Issues of MC IDE version 2.6b11

[Wilhelm Sanke]

First, I assume that 2.6b11 is the latest version. At least I could not 
find a later version in the files section of the MC_IDE Yahoo group.

A number of the following issues were already discussed or mentioned in 
earlier posts of this list, but they are still relevant for 2.6b11.

1. When the MC IDE is started, stack "mctools" appears to have been be 
loaded twice. This was mentioned by Tariel Gogoberidze <tariel at mac.com> 
on Sept 1, 2005:

> Also, one kind of strange thing I just noticed in my copy of IDE.
>
> In freshly launched MC if I type in msg box "put the stacks", it puts
> mctools.mc twice


I see this this happening here, too. Maybe the double-loaded stack is 
the cause underlying the nex item:

2. Launching the IDE from a CD you get a warning "Cannot build a Plugins 
folder" - or the like. If you press the "skip" button, the same warning 
is repeated. Only after after the second "skip" the IDE is started.
Could it be that both "mctools" stacks are involved here?

And maybe we could let detect the script from where the IDE is started, 
then in case of a CD we could skip the warnings altogether.

What is the cause of the double-loaded mctools stack? I think we can 
rule out that the stack may launch itself another time (as that could 
lead to an infinite loading of mctools stacks). Has the "home" stack 
been changed or is the cause the new Metacard/Revolution engine? (for 
another engine-related bug see below).

Two minor, but somewhat annoying issues:

3. The "Find" tool comes up with "bwidth"; the "replace" tools comes up 
with "bwidth" for the find string and "4wDev" for the replace string. 
They should come up blank.

4. The Standalone Builder displays "4W WebMerge Folder/WebMerge24.mc" 
for the stack name and "/Area 51/4W/WebMerge/wm24/dev..." for the 
standalone file name. They should come up without any preset entries.

5. The Standalone Builder builds standalones according to the 
look-and-feel for  "OS native" even if "Windows 95" has been set in the 
preferences.
I noticed this when I build the splash stack for my "Colorpattern 
Toolkit" (<http://www.sanke.org/Software/PatternToolkitWin.zip>) and 
tested it with other stacks.
I tried to find out whether version 2.6 of the two embedded (in mctools) 
standalone builders was the cause, but it wasn't. Even using an older 
standalone builder (of MC 2.5) , but with the 2.6.6 engine, made no 
difference. But changing to an older engine, namely that of MC 2.5, 
produced a standalone with Windows look-and-feel even when the new 
standalone builder was being used.

Which means that the culprit must the new engine! I built a standalone 
of the same stack in the Rev IDE with "Windows emulated" checked: Same 
result, the produced standalone displays MacOS native features (like 
they appear on Windows).

6. Width of answer dialogs

Also on Sept 1 Tariel Gogoberidze  had written:

> Great, especially because I recently noticed that  in my copy of B11
> IDE answer dialog can't expand it's width dynamically more than about
> 460 pixels, trims my forth button in half.


I myself noticed that one button was cut in half in the longer dialogs 
of my Colorpattern Toolkit (when six button were displayed), but only 
when OS native was checked. With "Windows" set, all buttons appear in 
full length, but - see item above - when the standalone had been built, 
it was transformed to "OS native" and the last button cut in half.

The Revolution answer dialogs display all 6 buttons in full length 
irrespective of the chosen look-and-feel. However, I do not like the 
overall length of the Revolution dialogs.

7. The case of the "placed" answer and ask dialogs

One thread of the discussion had ended Sept 5 with statements from Scott 
Rossi and Richard Gaskin:

Scott:

> >> You can of course use the available IDE dialogs: Just add the two 
> script
> >> lines I have proposed (at the right place) to them, this is what I
> >> normally do when a new version appears.
>
> Not when I'm delivering tools to other developers, no.  I have no problem
> messing around with my own development environment but I don't want to
> modify other developers' IDEs.


and Richard:

> I'm a bit skittish about using properties -- how about a global named
> gMCAlertLoc?  When empty it uses the proposed defaults I outlined, and
> when set it becomes the default location.


I can only stress again that my proposal to add two scriptlines to the 
answer and aks dialogs is absolutely harmless, the "NewLoc" property is 
just *dormant* when not invoked and reset at once even if used. But the 
gained flexibiltiy is enormous on the other hand.

See the majority of the dialogs of the already mentioned-above 
"Colorpattern" stack.

Aren't we just discussing how to "mess around" with the IDE, to really 
improve it in such a way that "other developers" can benefit from it?

The two lines to be added are at the end of the preopenstack handlers:
 Line 1: "if the NewLoc of this stack is not empty then set the loc of 
this stack to the NewLoc of this stack"
Line 2: "set the NewLoc of this stack to empty ".

There is no need to be "skittish" here, because the two lines are 
encapsulated in a way, they do not interfere with any other parts of the 
script when no "newLoc" has been set in the calling script.-

Two issues concerning the relationship between the MC and Rev IDEs:

8. We cannot display ".rev" files in the dialog for loading stacks, we 
have to switch to "all files" to find them finally among all other file 
types in the directory. The Rev IDE displays both Metacard and Rev files 
in the open dialog.

A couple of months ago I had made such a proposal for the MC IDE and had 
shown how to script this.

9. I found out that it is impossible to build standalones from Metacard 
stacks (when maintaining their extension "mc") with the Rev standalone 
builder. Up to now I had assumed that it has something to do with 
embedded dialogs or other substacks, but that is apparently not the case.
The other way round, building standalones in the MC IDE from rev stacks 
is possible even with maintaining the extension. But when selecting the 
file in the dialog, Rev files are not displayed (see the related issue 
8. above), but you can type the stack name into the dialog, which is 
however less comfortable than selecting the file directly.---

Could these issues possibly be addressed in a next version of the MC IDE?

Best regards to all Metacardians,

Wilhelm Sanke
<http://www.sanke.org/MetaMedia>