Graham, > Ken, could you possibly put this in context for us Mac-oriented > types? My problem is how to understand how to arrange the > installation of a standalone based on these principles. I mean, in > the Mac, the file association is picked up by the OS as soon as the > an associated file is double-clicked by the user - as far as I > remember there is no installation process as such. Therefore the > first invocation of a standalone in a new Mac is exactly like all > subsequent invocations. > > In the PC, it looks as if you need to go through an installation > process which does the kind of thing you have described, but that > this needs to happen only once, on first running the app. > Subsequently the register will already be set in that particular > machine and will not have to be set again unless some un-install > process has been carried out... or do I misunderstand the whole idea? > Is it mandatory to run an actual installer to install a Windows app? > Do different flavours of the OS need different flavours of installer? > Pardon my ignorance, but I am still lurking here, not having really > taken off into Revo development yet, and coming from a Mac/SuperCard > background.
On the Mac (at least in OS 9), applications have type and creator codes that are part of their resource fork that identify documents by type and creator code. When an app is copied to a disk, the system extracts those type/creator associations and inserts them into the desktop database so that when you 2x-click a file, the desktop database retrieves the app that it belongs to and launches the app. Occasionally the desktop database is messed up, and 2x-clicking a file does *not* launch the app. The instructions are then to "rebuild the desktop", which goes through all the apps on the drive(s) and rebuilds those associations in the desktop database. In Windows, files/apps don't have a separate resource fork, so files are associated with apps through extensions. If you can imagine the Windows Registry as the equivalent of the Mac's desktop database, it becomes a little clearer. When a file is 2x-clicked, its extension is looked up in the Registry and if found, there is a pointer to the location on the disk where the host application resides. That app then is launched. So in order to get this association, SOMEBODY needs to be write this information to the Registry: this is the domain of the installer application. The installer writes these Registry entries as it is installing the application so that documents created by the application will launch the application properly. You don't need different installers for different OSes to accommodate file associations (all Windows OSes from Windows 95 through XP use the Registry in the same way for file associations), although sometimes different installers for different OSes are created for *other* reasons (which I won't get into now). Similarly, when a program is uninstalled, it should remove its entries from the Registry, including file association entries. This is the domain of the uninstaller application. If you just delete files on disk and don't run an uninstaller, the Registry entries remain and don't get cleaned up. The good thing is that almost all the installer programs out there for Windows give the option of automatically creating an uninstaller as well. So the basic rules are these: 1) If an app has *no* documents, you don't need to make any file associations, and can simply copy the app to the user's hard disk. 2) If an app *has* documents, you need to make the file association tweaks in the Registry - generally done by an installer. 3) You don't need a special installer for each OS to make these Registry changes - one installer will do. 4) If you include an installer, make sure you include an uninstaller as well. Hope this helps, Ken Ray Sons of Thunder Software Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web Site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/ _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
