External files in Standalones

[William Prothero]

Folks:
I’m building an app that reads a number of external data files. I’ve been trying to create a standalone and have a number of problems with the external files.

In my development area, I have a folder:

App folder which contains the .livecode app and data files. It looks like this:

myApp      
   myApp.livecode
   files
   images and icons
     
When I build the standAlone, I get a package with:

Contents
   info.plist
   MacOS
      Externals
      files
          data
              dataFolder1    —This is empty of files
              dataFolder2    —This is empty of files
              dataFolder3    —This is empty of files 
         moreData          —empty, no data
         etc    
      images and icons    —nothing in this folder
      myApp
      PkgInfo
   Resources
       _MacOS    —This has all of my data files, with correct contents
      language Folders  —I don’t need these

My question is:
Should I build the path to these files starting with “the effective path of this stack”? It would be different, depending on whether I had a standalone. Is there a specialFolderPath function that will give me the path to the original data?

Alternatively, I could create these folders in my development environment and then there would only be a single set of paths.

What are the “Best practices” regarding this? Also, do I need to include all these superfluous, empty language folders?

Best,
Bill

William A. Prothero
http://es.earthednet.org/