Database Encryption

[Scott Raney]

On Sat, 04 Jan 2003 Ruslan Zasukhin <sunshine at public.kherson.ua> wrote:

> Then I still think that Okay, you can return UNIX paths on default.,
> But will be good for MC developers if you will give them built-in methods to
> convert them into MAC and windows native paths.

It's not a problem on Windows, you just need to change the / to a \.
A conversion from MacOS X native paths to old MacOS-format paths would
be trivial to script: if the path starts with "/Volumes/", just delete
that part.  If it doesn't, put the first line of the list returned by
"the drives" before the path.

> This DO NOT make any problems for development of cross-platform code.
> As you know REALbasic, Director, Java, C++ all they perfectly work in
> cross-platform way with Valentina, and again, developers do not have
> problems with conversion of paths as you think, because paths self come from
> system's Open Dialog.

The problem being that paths *don't* always come from the Open dialog,
in which case the way those other products handle paths are a pain in
the ass because you have to handle each platform separately.

> And ONLY Metacard developers, as far as I see, have headache with conversion
> of paths...at least if they work with Valentina.

Correct.  Which is fine because the number of them doing
Mac/Windows/UNIX work *without* having to write special code to handle
the differences is vastly larger than the number using Valentina where
you *do* have to handle paths differently (assuming of course that you
don't modernize Valentina, at least on OS X, to use native paths
instead of the old style).

> >> I have see that you try work around this to convert manually Unix paths to
> >> Mac OS paths. But this not works on my computer.
> > 
> > You shouldn't ever need to do this.
> 
> Scott, this is not correct.
> 
> All other products (C++, REALbasic, Director) work in this way.
> And Valentina kernel also work in this way:
>     native path for each platform.
> 
> Only MetaCard habe its own special way...

Because only MetaCard allows access to, e.g., the file /etc/password
so that you can determine what users are configured on the current
system.  You have to go and buy an external package to do this with
these other products, which IMHO is an inferior architecture.  There
are many other similar system files that people need access to.  Same
situation exists with the shell() function, which you would have to
translate everything with if the engine used those old-style paths.

> >> And Scott, again, I believe this is NOT correct, that MC 2.4.2 which is
> >> CARBON, returns UNIX paths. It must return MacOS paths from Choose dialog.
> > 
> > It can't do that and then use UNIX paths for everything else...
> 
> Why MC Carbon can't return native MacOS paths ???

It does: what you're confused about is what "native" means.  Those old
things that start with a drive name and are delimited with colons are
obsolete MacOS 7/8/9 format paths.  The way of the future is UNIX paths.
  Regards,
    Scott

> -- 
> Best regards,
> Ruslan Zasukhin      [ I feel the need...the need for speed ]
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> e-mail: ruslan at paradigmasoft.com
> web: http://www.paradigmasoft.com
> 
> To subscribe to the Valentina mail list
> send a letter to valentina-on at lists.macserve.net
> -------------------------------------------------------------

********************************************************
Scott Raney  raney at metacard.com  http://www.metacard.com
MetaCard: You know, there's an easier way to do that...