Where goes stacks, included stacks and externals? (was Dialogs inlibrary organization)

J. Landman Gay jacque at hyperactivesw.com
Thu Feb 5 22:19:11 EST 2004


On 2/5/04 5:52 PM, Dar Scott wrote:

> On Thursday, February 5, 2004, at 04:14 PM, J. Landman Gay wrote:

>> I don't think there is an official established procedure, but I'd put 
>> all my library stacks together in one folder. When it was loading 
>> time, I'd set the directory to that folder and start using them.
> 
> Do you start using everything in the folder or do you use a list?  Do 
> you generate the list by hand?

Well, again, I don't really work this way much so it has never been an 
issue. I tend to embed everything as backscripts, or at the most, I have 
one external library. Even then, I tend to want to make the stack 
library into a substack just to make sure it is always available.

But see below. When I start using a library depends a lot on how much 
and when I need to use it.

>> There is another, perhaps more efficient, way to use libraries though, 
>> and it is the way used by Revolution itself. Store the libraries as 
>> button scripts somewhere (in a substack, or a card you never go to, or 
>> even just invisible on a card somewhere) and insert the scripts into 
>> the back as necessary.
> 
> Won't this run into the ten backscript limit?

Yes. I have never needed very many backscripts though. I'm curious what 
you might build where you'd need so many. Since I don't work that way 
I'm having trouble picturing a reason to. Most of my stuff is so 
customized that I rarely need a lot of generic libraries.

> Suppose a library supplier wants to encrypt the library?

Good point. I guess in that case you'd need a substack or an external stack.

> What's a good way to insert these?  Explicitly at preOpenStack?

I usually do it then, or on openstack, or else just before I need to use 
the library. I had a project that worked with XML a lot, and I started 
using a library on preOpenStack because I knew it would be in constant 
use. I had another project where I only needed a library in one 
particular handler, which might or might not ever run, so in that case I 
checked the stacks in use at the top of the handler; if it wasn't in 
use, I started using it.

> I guess this would not apply to libraries needing menu or dialog substacks.

True.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com


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