Newbie

[Ken Norris]

Dottore,

Howdy from Friday Harbor, Washington (the state),

> From: dottorzivago at fastwebnet.it
> Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2003 21:56:52 +0200
> Subject: Newbie

----------snip
> I am in love now with  a beautiful Ibook, after many years with Windows
> (which I still use on work).
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iBooks are great. I want a new one myself (Is my jealousy showing?)/
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> Unfortunately my knowledge of MAC is so so and my knowledge of
> Revolution is 0 (perhaps 1...)
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Good things come in time.
----------snip
> Since I have read that built applications cannot be modified, I have
> built an application with only stack A (startup screen) that opens
> stack B (not in the application); stack B contains all the fields,
> grouped as background (name, address, date of birth, etc...), of the
> database plus some buttons (next, prev, new, list)  A button on stack B
> could, for instance, save and close stack B. So I can save all the
> records of my database and find them relaunching the application.
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Well, that will ceratinly work, but now your startup stack can't easily be
modified.
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> Not sure if I understand you well: can I make a main stack with a
> substack, tell the distribution builder to make substack in separate
> files and when the application is built  can I  create and save new
> records?
----------
That's essentially true. You're not really doing anything wrong, it's just
easier to keep everything in modifiable forms until you're ready to build
distribution. It's a faster, more convenient way of developing. Then when
you're finally ready, the distribution manager will make your substacks into
files for you.

I've been playing with having my GUI in the main stack as standalone, which
will help keep the user out of it until I'm ready to come out with the next
version. That means I can have the splash to initialize stuff, then throw it
offscreen to keep everything open, the UI in the unmodifiable main, and the
data, images, and preferences in files. The main can be a palette that stays
open with buttons, index lists called from one of the data stacks, menus,
etc. It can open a data stack which appears in a window as a group of fields
on cards. 

This way, I can keep records in records, and lots of rewriteable data files.
all controlled from a protected UI.

There are reasons for such a method, but there are also reasons for making a
highly modifiable UI as well , which requires a different method and
philosophy.

HTH,
Ken N.