On Wed, 1 Sep 1999 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I am slightly anxious about getting the new list address right...apologies
> if this ends up somewhere it shouldn't.
>
> I am using MC 2.2 on Mac and the same(ish?) on Windows.
You should check to make sure you've got 2.2.5 on both...
> I recently wrote to Kevin Miller of Cross Worlds Computing to congratulate
> him on the paper on stack files available on their site. I also slipped in a
> question re standalones and saving modifications to stacks/files. Part of
> his answer was as follows:
>
> <<If you need to save data, get round this by creating the standalone with
> just the splash screen, and having that stack load the next stack which is
> stored in another file. You can use relative paths in the stackFiles
> property - the starting directory will be the one the standalone started
> from.>>
>
> Very helpful advice, but after playing with the idea I became confused.
> Rather than pester the man again, I thought I would try the list.
>
> I created a standalone that did nothing but open a stack (a stack that was
> not a stack within the standalone). It did, and didn't seem to be doing this
> with the aid of MC itself. So was the stack sort of working on its own? Or
> was it using the standalone as a player (a la HC player)?
When you build a standalone, the engine and the stack are bound
together into a single file. It can still open other stacks while its
running. But note that if you doubleClick on a stack, it may start up
some engine other than the one in your standalone.
> It seemed the stack was using the standalone as a player, but then I tried
> double clicking on the stack and got a similar result (ie no MC and no
> standalone open at the time). I tried to see if everything worked under both
> conditions (although uneasily aware that they may not in fact be two
> conditions). *Almost* everything worked, except a script that allows a user
> to create a new a 'set' generated by combining items from several other
> 'sets'. They are invited to name the new set (field) which is created
> invisibly and the name of which appears in a list of available sets. If they
> later want to refer to and use the new set, they click on the name in the
> list and ....well you know the rest. It works fine in development. Aha!
> thought I, maybe it needs the ask/answer resources. I imported them into the
> stack, an nothing happened. I imported them into the stack that became the
> standalone, then generated a new standalone from it. No joy.
Are your scripts using ask or answer to build up these lists, or some
other stack of yours as a dialog? If the former, what you did should
allow it to work. If the latter, you'll need to either make the
stacks you open as dialogs substacks of your main stack, or set the
stackFiles property of your mainStack so that the engine will know
where to find that other stack.
> I can't even say for sure how many questions this is. Answers to any that
> can be discerned would be welcome.
A couple of things to keep in mind:
1) mctools.mc is loaded if you double-click on a stack to open it (at
least it is if it can be found), so there is no need to use the
resource mover to move the ask or answer or other dialogs if this is
how you'll be starting up your stacks.
2) all the messages send to stacks you open pass through the stack
script of the main stack in the standalone. Be sure you don't put
handlers in there that assume that the target is that main stack.
Regards,
Scott
> Best wishes,
>
> Dvaid Glasgow
>
********************************************************
Scott Raney [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.metacard.com
MetaCard: You know, there's an easier way to do that...
