Some Basic Misunderstandings/Problems with RunRev - aka Help!

[David Burgun]

Hi,

I've seen that I can save it as a text file but this seems like a lot 
of work and for reasons explained below I don't think that this is 
the best way to do it (unless I have no alternative). I have really 
large number of controls and need to save the state of all of them. 
This is not just "Preferences" this is the whole of the GUI for a 
large application.

For instance, just one of main windows has seven panes (or tabs) and 
each one of these has 3 or 4 object groups with upwards of 20 
controls in each group.

I don't want to save any "User Data" (e.g. names, addresses etc. etc. 
etc.), just the controls that act on the data. The data is obtained 
from an external source (usually an XML file) and the results of 
processing that data as per the current state of the controls is 
exported back to an XML file. The data itself is never shown to the 
user of this App!

>Oh, c'mon, don't panic, it is even REALLY HARDER to do so with other tools!
>The most ugly way i've ever seen, was offered (?) by MM 
>"Director"... Brrrrrrr ;-)

Well I wouldn't use MM director either if it were difficult to save 
the state a Checkbox!

>>Why doesn't the documentation say anything about this?

I mean that if you look up the "save" command it makes no mention 
that you can't save a stack if it's a Standalone. In fact I've found 
the dictionary good for checking the syntax of a command/message but 
absolutely useless for putting the command/message into context.

>OK, you can loop through all your (necessary) controls and put them
>PLUS their values into a list, which you can then save as a text file...
>
>Or do it manually, if you only have a couple of controls:
>
>...
>put "Name of checkbox 1" & TAB & the hilite of btn "Name of checkbox 
>1" & CR after myprefs
>put "Name of checkbox 2" & TAB & the hilite of btn "Name of checkbox 
>2" & CR after myprefs
>etc...
>delete char -1 of myprefs ## get rid of last CR
>put mylist into ... see below

But there are literally thousands of controls! Do I have to loop 
through all of them? What if I change the GUI to add or remove an 
item? Surely I'd have to keep changing the save/restore code! Seems 
very error prone to me!

>And here is the advice WHERE to store your bloody prefs :-D
>
>http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-revolution/2003-December/026781.html
>
>Then on "openstack" or whenever you can read in that list, if 
>present and act accordingly...
>
>XXX -> see above
>...
>if there is a file XXX then
>     put url XXX  into mylist
>     set the itemdel to TAB
>    ## we saved the list as a tab delimited list...
>    repeat for each line l in mylist
>         set the hilite of btn (item 1 of l) to (item 2 of l)
>    end repeat
>end if

I found this already, but as I said this isn't preference data, this 
is normal GUI data. I do have a preferences panel and this refers to 
the preferences of the app, the rest of the (large number) of 
stacks/cards/controls refer to preferences on how to process the data 
from the XML file(s).

Not sure what is the best thing to do now.
All the Best
Dave