Re: Two features I don't understand
Regarding id caching, I had an idea that one might be able to use it to emulate the performance gain of a 'repeat for each...' style structure on controls. Referencing a control by number or name will iterate through the controls of the card until it gets to the specified one. Thus a loop of the form repeat with x = 1 to the number of controls of this card // do something with control x end repeat could in theory be speed up by using repeat for each line tId in the controlIDs of this card // do something with control id tID end repeat However I haven't yet tried to measure any actual performance difference, and I think it would only be faster if there were a large number of controls. Ali On 31 October 2014 04:48, Richard Gaskin ambassa...@fourthworld.com wrote: Monte Goulding wrote: On 31 Oct 2014, at 2:55 pm, Richard Gaskin wrote: If RunRev needed this themselves, they've done a good job of concealing why. :) Copying styled text works great with htmlText. Richard if you remember originally styledText supported a few things that htmlText didn't and people complained... Rightly so, according to the inventor of the LiveCode engine: Dr. Raney once explained to me that the purpose of htmlText is to provide an easily-manipulatable way to faithfully reproduce the entire contents and styles within a field or chunk. Anything less is indeed a bug report. :) I like the idea of using arrays to manipulate field contents, but alas we have so much missing from the the styledText representation at the moment. -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Systems Software Design and Development for Desktop, Mobile, and Web ambassa...@fourthworld.comhttp://www.FourthWorld.com ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Two features I don't understand
On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 2:36 PM, Richard Gaskin ambassa...@fourthworld.com wrote: 2. StyledText array Pages 16-18 of the v5.5.4 Release Notes: http://downloads.livecode.com/livecode/5_5_4/LiveCodeNotes-5_5_4.pdf Anyone here use this? Is it faster than doing equivalent operations on htmlText? While the style attributes themselves are well represented in the array, the character offsets of runs don't seem to be present, so I'm unclear as to what this should be used for. Richard, I use styled text all of the time in my text editors and exporters. Mainly for modifying runs of text and for converting text to other formats. Two examples: 1) Converting text to different types of markup. Markdown, BBCode, etc. Looping through a styledText array makes it trivial to convert to other text formats. 2) Modifying formatting in text. It is trivial to loop through the styledtext array and strip out styles you don't want, add in metadata you do want, etc. What if you want bold and italics but not color when the user pastes text? The code is much simpler to write and easier to read using a styledText array. It is much faster than looping through the text in a field and checking styles. -- Trevor DeVore ScreenSteps www.screensteps.com-www.clarify-it.com ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Two features I don't understand
I am sorry to report that the pageranges property of fields is still broken in 7.0. Create a field and place this in a button: on mouseUp put empty into fld 1 set the height of fld 1 to 60 repeat with i = 1 to 10 put i cr after fld 1 end repeat set the spaceabove line 2 of fld 1 to 10 put the pageranges of fld 1 cr put the first line should be 1,6 after msg end mouseUp On Oct 30, 2014, at 5:32 PM, Michael Doub miked...@gmail.com wrote: I use the styled arrays quite often when creating content, applying styles and taking advantage of the metadata. I can’t comment on the speed. I have a tendency to think in terms of arrays so this is pretty comfortable for me. I did a lot of work using space above and below and was really bummed when pageranges did not take them into account. (a bug report exists for this.) I guess I should look and see if 7.0 addressed that issue. Rather than including char offsets for runs in the array itself, I think it might be more useful to have an easy way to get from a char offset to the pgh_number/run_number within the styled array. Another thing to look at in 7.0. -= Mike On Oct 30, 2014, at 2:36 PM, Richard Gaskin ambassa...@fourthworld.com wrote: 1. ID caching Page 10 of the v6.0 Release Notes: http://downloads.livecode.com/livecode/6_0_0/LiveCodeNotes-6_0_0.pdf The description there says: The engine now caches lookups of control references of the form “card id ...” and “control id ...”. This speeds up any access using those forms after the first time, turning an operation that would be completed in linear time into one that will be completed in constant time. What does that mean in practical terms? How can I benchmark the benefit of this new feature? 2. StyledText array Pages 16-18 of the v5.5.4 Release Notes: http://downloads.livecode.com/livecode/5_5_4/LiveCodeNotes-5_5_4.pdf Anyone here use this? Is it faster than doing equivalent operations on htmlText? While the style attributes themselves are well represented in the array, the character offsets of runs don't seem to be present, so I'm unclear as to what this should be used for. Any insight into either of these would be appreciated - TIA... -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Systems Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web ambassa...@fourthworld.comhttp://www.FourthWorld.com ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Two features I don't understand
On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 3:32 PM, Alex Tweedly a...@tweedly.net wrote: If I could remember well enough how to find things on Nabble or Gmane, I'd just point to the original thread - but since I can't and am in a hurry - here's a message I sent to this list on 12/05/2013. There are *very* few sites who can search themselves as well as google. So search for caching id site:nabble.com or whathaveyou. (actually, I tend to use -site:nabble.com when searching for answers,as it usually only gives me parasitic duplicates of the original thread.) -- Dr. Richard E. Hawkins, Esq. (702) 508-8462 ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Two features I don't understand
On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 9:48 PM, Richard Gaskin ambassa...@fourthworld.com wrote: Rightly so, according to the inventor of the LiveCode engine: Dr. Raney once explained to me that the purpose of htmlText is to provide an easily-manipulatable way to faithfully reproduce the entire contents and styles within a field or chunk. Anything less is indeed a bug report. :) I like the idea of using arrays to manipulate field contents, but alas we have so much missing from the the styledText representation at the moment. so does styledText even have a purpose any more? Should it be treated as deprecated? -- Dr. Richard E. Hawkins, Esq. (702) 508-8462 ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Two features I don't understand
My guess would be data grids and anything using behaviors. Bob S On Oct 30, 2014, at 21:04 , Richard Gaskin ambassa...@fourthworld.commailto:ambassa...@fourthworld.com wrote: What I find most remarkable is the way your benchmark makes the value of this ID caching seem rather trivial. I trust this was a one-liner, as I can't imagine them spending much time optimizing something so very specialized and which takes so little execution time per iteration. I wonder what prompted this one...perhaps something specific to the coding style of the person who wrote the Project Browser? -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Systems Software Design and Development for Desktop, Mobile, and Web ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Two features I don't understand
The improved field control of LC 5.4 and 6.0 and up has been extremely useful to me. I use StyledText Array in much the same way as Trevor -- applying format changes. And metadata attached to field chunks is a great feature that's very useful for educational content creators. Overall, the field control of LC is far more powerful than the fields offered in Director and Flash (and probably other tools), so there are competitive reasons to maintain and promote these features in LC. Once RunRev finishes modernizing the audio-visual player controls across platforms, LC will be an excellent multimedia authoring tool. Tom Bodine -- View this message in context: http://runtime-revolution.278305.n4.nabble.com/Two-features-I-don-t-understand-tp4685202p4685237.html Sent from the Revolution - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Two features I don't understand
On 31/10/2014 04:04, Richard Gaskin wrote: Alex Tweedly wrote: H - I said this once before :-) :-) My apologies for the inconvenience. I'd either missed it before or completely forgot about it, but the latter seems unlikely given how remarkable the post was: Oh Richard - I even threw in 2 smiley faces so you would *know* I was teasing you :-) in 5.5.3 name takes 830 ms while id takes only 250 ms but in 6.0 (i.e. with id caching) name takes 830 ms while id takes 5 ms -- Alex. What I find most remarkable is the way your benchmark makes the value of this ID caching seem rather trivial. I trust this was a one-liner, as I can't imagine them spending much time optimizing something so very specialized and which takes so little execution time per iteration. I wonder what prompted this one...perhaps something specific to the coding style of the person who wrote the Project Browser? It is a trivial example - but the speed-up of 50X seems significant. It's not just *the* most recent ID that is cached (at least according to a simple-minded test I did - see the original thread for details). It does appear that it speeds up access to a number of cached IDs. So if you had a lot of controls (Datagrid ??) and were doing something to them multiple times (scrolling?, fading in/out, ...) then maybe it would be noticeable, if not actually significant. Anyway - this is one way to test it - whether or not you find it useful. Probably worth adding it to the compare-engine-versions benchmark; I'll do that once a framework / sample of that happens. --Alex. ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Two features I don't understand
Dr. Hawkins wrote: so does styledText even have a purpose any more? Should it be treated as deprecated? It seems it serves a very different purpose than htmlText. It's a new addition and folks find it useful, so I wouldn't expect it to be deprecated. Trevor DeVore wroteL I use styled text all of the time in my text editors and exporters. Mainly for modifying runs of text and for converting text to other formats. Two examples: ... Good stuff - thanks for that, Trevor. I figured it was useful, I just needed to see how. Ali Lloyd wrote: Regarding id caching, I had an idea that one might be able to use it to emulate the performance gain of a 'repeat for each...' style structure on controls. Referencing a control by number or name will iterate through the controls of the card until it gets to the specified one. Thus a loop of the form repeat with x = 1 to the number of controls of this card // do something with control x end repeat could in theory be speed up by using repeat for each line tId in the controlIDs of this card // do something with control id tID end repeat However I haven't yet tried to measure any actual performance difference, and I think it would only be faster if there were a large number of controls. Alex's test suggests it needs a very large number of controls or a very high number of iterations, but being a performance fiend I certainly don't mind any optimizations that offer a speed boost, even a minor one. I can appreciate why this is limited to IDs, because they're seldom modified, but since I so rarely use them I have to ask: has the team considered caching other control references, perhaps purging the cache when the control's name or number is modified? Tom Bodine wrote: Overall, the field control of LC is far more powerful than the fields offered in Director and Flash (and probably other tools), so there are competitive reasons to maintain and promote these features in LC. Amen to that, brother. Hardly a week goes by that I don't hear, Wow - you can do that in LiveCode? Cool! -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Systems Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web ambassa...@fourthworld.comhttp://www.FourthWorld.com ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Two features I don't understand
On 30 Oct 2014, at 18:36, Richard Gaskin ambassa...@fourthworld.com wrote: 2. StyledText array Pages 16-18 of the v5.5.4 Release Notes: http://downloads.livecode.com/livecode/5_5_4/LiveCodeNotes-5_5_4.pdf Anyone here use this? Is it faster than doing equivalent operations on htmlText? While the style attributes themselves are well represented in the array, the character offsets of runs don't seem to be present, so I'm unclear as to what this should be used for. The array returned by the styledText property is as close to the field’s internal representation as its possible to get in script. Internally, the field is structured somewhat like this(*): - Field - Paragraph 1 - Run 1 - Run 2 - Paragraph 2 and the styledText property is that structure in array form. (A “run” in this case is a block of text sharing the same styling attributes). It is also possible to set properties at the paragraph and field levels so these are also exported in the styledText. The offsets aren’t stored because they are redundant with the contents of the array - Run 2 comes after Run 1 (and Paragraph 2 comes after Paragraph 1). Storing them would cause problems when the contents of any of the runs are updated. In terms of comparisons with htmlText, styledText is more “raw” - far closer to the field’s internal representation than HTML. Because of this, it is easier for the field to process than HTML (especially as HTML has to be parsed while the array is already structured). Looking at it from the other side, an array is generally easier to manipulate compared to parsing HTML in your scripts. There are definitely some very heavy users of the styledText in the LiveCode community; I know because the refactoring work for 7 broke it at various times during the DP process… (*) the field is vastly more complicated than this diagram. For example, there are “lines” and “segments” used internally between paragraphs and runs in order to keep the code remotely manageable. It is by far the most complicated control in the engine and that was before adding support for things like bi-directional text input… the humble LiveCode field is actually not all that different from the insides of a word processor. Fraser ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Two features I don't understand
Alex Tweedly wrote: On 31/10/2014 04:04, Richard Gaskin wrote: What I find most remarkable is the way your benchmark makes the value of this ID caching seem rather trivial. ... It is a trivial example - but the speed-up of 50X seems significant. In relative terms it certainly seems so, but in absolute time just how much is being saved? That is, what is the time required to resolve an object ID without caching? This reminds me of a test I ran yesterday on a different issue, similar only in that whether or not it's a valuable thing to do may differ depending on whether you're looking at total-time or time-per-iteration: I was measuring how much overhead is involved in making a call to a function relative to performing the same code in-line. The total time saved was 15.897949 ms, which seems a worthy number until we consider that it was running for 100,000 iterations. In a single iteration it was only saving 0.000159 ms, which for the purposes of the test made it clear that the performance penalty of factoring large handlers is probably not worth the time we spend trying to wrap our head around really long complex handlers. With ID caching we have a nuance that further qualifies its value: it's very specific, caching only ID references but not the more commonly-used forms like names or, as often used in loops, ordinal numbers. That said, I tend to be somewhat obsessive about performance because I see every nanosecond saved as a penny in a bank account; over time I can save up enough to have some milliseconds free to spend on new features like real-time display updates or background processing. So I'm always grateful for anything that boosts performance in the engine, even those that may seem small, since over the long run everything adds up. Probably worth adding it to the compare-engine-versions benchmark; I'll do that once a framework / sample of that happens. I hope we can get that project going. It'll be very helpful for many purposes. -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Systems Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web ambassa...@fourthworld.comhttp://www.FourthWorld.com ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Two features I don't understand
Always valuable to read your words here, Fraser. Meeting you was one of the key highlights for me at the conference. You wrote: Internally, the field is structured somewhat like this(*): - Field - Paragraph 1 - Run 1 - Run 2 - Paragraph 2 and the styledText property is that structure in array form. (A “run” in this case is a block of text sharing the same styling attributes). It is also possible to set properties at the paragraph and field levels so these are also exported in the styledText. The offsets aren’t stored because they are redundant with the contents of the array - Run 2 comes after Run 1 (and Paragraph 2 comes after Paragraph 1). Storing them would cause problems when the contents of any of the runs are updated. ... (*) the field is vastly more complicated than this diagram. For example, there are “lines” and “segments” used internally between paragraphs and runs in order to keep the code remotely manageable. This is one of the things that had eluded me about this feature originally: I had been looking at StyledText as a means of setting attributes, very useful for setting at the field or paragraph level, but without offsets not so much for making a single word within a paragraph bold, for example. But I see now that most folks are using it as read-only, for exporters. I can definitely see very high value in that - in fact, I'm tempted now to rewrite some exporters I have to make use of this over htmlText as I had been using. It is by far the most complicated control in the engine and that was before adding support for things like bi-directional text input… the humble LiveCode field is actually not all that different from the insides of a word processor. Agreed. I think Kevin was being modest: http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-livecode/2012-February/168802.html In terms of the full scope of features a true word processor needs to compete against Microsoft I think he has a good point there, but in the broader view of being able to craft very specialized word processing tools I think LiveCode is perhaps the most capable development option on the planet. This is good to know: In terms of comparisons with htmlText, styledText is more “raw” - far closer to the field’s internal representation than HTML. Because of this, it is easier for the field to process than HTML (especially as HTML has to be parsed while the array is already structured). Looking at it from the other side, an array is generally easier to manipulate compared to parsing HTML in your scripts. Thanks for your input, Fraser. And thanks to Trevor, Tom, and the others who've provided good examples of styledText in use. -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Systems Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web ambassa...@fourthworld.comhttp://www.FourthWorld.com ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Two features I don't understand
That settles it. Richard Gaskin is an Alien Android!! Bob S On Oct 31, 2014, at 10:40 , Richard Gaskin ambassa...@fourthworld.commailto:ambassa...@fourthworld.com wrote: That said, I tend to be somewhat obsessive about performance because I see every nanosecond saved as a penny in a bank account; over time I can save up enough to have some milliseconds free to spend on new features like real-time display updates or background processing. So I'm always grateful for anything that boosts performance in the engine, even those that may seem small, since over the long run everything adds up. ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Two features I don't understand
1. ID caching Page 10 of the v6.0 Release Notes: http://downloads.livecode.com/livecode/6_0_0/LiveCodeNotes-6_0_0.pdf The description there says: The engine now caches lookups of control references of the form “card id ...” and “control id ...”. This speeds up any access using those forms after the first time, turning an operation that would be completed in linear time into one that will be completed in constant time. What does that mean in practical terms? How can I benchmark the benefit of this new feature? 2. StyledText array Pages 16-18 of the v5.5.4 Release Notes: http://downloads.livecode.com/livecode/5_5_4/LiveCodeNotes-5_5_4.pdf Anyone here use this? Is it faster than doing equivalent operations on htmlText? While the style attributes themselves are well represented in the array, the character offsets of runs don't seem to be present, so I'm unclear as to what this should be used for. Any insight into either of these would be appreciated - TIA... -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Systems Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web ambassa...@fourthworld.comhttp://www.FourthWorld.com ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Two features I don't understand
I use the styled arrays quite often when creating content, applying styles and taking advantage of the metadata. I can’t comment on the speed. I have a tendency to think in terms of arrays so this is pretty comfortable for me. I did a lot of work using space above and below and was really bummed when pageranges did not take them into account. (a bug report exists for this.) I guess I should look and see if 7.0 addressed that issue. Rather than including char offsets for runs in the array itself, I think it might be more useful to have an easy way to get from a char offset to the pgh_number/run_number within the styled array. Another thing to look at in 7.0. -= Mike On Oct 30, 2014, at 2:36 PM, Richard Gaskin ambassa...@fourthworld.com wrote: 1. ID caching Page 10 of the v6.0 Release Notes: http://downloads.livecode.com/livecode/6_0_0/LiveCodeNotes-6_0_0.pdf The description there says: The engine now caches lookups of control references of the form “card id ...” and “control id ...”. This speeds up any access using those forms after the first time, turning an operation that would be completed in linear time into one that will be completed in constant time. What does that mean in practical terms? How can I benchmark the benefit of this new feature? 2. StyledText array Pages 16-18 of the v5.5.4 Release Notes: http://downloads.livecode.com/livecode/5_5_4/LiveCodeNotes-5_5_4.pdf Anyone here use this? Is it faster than doing equivalent operations on htmlText? While the style attributes themselves are well represented in the array, the character offsets of runs don't seem to be present, so I'm unclear as to what this should be used for. Any insight into either of these would be appreciated - TIA... -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Systems Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web ambassa...@fourthworld.comhttp://www.FourthWorld.com ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Two features I don't understand
On 30/10/2014 18:36, Richard Gaskin wrote: 1. ID caching Page 10 of the v6.0 Release Notes: http://downloads.livecode.com/livecode/6_0_0/LiveCodeNotes-6_0_0.pdf The description there says: The engine now caches lookups of control references of the form “card id ...” and “control id ...”. This speeds up any access using those forms after the first time, turning an operation that would be completed in linear time into one that will be completed in constant time. What does that mean in practical terms? How can I benchmark the benefit of this new feature? H - I said this once before :-) :-) If I could remember well enough how to find things on Nabble or Gmane, I'd just point to the original thread - but since I can't and am in a hurry - here's a message I sent to this list on 12/05/2013. Yes, here's an example. The clue (I think) is in the linear time...into constant time Create a large-ish number of controls - in this stack I cloned a button 1000 times, calling them BBB1 BBB2 BBB1000 Then this code accesses a single control many times - and shows that accessing by id is much faster than accessing by name, but more importantly here, that in 6.0 access by id to the most recently accessed control is very fast. in 5.5.3 name takes 830 ms while id takes only 250 ms but in 6.0 (i.e. with id caching) name takes 830 ms while id takes 5 ms -- Alex. global K on mouseUp put 1000 into K put the millisecs into t1 put BBB(K-10) into tName repeat 1 times put the short name of control tName into t end repeat put the millisecs-t1 t CR after msg put the millisecs into t1 put the id of button tName into tID repeat 1 times put the short name of control id tID into t end repeat put the millisecs-t1 t CR after msg end mouseUp On 11/05/2013 03:11, Richard Gaskin wrote: The Release Notes for v6 include: ID caching (6.0 DP 2) New global property – allowDatagramBroadcasts (6.0 DP 2) A new global property allowDatagramBroadcasts has been added. This needs to be set to true before sending to a broadcast address (enables the per-socket flag for whether they are allowed). The engine now caches lookups of control references of the form “card id ...” and “control id ...”. This speeds up any access using those forms after the first time, turning an operation that would be completed in linear time into one that will be completed in constant time. I'm not clear on the syntax, so I've been unable to benchmark the performance boost. Anyone here have a sample of ID caching in action? -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/FourthWorldSys ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Two features I don't understand
Michael Doub wrote: I use the styled arrays quite often when creating content, applying styles and taking advantage of the metadata. Thanks. I still don't understand how I might use it, but I'm glad someone's using it. RunRev don't generally spend time on a feature unless there's either a lot of people asking for it or it's something they need themselves. Since AFAIK no one's ever asked for this it seems an internal need, but the examples in the Dictionary are a bit weak, simply using it to copy formatted content but nothing more interesting than that. If RunRev needed this themselves, they've done a good job of concealing why. :) Copying styled text works great with htmlText. Rather than including char offsets for runs in the array itself, I think it might be more useful to have an easy way to get from a char offset to the pgh_number/run_number within the styled array. Another thing to look at in 7.0. Yes, when I first heard about StyledText I had imagined it would have elements like that, which would make it much more interesting (or at least understandable) for me. -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Systems Software Design and Development for Desktop, Mobile, and Web ambassa...@fourthworld.comhttp://www.FourthWorld.com ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Two features I don't understand
Alex Tweedly wrote: On 30/10/2014 18:36, Richard Gaskin wrote: 1. ID caching Page 10 of the v6.0 Release Notes: http://downloads.livecode.com/livecode/6_0_0/LiveCodeNotes-6_0_0.pdf The description there says: The engine now caches lookups of control references of the form “card id ...” and “control id ...”. This speeds up any access using those forms after the first time, turning an operation that would be completed in linear time into one that will be completed in constant time. What does that mean in practical terms? How can I benchmark the benefit of this new feature? H - I said this once before :-) :-) My apologies for the inconvenience. I'd either missed it before or completely forgot about it, but the latter seems unlikely given how remarkable the post was: Yes, here's an example. The clue (I think) is in the linear time...into constant time Create a large-ish number of controls - in this stack I cloned a button 1000 times, calling them BBB1 BBB2 BBB1000 Then this code accesses a single control many times - and shows that accessing by id is much faster than accessing by name, but more importantly here, that in 6.0 access by id to the most recently accessed control is very fast. in 5.5.3 name takes 830 ms while id takes only 250 ms but in 6.0 (i.e. with id caching) name takes 830 ms while id takes 5 ms -- Alex. global K on mouseUp put 1000 into K put the millisecs into t1 put BBB(K-10) into tName repeat 1 times put the short name of control tName into t end repeat put the millisecs-t1 t CR after msg put the millisecs into t1 put the id of button tName into tID repeat 1 times put the short name of control id tID into t end repeat put the millisecs-t1 t CR after msg end mouseUp What I find most remarkable is the way your benchmark makes the value of this ID caching seem rather trivial. I trust this was a one-liner, as I can't imagine them spending much time optimizing something so very specialized and which takes so little execution time per iteration. I wonder what prompted this one...perhaps something specific to the coding style of the person who wrote the Project Browser? -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Systems Software Design and Development for Desktop, Mobile, and Web ambassa...@fourthworld.comhttp://www.FourthWorld.com ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Two features I don't understand
On 31 Oct 2014, at 2:55 pm, Richard Gaskin ambassa...@fourthworld.com wrote: If RunRev needed this themselves, they've done a good job of concealing why. :) Copying styled text works great with htmlText. Richard if you remember originally styledText supported a few things that htmlText didn't and people complained so they upgraded htmlText so I think the original plan was to introduce a way to work with the new field features and that may have become somewhat redundant after the update to htmlText. I think it also mirrors more closely the data structures used in the engine and therefore be a bit quicker to get and set. Cheers -- M E R Goulding Software development services Bespoke application development for vertical markets mergExt - There's an external for that! ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
Re: Two features I don't understand
Monte Goulding wrote: On 31 Oct 2014, at 2:55 pm, Richard Gaskin wrote: If RunRev needed this themselves, they've done a good job of concealing why. :) Copying styled text works great with htmlText. Richard if you remember originally styledText supported a few things that htmlText didn't and people complained... Rightly so, according to the inventor of the LiveCode engine: Dr. Raney once explained to me that the purpose of htmlText is to provide an easily-manipulatable way to faithfully reproduce the entire contents and styles within a field or chunk. Anything less is indeed a bug report. :) I like the idea of using arrays to manipulate field contents, but alas we have so much missing from the the styledText representation at the moment. -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Systems Software Design and Development for Desktop, Mobile, and Web ambassa...@fourthworld.comhttp://www.FourthWorld.com ___ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
