Datastore. We’ve also added a number of smaller features including a PDF widget, a Switch widget and the single window IDE for Create Native (the desktop IDE). While we did our best to answer all your questions in the webinar, we inevitably ran out of time, so I have collected all your questions relating to LiveCode Create here and provided answers in the appropriate sections below.

Docs

Steven gave us a walkthrough of the new Docs portal, which is almost ready to go live. It provides a unified set of documentation specifically for LiveCode Create, including examples, tutorials, the language dictionary and video walkthroughs. All the topics are interlinked so you can dig deeper into the particular area you want information about, with optional dark mode, and a built in search. We are building in user feedback and comments as well. Its looking really good!

Your questions around Documentation

Daniel and David: Does “Create” require an Internet connection to operate and give access to all resources such “Dictionary”, etc.?

The portal itself runs online. In the future, we can embed a static version of the docs portal within Create Native, and that will be accessible offline.

Tim: Can you make the main body of documentation collapsible, like the table of contents?

That should certainly be possible, we can look into making that an option in the future.

Alan: Can we get access to this documentation?

Yes, very soon now!

Deployment

Our primary focus has been on getting Create Cloud to a state where you can deploy your online projects publicly to the web. Ali gave us a demo of how far we have got with this and what it will look like. You will be able to specify a url to deploy to.

Alan: Any news on deploying standalone apps to iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Linux?

You can do that now using LiveCode Create Native, by first switching it into Classic mode. The need to switch to Classic will be eliminated in the future.

Datastore

A major component for Create is the online datastore. This allows you to handle data without needing to set up your own database. We are providing completely code free ways of arranging and viewing your data using Actions and Dataviews. Steven discussed what we mean by a Dataview and demonstrated setting up a Dataview using Actions, then searching and filtering through the data.

Your questions around data

Anton: I need to distribute cloud based LCC apps to several hundreds or thousands of end users with each having their own data store, dashboard and access ID. In an earlier meeting, I was told that this would be possible to be set-up and maintained from a single developer account.

Yes, this will be possible, and completely scalable to very large volume.

Paul D: For SQL databases, are not “Collections” just being mapped to TABLES and “Dataviews” being mapped to VIEWS?

These are similar concepts but not exactly the same. We’re not using SQL behind the scenes, so there’s no direct mapping. However, there are similarities in the concepts, the difference being that SQL views are not optimised. They are essentially stored queries that a rerun each time the view is accessed. This is unlike Create Dataviews, which are optimised behind the scenes based on the parameters defined at creation, allowing for efficient data access.

Tom S: With the Data View, can you build relations with other collections based on IDs, or how would it work?

Yes you can. You just select the collections you want to work with and build your Dataview, you can choose items across collections to include in the Dataview.

Sébastien: Can you manage Dataview Builder directly with script? It’s possible to directly retrieve data from database (like sqlite or mysql ) in collections?

Yes you can. When you use Actions they write the script for you, you can then open and edit these scripts, or you can just write your own.

Ken: I guess the data views you’re showing are internal to LiveCode (no interfaced database program). Are there functions (and data view tools?) to make it trivial to merge datasets based on matching IDs? (E.g., a table of country IDs with information on countries’ patent laws, matched to a table of patents each with a country ID, to create a combined table with all the information.)

Yes, this is exactly the sort of thing you would use Dataviews for.

Tim: Can LiveCode host my data?

Yes. Data hosting is included with LiveCode Create.

Lloyd: Can you use large JSON data sets in data views?

You will be able to in the future. Right now Create only supports Dataviews for the data we’re hosting natively. In the future there will be an API to bring in data from other sources and use all the new features for handling that data too.

Tim: Will data be encrypted?

Yes.

Bruce : Is there a “secure” database anticipated in the future? Looking to replace AWS/Python/RDS secure storage

Yes.

Brian: Will there be a solution to convert a FileMaker xml opus to a data source?

If there is enough demand for this in the future then it would be perfectly possible to do this.

Bruce: Can Livecode Create access existing Restful APIs on say AWS secure server.

Yes.

Paul: Is get and set w/ MySQL supported?

Yes. We are taking nothing away. Everything you can do now in traditional LiveCode you can still do in Create.

Other new features

Steven gave a demo showing other features we’ve been working on, which include our new PDF widget on web, the Switch widget, Single Window on Desktop, Property Inspector improvements and working between web and desktop. In the Single Window demo he showed the ability to “tear off” the script editor from the single window, move it to another screen, make changes and move it back, where it can snap back into the single window.

Questions on new features

Paul D: Is the Attach/Deattach [of single window components] an engine capability OR is it done in scripting?

This is scripted rather than being at the engine level.

Paul A: Will there be more widgets available and especially more icons to select from?

Yes, there will. I’m sure we’ll continue to add widgets well into the future. We are expecting to provide a wide array of icons you will be able to choose from in the future.

Kaan: A search box in the property inspector would be cool

Yes it would, and this is actively under consideration!

Matthias: Does this PDF widget support password protected PDFs?

We’ve checked with the developer, and yes, it does. You have to specify the password before uploading the pdf, there is a property for this.

Paul: Is there a way for end users to open local documents/media (text files, PDFs, images, etc.)for an App to work with? Or when will this be available?

You can do this now, using Javascript (see this blog post). We will be adding an action to do this for you down the line.

Alan: Will the PDF widget allow users to fill out fields in them?

Yes, it will.

Bob: Will printing of pdfs be supported?

Yes, it will. The widget can extract the data and then Create can handle printing it.

Peter: what about extracting data from pdf forms?

Yes, this is supported.

Other questions

Anton: When will rotating/flipping videos in ALL directions (not only horizontally) be implemented in player objects?

This should be relatively easy to do now, since we’ve updated our support for playing media.

Tom: What is the method of opening and importing projects that have features that create web does not support, like encryption. Does it just crash and we have to remove those functions first before we open in create?

You should be able to open the projects as normal, the functionality that is not supported will just not work. We’ll be looking into ways to provide warnings when a project imported into Cloud has unsupported features.

Rolf: What does the future hold for LiveCode Desktop? Will it remain a key product, or could it eventually be replaced by LiveCode Create?

LiveCode Create Native is the desktop product for Create. It will be a mainstream part of our offering alongside Cloud.

Paul A: Will AI be integrated and if yes how?

AI is already working in some areas, it can provide assistance with your code in the Code Editor for example. We are working on a feature to describe your project interface and have AI automatically build it.

Tim and others: Which web browsers do you support?

We are currently targeting Chrome, Safari, Edge and Firefox.

David: Has the Motif problem been fixed with the multi-line text field object?

If you mean what we think you mean, then yes 🙂 The Motif theme has been replaced by Material Design.

Bruce: Will there be a provision to support existing websites, in which javascript can open a window in which Livecode Create stack can run? Intention is to use live code features to provide “pop-up” functionality not readily implemented in an existing Javascript/HTML/CSS website.

Yes, definitely. You will be able to embed a LiveCode web app in any web page, and access the DOM with two way communication.

Bruce: Follow-up to previous question: can Livecode Create run “headless” (no windows or other visible pieces) so as to be referenced from Javascript? JS would pass/receive JSON to the stack?

This is possible, you might need to do a bit of fettling with the Javascript or HTML.

Bob: Is there a new DP version of Create being released along with the webinar?

A new DP will be coming very soon, its almost there.

Ken: LiveCode text was being chopped off above about 2 GB or so, on Mac and Windows. Are string variables of 4GB+ now working, or will they be?

No, the same limits will still apply for some time to come. You can find other ways to handle large amounts of text however.

Ken: Back to the 1 or 2 GB current limit for strings. Can LiveCode fail with an error message for such cases (e.g., when concatenating 2 long strings), instead of just yielding wrong results? (Hidden errors are a big problem for large data work — some of the data just disappear without us knowing!)

That should be possible, we can look into providing better errors on this.

Kaan: Can we develop Chrome & Firefox extensions?

Yes, you should be able to do this. It’s not yet been done but there is nothing that would prevent you doing it.

Greg: will Livecode Builder be available in Create, and will currently built extensions be usable?

Yes, it will be, and there is no reason existing extensions should not work.

Kirby: How is source control handled in Create?

You can do this in the same way you do now, using script only stacks, Github and Levure, from LiveCode Create Native on the desktop.

Paul: Can it handle fast fourier transforms on say 1 second of audio input at 44.1 kHz? I’m looking to develop an iOS app that produces a power spectrum from short bursts of sound input.

This might already be fast enough in LiveCode Create as iOS devices are now pretty powerful. However, if you needed higher performance you could always wrap an external to do the FFT and bring it into LiveCode.