Can Anyone Give Me A Clue

[Jeanne A. E. DeVoto]

At 8:06 AM -0700 5/23/2002, Rob Cozens wrote:
>One further clue to pass on:
>
>Avoid working with multiple stacks with the same name in the same session:
>
>It's taken me a while to get used to the fact that Revolution focuses
>on a stack's name property, not it's system file name.  So "My Stack
>A.rev" and "My Stack A.rev.bu" or "My Stack A.rev copy" are the same
>stack to the RunRev engine.  This can introduce uncertainties,
>especially if one gets in the habit (I'm weaning myself) of using the
>Open Recent Stack menuItem.  In the above scenario, "My Stack A.rev"
>could refer to any of the three stacks.  In fact, it will pick the
>last of the three to be opened.

It's a little different (or at least, the way I think of it is a little
different, and may be helpful):  Revolution can have only one stack of a
given name in memory at a time. If you try to open a second stack with the
same stack name, it will complain and ask which one you want to have open.

So when you save the stack, it saves the one that's open - which may or may
not be the last version you double-clicked, depending on what you answered
to the Save/Purge/Cancel dialog. Only one can be open at a time, and which
one depends on what you've done in ways that may not be obvious.

This has been a source of some confusion for me, and if your work habits
are to use Save As to make frequent backups (and to routinely revert to a
backup during the same session), it increases the possibility of confusion.
So what I've ended up doing is:
- Backing up by going out to the Finder and using Duplicate to make a copy
- Quitting and starting a new session if I need to re-open a backup
- Paying close attention to the "Save" screen where it says what file it's
saving
- If necessary, checking "the long name of this stack" in the message box
to see which file the stack I'm looking at is in.

------

I don't think this situation is ideal by any means, but it's what we have
for the moment, so more precise awareness of exactly what's happening when
you open/reopen stacks with the same name may help people avoid the
pitfalls.

--
Jeanne A. E. DeVoto ~ jeanne at runrev.com
Runtime Revolution Limited - The Solution for Software Development
http://www.runrev.com/