kee nethery wrote:
Wonder if it would make sense for the runrev team to translate that
specific HC stack (assuming they are using the one that was provided by
Apple) and to build a hypercard based exporter/importer (in case they
added some fields or buttons to the Apple stack). She could run the
exporter and have it dump the data to a text file, and then the runrev
equivalent could import that text file and add additional buttons or
fields as needed. Just a thought.
Good thought, but probably not workable, unfortunately. The problem
isn't really the objects or the data, both of which convert very well
automatically. The native importer that already exists does a fantastic
job, it is really quite impressive.
What generally needs tweaking is almost always script-related. The most
common things that need human attention include:
1. Menus. HyperCard menus are scripted. Rev menus are objects. Menu
handlers must be rewritten manually and a menubar has to be created and
assigned. I suppose some kind of conversion could be done automatically
but it would be very difficult, as scripters tend to write their HC menu
scripts in all sorts of different ways (and HC allows several alternate
kinds of syntax.)
2. Calls to XCMDs/XFCNs. These don't generally convert over, so
externals are omitted from the import. In most cases HC externals can be
scripted using native Rev commands and no externals are needed at all.
Because there are thousands of HC externals in use, automatic scripts
are impossible. Calls to externals always throw errors. The most common
trouble-making external is AddColor. All addColor calls have to be
replaced by Rev color scripting, and/or all stack objects have to be
recolored using native Rev color properties.
3. Unquoted literals. HC allows them, Rev usually doesn't. The only
solution is to go through the scripts, find the literals, and add quote
marks around them. Again, not easily done via an auto-converter because
it is impossible to tell which words are intended as literals and which
are intended to be variable names. (Unquoted literals are very poor
programming technique, but unfortunately they are common in HC stacks.
HC was pretty lax about it.)
4. Rev keywords used as variable names. Again, probably impossible to
automate. Rev has three or four times as many keywords as HC, and in
addition, HC allows its own keywords to be used as variable names. It is
common to see syntax like:
put the name of this cd into name
put the short date into date
This causes Rev to complain, but HC allows it. Only a human can figure
out which words in a script should be variables and which are language
keywords. Those that should be variables need to be changed in every
instance throughout the stack.
There are a few other things the seize up too, but in general I think
all the automatic stuff has already been addressed very well and what is
left needs to be looked at by a human.
--
Jacqueline Landman Gay | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com
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