Rev's Portability

[Jim Ault]

I think you need to look at several solutions to the cross platform issues,
as well as your pendrive solution.   I believe you are booting from the
pendrive, which will not work in any of my needs.  My programs need to run
while other native programs run (Excel, FoxPro, Stata, Entourage, Photoshop,
Timbuktu, and many more).  This means that Linux is not an option for me.

Yes, path names is one of the issues, but is easily handled.  Almost all of
my Rev stacks and apps are meant to run cross-platform (Win, Mac, but not
Linux)

Here are two examples

function keyFolder
  --where the app or stack is located
  put the filename of this stack into keyPathh
  set the itemdel to "/"
  put item 1 to -2 of keyPathh &"/" into keyPathh
  return keyPathh
end keyFolder

function keyFolder2
  --other than the location of the app or stack
  switch the platform
  case "win32"
    put "c:/KEYFOLDER/" into pathh
    break
  case "MacOS"
    put specialfolderpath("desktop") into pathh
    replace "desktop" with "Documents/KEYFOLDER/" in pathh
  end switch
  return keyPathh
end keyFolder2

Jim Ault
Las Vegas


On 12/28/06 3:54 AM, "Robert John Warren" <bobwarren at howsoft.com> wrote:

> One of Rev's great characteristics is its portability. A Rev standalone
> doesn't need a setup. If you create an app in Windows, you can easily
> load up the same project in Macintosh, create a new standalone, and
> provided no adjustments to the handling of the file system are needed,
> the app will run just as well on Mac as it does on Windows. Great!
> 
> But, to use a phrase I know Dan loves, there is a fly in the ointment.
> The Windows file system is different to the Macintosh file system is
> different to the Linux file system is different to the ..... So if your
> app makes heavy use of the file system, to run it anywhere, you either
> have to make it detect and adjust to the specific operating system it is
> running on, or you have to produce different versions of the app for use
> on different operating systems. Damn!
> 
> Please correct me if I am wrong. One very easy way around this problem
> is to use Linux. And only Linux. You don't need to install Linux on your
> HD, or Rev/Linux for that matter. Get yourself a pendrive. If you want
> to, you can get one with Linux (e.g. Mandriva) already installed on it.
> Personally, I prefer to install my own version of Puppy Linux on the
> pendrive. It is so easy that even I can do it very quickly with no
> hassle at all. Just follow the simple instructions at the Puppy site. So
> now you can carry the operating system, Rev/Linux and your apps around
> in your pocket. And you really do only have to create a single version
> of your app. By this method, Rev is not "cross-platform", it is the
> operating system itself which is "cross-computer"!
> 
> Strangely, a great number of quite modern computers cannot be booted
> directly from the USB device. In practice, though, this problem is very
> small. In Puppy, it takes about 1 minute to produce a fat16 diskette for
> Windows. Use this to boot your pendrive. In other pre-prepared systems
> (e.g. Mandriva) you can create a CD to do the boot (possibly for
> Macintosh too, I can't quite remember).
> 
> For further info you might like to visit http://www.pendrivelinux.com/
> 
> Regards to all,
> Bob Warren
> 
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