![]() Object ProfilesĪnother way to compensate for platform appearance differences is to use profiles. LiveCode provides the specialFolderPath function to provide a cross-platform way of referring to these folder locations. Examples include the user's Documents folder, the user Preferences folder and others. Operating systems also provide certain directories that are always available and "safe" to write in. To prevent this, operating systems impose a system of permissions that determine which users or programs can write to which directories on the disk. For instance, you don't want to allow programs (or LiveCode stacks!) to delete critical system files. The various operating systems take differing approaches to securing certain areas of the file system against changes that could adversely affect the performance of the system. File System: Standard Storage Locations and Permissions LiveCode does provide some automated help in this regard, but you still need to check it on all platforms to make sure it works the way you want. This menubar would be hidden on Mac systems, so you have to decide if you like having the blank strip at the top of the card, or if you would rather resize the stack window slightly when running on Macs. That means that you have to leave a little extra room at the top of your card for a menubar, if you are planning to deploy on Windows. Most obviously, menus on the Mac OS appear at the top of the screen, while on Windows and Linux they appear in the application window. MenusĪs you know, menus look and behave differently on Mac OS vs. Button Look and FeelĮven though LiveCode presents several common button styles-Push Button, Default Button, Checkbox, etc., the appearance and behavior can be different enough between platforms that you will want to be sure to test them extensively on all platforms you are targeting. One way to avoid these differences is to set the stack's textFont, textStyle, and textSize properties, and its backgroundColor, foregroundColor, and other color properties, to the values you want before creating the standalone. This is due in part to differing default settings that the LiveCode engine uses on different platforms. For instance, the fonts might be slightly different, or the background color might be different. Sometimes you will notice that a stack or standalone changes appearance in minor ways when moving it between platforms. Dealing with Differences in Appearance Between Platforms Let's look at some tools and settings that LiveCode gives us for creating well-behaved cross-platform standalone applications. ![]() To distribute closed-source commercial applications you would have to purchase a commercial license of LiveCode (Indy or Business Edition).) (Keep in mind that if you distribute applications built with LiveCode Community you must make your source code public, in accordance with the GNU General Public License, or GPL, under which the Community version is distributed. These standalone applications may be distributed without the developer having to pay royalties to LiveCode Ltd. Fortunately, LiveCode provides a robust set of tools for creating double-clickable, stand-alone applications on any supported platform. If everyone needed their own a copy of LiveCode in order to run the stack, distribution would be difficult. Of course, the ultimate goal of any software developer is to get their program into the hands of users. ![]() Office of Digital Humanities Back BYU LiveCode Lessons Gateway DigHT 210/310īuilding Standalone Distributions of LiveCode Stacks
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