Three topics combined - Hiding Transcript, Writing to Stacks, App Packages

[Barry Levine]

I've been following the above-mentioned three topics and wanted to ask 
for advice concerning the following thoughts:

1. I want to keep people from reading the Transcript code I write in my 
stacks.

2. I will want to have the ability to save data to stacks. I know I 
should have the "standalone" engine in a "splash" stack and then the 
rest of the stacks may have the data they contain saved 
programmatically.

3. It appears that placing my stacks (and, indeed, all other resources 
such as sounds, pictures, etc.) within the ".app" package is a 
reasonable means to distribute a commercial application. I am thinking 
of  the ease of installation - "Drag the program icon from the CD to 
your hard disk" (or something along those lines).

I examined a standalone (package) I recently created (in v2.0.1) and I 
can't seem to find my Transcript code contained anywhere within it. I'm 
thinking that I misinterpreted the thrust of the thread and that folks 
were referring to the separate stacks the app might use.

So the answers would be (and I ask for commentary where appropriate):

1. To keep the Transcript in my stack unreadable, I simply "set the 
password of this stack to [myPassword]" from the message box. (When I 
dropped the now-password-protected stack on TextEdit, the Transcript 
did appear unrecognizeable.)

2. The separate stacks that the app will use, now password-protected, 
will still work within my app. The Help docs say "If you want to set a 
password for stacks before you release them, the recommended method is 
to set the password in the Distribution Builder when you package the 
final application for distribution." Is this the "Encrypt with 
password" checkbox? If so, it seems to apply to all stacks in the 
Distribution. So is would seem that I should NOT do what I mentioned in 
the previous paragraph; rather, add in all of my stacks to the 
Distribution builder window and then set the Encryption password there. 
If I am right, then password-protected copies of the original stacks 
will be deposited in the Distribution folder (leaving the originals 
un-protected in their original locations). Please comment on this.

3. There was some discussion of the proper procedure of including 
everything within the ".app" package. Is there a formal document on 
this process including how one might need to modify the pathnames in 
referenced images, sounds, etc.?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Barry