Anyone care about stack size?

[Richard Gaskin]

Brian Yennie wrote:

> I'm curious, how many of you consider stack size a major concern?
> I was playing around the other day, and realized there is a pretty
> simple way to shrink your stacks permanently:
> 
> 1) Create an invisible, empty stack, "Wrapper"
> 
> Do this:
> set the stackData of stack "Wrapper" to compress(stack "SomeStack")
> set the visible of stack "Wrapper to false
> 
> Then add a script like this to "Wrapper":
> on openStack
> go stack (uncompress(the stackData of this stack))
> close stack "Wrapper"
> end openStack
> 
> Voila! Save the wrapper to disk and it made my 900k stack shrink to
> about 300k, and it still opens in virtually the same amount of time. Of
> course if I want to make changes, I would need to make the changes and
> re-stuff the stack into the user property.
> 
> Obviously most files are compressed anyway when they are distributed,
> but in this case they remain compressed on disk regardless.
> 
> It seems that one could write a plugin which cloned itself, prompted
> the user to pick an open stack, and then created a new, wrapped and
> compressed stack which could then be built into a standalone, etc.
> 
> Personally, I'm not working on anything where file size matters, but
> does it to others?

Before DMGs came along I had considered a similar scheme as an installer
(and toy with the idea of pursuing it still to avoid the annoyances of RPMs
on Linux).  In this scheme the standalone drving the installer is also the
standalone driving the app -- it merely behaves differently after it's bee
copied to its destination folder and its parts decompressed into a
Components folder.

Like I have time. :)

If some wants to build such a creature I'd be happy to explore ways we might
build a way to call it from the Standalone Maker.

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
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