Help with save as or new using standalones

Jim Bufalini jim at visitrieve.com
Wed Mar 10 07:51:17 EST 2010


Bill Ziegler wrote:

> I've created some programs for students with disabilities. At first I
> circulated them with the the Mac and Pc players. It was easy to script
> a 'New' that copied the stack and cleared all text and audioClips. The
> 'Save as' made a  copied of the stack. Both renamed the new stack.
> Schools with pc's need them to run from the startup menu since the
> students can't drag them onto the player. I made them standalones but
> now I don't know the proper way or logic or even an intelligent way to
> ask the question of duplicating them. The Mac version is in a package,
> the pc is in a folder with an externals folder, the slpashstack and
> the real stack. I need to keep the audio in the stacks to make it
> easier for students to transport their work from home to school and
> back. Would I use the copyFolder command and save it to the same level/
> folder as the original? I have them on my On-Rev Server website at
> www.billziegler.com
>   . The two I'm having trouble with, when turned into standalones, are
> the "ReportCards MacPC" and "Just Say It".
> 
> I couldn't find anything in the archives. If there is an old post or a
> tutorial in detail I could start with that.
> 
> Thanks in advanced

I am not sure I clearly understand the issue and I am sure I do not know the
environment of your students or how you normally distribute your software
(Do teachers just download the zips you have on your site? What do they do
with these zips? Do they know how to unzip? Etc.). 

However, assuming that the issue involves running on PCs and further
assuming you are looking for a single click way to launch your programs,
there are a few things you can do:

1. The normal way to distribute a program to PCs is build a standalone in
Rev and then you use a third party "installer" to install on other PCs. An
installer is itself an EXE that contains your standalone EXE, as well as any
other directories and files your standalone EXE needs to run. The installer
EXE is downloaded by the end user and, when run, it places your standalone
EXE, along with its directories and files, into the Program Files directory
of the PC and creates a shortcut to your program in the Startup Menu, and
optionally on the desktop and/or Taskbar.

If you look up *PC installer* in the mail archives you will find a LOT of
information on different installers people use and how to use them. Other
things you can do:

2. First. Take the spaces out of your program names! I downloaded your *Just
My Type MacPc beta1b.zip* and unzipped it. Using this as an example, please
rename *Just My Type MacPc beta v1c.rev* to something like *
Just_My_Type_MacPc_beta_v1c.rev* or *JustMyTypeMacPcBetav1c.rev*.

Now, you seem to imply that your teachers/students already have *Revolution
Player.exe* and are able to launch this but that the problem is that they
cannot "drag" your rev program into the player. If this is the case, then
you can simply have them place your *JustMyTypeMacPcBetav1c.rev* into the
same folder as the player. Now you create a shortcut to *Revolution
Player.exe* Rename this shortcut to *Just My Type MacPc beta v1c* (yes, you
can leave the spaces in the name of the shortcut). Edit the properties of
the shortcut and in the General tab where it says Target: "C:\...Revolution
Player.exe" add a space after the last quote and
*JustMyTypeMacPcBetav1c.rev* (without the asterisks, of course, and no
quotes).

This shortcut can now be placed on the desktop or the Start Menu folder and
clicking on it will launch the player and the player will automatically load
and launch your rev stack (provided it has no spaces in the stack file
name). If the players are all located in the same directory on all machines,
you can pre-build this shortcut and distribute it with your zip.

3. Lastly (and this may be the easiest for you and so I saved it for
last;-), there are some free programs that will "install" a zip file on a
PC. One is called ZipInstaller and available from
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/zipinst.html. 

In this case, you can create a standalone EXE with Rev and place the
directories and files exactly like you want them and just zip it. Then tell
your users to download this zip and also the zipinst.exe, which you can put
on your site and make available for free download.

They run zipinst and point it at your zip, that they just downloaded, and
this program will unzip your zip and install your standalone EXE in the
Program Files directory of a PC, create shortcuts to your program in the
Start Programs folder, and optionally on the desktop and taskbar, and even
creates an uninstall program to remove your program from the PC, should the
user so desire. Once installed, they can now just click on your program name
from the Start Menu and optionally desktop or Taskbar.

I hope this all helps.

Aloha from Hawaii,

Jim Bufalini




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