Q. data stacks and app design

[Ken Norris (dialup)]

on 10/3/02 8:19 PM, Alex Rice at alex at mindlube.com wrote:
 
> What is a data stack, just a hidden stack with a big Field in it?
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Hi Alex,

I'm a "newbie" too, although I've done some developing in HyperCard over the
years, and am close to releasing some adaptive/freeware for the Mac written
in HC and designed specifically for older machines.

For a number of reasons I haven't gotten into Rev's more complex UI (I'm not
a pro-programmer), but I'm redeveloping my programming philosophy to work
with it, and to include the advantages of using data stacks, even in HC.

Two main examples:

1) Feature options and preferences -- You can design your stack to add more
of these as plugins later, thus effectively updating it without rewriting
the main UI. 

2) Saved data -- You can design your stack to save data it uses to work with
separately. This way you can just back up the text, numbers, images, sounds,
or whatever, elsewhere, so if you have a crash, all your work will be safe
instead of being lost with the app.

What it means is using the basic RR/MC model. You develop a main stack and
some substacks as a UI, a front-end which is mainly just menus, button
controls, and indexes that manipulate and display stuff you store in other
stacks.

Hope this makes sense to you.

Ken N.