Problems with externals API

[Jim Ault]

On 1/24/07 9:46 PM, "Richard Gaskin" <ambassador at fourthworld.com> wrote:
> 
> I've been reading the thread "Problem with altBrowser", and it got me
> thinking:  Why do we have this silly mess with files in the first place?
> 
It gives true professionals an advantage over psuedo-programmers like me.

In the old days I used good ol' ResCopy to put the externals (Rinaldi, et
al) into the resource fork of a Hypercard stack, and it ends up one stack
file. Apple's file structure has both a resource and data fork.  Moving
files to another operating system will delete the resource fork (where the
icons, dialogs, strings, XCMDs, XCFNs  and many other essentials are
stored.)

How can you tell...
Are the externals in the right place?
Are they loaded?  and when?
Where are they in the message path?
Why aren't they copied to standalones?
How can you tell if things are right... or what's wrong?

Is there a utility that will tell what is wrong when something is wrong?
... like "hey, dummy, you need to put the external here <..>" with "OK" or
"Huh?"


> Can we imagine a world in which externals are copied directly into a
> stack, even those for multiple platforms, and they get loaded and used,
> like the old XCMDs?
> 
> Then can we build it?
Well, I can't.

Jim Ault
Las Vegas
Just good at throwing stones.