Hard CASE: cracking the nut?

[Marty Knapp]

OK, I think I have this worked out. I spread my scripts around (reminded 
me of my HyperCard days and running into the 32k script limit!) and got 
everything below the 10 statement limit and it seems to be working now.

Thanks,
Marty
> Marty Knapp wrote:
>> What I have is a standalone that contains template stacks from which 
>> a user creates their own stacks. These stacks are saved outside of 
>> the standalone. I wanted to institute an updating feature, where the 
>> user's stack version is compared to the template (which may have had 
>> revisions from being updated) on launch and if needed to have the 
>> standalone copy the scripts from the template into the user stack, 
>> rather than making them create a new stack. But if any of these 
>> scripts exceed the 10 statement limit it will not work. So I stripped 
>> the template stack of as much code as I could, which also minimizes 
>> the need for updating in the first place :)
>>
>> But this user stack needs access to the standalone stacks and scripts 
>> to function properly, so now I've found that if the user launches the 
>> standalone by double-clicking their stack, that once in a while the 
>> stacks/scripts it needs are not available and I get errors when the 
>> user stack loads. Not always, but probably 1 in 10 times. I've tried 
>> a number of routines to check for this, but these routines need to be 
>> in the user stack and I run into the 10 statement limit . . .
>>
>> I hope that's understandable!
>
> Only sort of, I'm still a little confused. But basically when I have a 
> system with templates, I put almost nothing in the template except 
> very generic handler calls. I put all the actual, working handlers in 
> the app's script, where I can change them without updating the templates.
>
> I'm not sure why your templates need to contain any updating code. 
> They should just call a handler like "checkUpdates", which the main 
> stack executes. It can then act on any stacks it needs to change (with 
> the exception of long scripts, but if you use the generic approach to 
> handlers, that shouldn't be a problem.)
>
> If your users double-click a stack to launch your app, your app will 
> first get all the startup, preOpenStack, openStack etc. messages, and 
> then will open the user stack. The mainstack's script should 
> automatically be shared as a backscript, but if that isn't always 
> happening you can specifically insert it on preOpenStack. That should 
> clear up any issues your user stacks may have accessing the mainstack 
> script. Also make sure the handlers in the user stack pass any 
> necessary system messages if your mainstack needs to operate on those.
>