External Editor . . . on and on

[Richmond]

On 10/22/2013 09:35 AM, Richmond wrote:
> Digging around in "Metacard 4.5" I found the hopelessly
> outdated "Dialog Box Help" and under "Script Editor" this:
>
> 'If you want to run that external editor directly, bypassing
> MetaCard's script editor, choose the menu item "Set External Editor"
> from the Tools menu in the MetaCard menu bar.'
>
> And, naive as ever, I started getting all excited; but 'twas not to 
> be, as,
> on going to the 'Tools' menu "Set External Editor" was not to be seen.
>
> I asked a fairly direct question relating to this the other day, and as
> somebody else pointed out as well, have not had even a twitch of an 
> answer.
>
> When I get home (I'm at work right now) I'll check whether that menu 
> item existed in
> MC 2.4 as the original download link for that now seems to have vanished.
>
> Richmond.

Arriving home, as one does, after a long day at the chalk-face (err . . 
. plastic sheet on wall with
washable board markers), and two glasses of good, therapeutic red wine 
later, I turn on my G3, slot-loading,
iMac, lately returned to Mac OS 9.2.2 after many years sterling service 
in my school running Mac OS 10.4.11.

Crack open Metacard 2.4.1, get a new Mainstack going, and, 
'whaddayeknow?' as coarse types from the
really cheap imported-from-the-US TV prole-fodder of my teenage years 
(1974-1980; an all time low in
WASP culture all round quite frankly) used to say ("Alias Smith and 
Jones"; probably couldn't do much worse than that for a subversive 
influence on a teenager from Scotland stuck in some upper-class English 
boarding school where he did, definitely, not fit - remember when Pete 
Duel shot himself and was replaced by Roger Davis - carp from there on); 
well, fans, enough of the social commentary, and the 1970s come to think 
of things; they only good thing, for me at least, that came out of that 
was Fortran 4 and BASIC. Gosh that red wine is EFFECTIVE.

Anyway: Metacard 2.4.1 on Mac OS 9.22; crack open the 'Script Debugger' 
(note that in the apres la deluge version de Runtime Revolution ["apres 
Kevin" ??? sans accents, excusez-moi] that is 'now' (4.5) 'Script Profiler')
and 'Set External Editor' is absolutely NOWHERE to be seen.

Ugh; too many questions arise at this point:

1. Was the 'Set External Editor' thing only available in some of the 
other OSes than Mac Classic?

2. Was the 'Set External Editor' something inserted by Jacque, Klaus or 
Richard sans le mort du Metacard as
an independent life-form?

3, 4. 5, 6  anybody really motivated, or, possibly on wine-glass #3 and 
#4 (I'm only on #2), can fill those
ones in; they should be fairly obvious without labouring the point too much.

Generally, when Richmond (and, Hey, if this guy is writing about himself 
from an external, third-person viewpoint it's ................) really 
means something, and tries to get something more than a laconic answer
(check 'laconic' in your dictionaries; it's not my problem that my 
vocabulary is vastly more extensive that yours) from folks on the 
use-list, the best way is for him to get tiddley (not drunk!) and write 
a suitably rambling, eccentric posting to annoy people enough that, in 
spite of themselves, they feel they have to respond.

Years ago I remember listening, in Scotland, to a really great guy 
calling himself "Hank Wangford" (I kid you
not"

[ http://www.hankwangford.co.uk/ ]

and he had a programme called "In Search of the Lonesome Yodel" . . . a 
laugh a minute!

Anyway, consider that Richmand is in search of the shy external script 
editor that lurketh somewhere in the history of Metacard, which, in 
itself, is a sort of shadow of Livecode's history.

Ooh, and "while I'm here", I see thgat hank Wangford is President of the 
Nude Mountaineering Society; now
you cannot go better than that as a source of inspiration to find where 
the code (!!!!!!) for leveraging
an External Script Editor lurketh is the long, convoluted history of the 
MetaCard IDE.

Richmond.