Newbie Questions

[Sarah Reichelt]

Welcome to the Revolution, Jonathan :-) And please don;t apologize for
asking questions. I think a lot of people are too nervous to ask, so
it is great when someone like you actually does. The information will
be of use to a lot more than just you.

>         My name is Jonathan Scott.  I was using SuperCard for quite a
> while.  Hypercard before that.  I recently moved over to RunRev.  I'm
> sorry to bug you with simple stuff, but I don't seem to be able to
> find the answers on my own.
>         I have a stack that is supposed to write out text files.  When I use
> the normal file writing procedure (as shown below):
>
> open file thisfile for write
> write thisstuff to file thisfile
> close file thisfile
>
>         I can get the files to show up, but they don't appear immediately.
> Even if I reboot the computer, the files won't show up.  The only way
> to get them to show up is to do a search of my hard drive for the
> file name and then, the computer will tell me about them.

I have had this happen sometimes when writing files to the Desktop.
Unfortunately, I think it is Tiger's fault, not something that Rev can
fix. Leopard is supposed to be much better at keeping the Finder
display current.

>         So, I switched to the put thisstuff into URL "file:thisfile"
> method.  And that works a whole lot better.

Yes, and it's much easier to write. I never use the other method any more.

>         Here's the problem though: I can't get either of these methods to
> work in a standalone.  When I save the stacks out as a standalone, no
> files ever get written, no matter what I do.

This is odd. If you were not using local files, I would think that the
URL library was getting left out of your standalone, but I don't think
that matters for just writing to your own drives. Put a check after
the line that saves the data and see what "the result" is set to. If
there is a problem, "the result" should tell you what it is.

> Next problem:
>
>         send "mouseUp" to bg btn "Bob" doesn't work for me at all when I put
> it in the openstack handler.
>         I researched it out on the net, and they said that this was a
> problem with the preferences file getting corrupted.  The suggested
> advice was to throw away the preferences file.  I did this, but, it
> still didn't work.  It goes without saying that it was also
> unsuccessful in a standalone.

Unless you have opened a HyperCard stack in Rev, you don't need to
specify "bg" or "cd" for any object. If you opened an HC stack
directly, then the global property HCaddressing will be set to true
and then you do specify cd or bg, but usually, you won't.

So maybe the problem is that the button is not being found. Do you get
an error or does nothing happen at all? Try adding another command
like a beep to the openStack handler to make sure it is actually being
called.

HTH,
Sarah