Problems using Dreamcard

[Alex Tweedly]

Jim Lyons wrote:

> In earlier messages of this thread, I described the problems I had 
> when I just copied the Dreamcard application out of my Rev 2.5 folder 
> onto a CD with a stack and copied them to a friend's Mac. Thanks to 
> help from the list, I found the problems were caused by not 
> "installing" Dreamcard and the resources it needs to work. When I 
> downloaded and installed the trial version of Rev 2.5 to my friend's 
> machine and opened the stack with the included player, the earlier 
> problems were gone.
>
> So I left the stack (a membership directory) with my friend to work on 
> using her newly installed Dreamcard player. Besides problems printing 
> (subject for another thread), in turns out that my Save command was 
> not actually working! She put in quite a bit of work before realizing 
> this, unfortunately. Of course, I had tested saving with my menu 
> command, but running in the IDE. Now that I test it with my Dreamcard 
> player, I discover it doesn't work.
>
> My menu command is:  save stack "Directory" as the filename of this stack
>
> Again, this functions correctly in the IDE, but not under Dreamcard. 
> Could "this stack" be different in the player? That would be a rude 
> shock. Am I making bad assumptions about using the player? And I ask 
> again, are there any rules, tips, warnings, guidelines, for designing 
> stacks to be used with Dreamcard anywhere? Thanks for any help.

Two possibilities :

1. Make sure the Player is not in "secure" mode (which prevents it from 
writing files or accessing the network).
[    Click on the Rev icon at top right, and set the checkbox for "Run 
in non-secure mode"  ]

2. There is a bug (Bugzilla 2294) by which stacks run in Dreamcard 
Player do not have a "home" directory, so expressions such as
   the filename of this stack
do not produce the correct answer.

(I've worked around this by (once only) asking the using to specify the 
folder they wish to use, and storing this in a preferences file; if I 
find a prefs file and it specifies a data folder, then there's no need 
to ask again. Code something like

>   if lPrefsFileName is empty then
>     if the platform is "Win32" then
>       put specialfolderPath(baseconvert("0x001c", 16, 10)) into tFolder
>     else
>       put specialFolderPath("Preferences") into tFolder
>     end if  

etc.

As far as I know, the only *expected* difference between the player and 
regular environment is the issue of secure mode - it's only bugs that 
make them different.  This is the only major one I know of - but there 
could be others. It would be nice to search by component in Bugzilla, 
but unfortunately there is bug 2140 - Need to have a Bugzilla component 
for "Dreamcard Player"

I've just had a quick look through the bugs which mention Dreamcard or 
Player, and while I might have missed some, I don't see anything else 
likely to cause different behaviour between the same stack in Player vs Rev.

-- 
Alex Tweedly         www.tweedly.net





-- 
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.8.6 - Release Date: 07/02/2005