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Let's learn to write programs with LiveCode
Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2021 12:08 pm
by richmond62
This series of posts is based on a number of presuppositions:
1. You have never done any computer programming before.
[Or, if you have, you did not really understand what was going on]
2. Your teacher has installed LiveCode on your computer so that when you start it up it
up it looks something like this:
[I am using LiveCode 9.6.x on Macintosh, but most of the time everything will look very much
the same as on Windows or Linux]
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Re: Let's learn to write programs with LiveCode
Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2021 12:13 pm
by richmond62
Let's get started by using the
Menu to make a "new stack":
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This 'stack' is really like a bit of paper on which we can draw things we want for our programming.
Why a window is called a 'stack' is interesting, but is not very important at the moment.
When it becomes important we'll explain why it is called a 'stack'.
We can make it bigger if we want to by dragging the window bigger with the mouse from the
bottom right corner.
Re: Let's learn to write programs with LiveCode
Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2021 12:16 pm
by richmond62
If we now look at the TOOLS on the left of our window we will see that there
are lots of things we can put on our window to help us with our program:
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Re: Let's learn to write programs with LiveCode
Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2021 12:21 pm
by richmond62
We are going to start by looking at
BUTTONS and
FIELDS:
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Re: Let's learn to write programs with LiveCode
Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2021 12:29 pm
by richmond62
Let's put a
BUTTON on our window by DRAGGING one from the TOOLS:
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Now, let's put a
FIELD on our window by DRAGGING one from the TOOLS:
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Re: Let's learn to write programs with LiveCode
Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2021 12:35 pm
by richmond62
We can use a
BUTTON to TELL the computer to DO things:
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- SShot 2021-10-23 at 14.31.59.png (13.66 KiB) Viewed 6093 times
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TELLING a computer to DO something is called
INPUT
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And we can use a
FIELD for the computer to TELL us things:
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- SShot 2021-10-23 at 14.32.18.png (11 KiB) Viewed 6093 times
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When a computer TELLS us something, that is called
OUTPUT
Re: Let's learn to write programs with LiveCode
Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2021 2:19 pm
by richmond62
Let's get the
BUTTON to ASK for some INFORMATION from US:
The FIRST thing we do is find the
SCRIPT EDITOR to enter some
CODE:
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NORMALLY we use a
BUTTON to get INFORMATION when we CLICK a computer mouse:
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Re: Let's learn to write programs with LiveCode
Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2021 2:27 pm
by richmond62
When we have typed some
CODE into a
SCRIPT EDITOR we need to
APPLY it:
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NOW it is important that the INFORMATION a computer gets goes somewhere so we can see it.
SO it is important that we give our
FIELD where we want our INFORMATION to go a NAME:
We need to open the
PROPERTY INSPECTOR of our
FIELD:
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Re: Let's learn to write programs with LiveCode
Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2021 2:38 pm
by richmond62
Here we can change the
NAME of our
FIELD to something that makes sense to us:
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- c9.jpg (17.02 KiB) Viewed 6064 times
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This also makes things easy when we want to send INFORMATION there:
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HOWEVER, ALL we have done so far is
INPUT some INFORMATION and told the computer to
OUTPUT
it again WITHOUT doing any
OPERATIONS.
Re: Let's learn to write programs with LiveCode
Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2021 2:45 pm
by richmond62
We can see this if we CLICK on the
PLAY button on the
TOOLS bar:
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Re: Let's learn to write programs with LiveCode
Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2021 2:46 pm
by richmond62
Re: Let's learn to write programs with LiveCode
Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2021 2:55 pm
by richmond62
SO: LET'S try an
OPERATION with the INFORMATION we have TOLD the computer:
BEFORE we do that we should
NAME our work and
SAVE it:
WE need to open the PROPERTY INSPECTOR of our work:
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And
NAME our work to something that makes sense to us:
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- c17.jpg (12.97 KiB) Viewed 6050 times
Re: Let's learn to write programs with LiveCode
Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2021 2:57 pm
by richmond62
And then
SAVE our work:
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Re: Let's learn to write programs with LiveCode
Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2021 3:54 pm
by richmond62
Now, let's
CHANGE the
CODE in the
BUTTON:
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And we will see that our
OUTPUT has been changed:
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Re: Let's learn to write programs with LiveCode
Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2021 3:59 pm
by richmond62
NOW, let's
CHANGE our
CODE so the
OUTPUT is a bit easier to understand:
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