externalPackages

Richard Gaskin ambassador at fourthworld.com
Wed Aug 13 16:02:24 EDT 2014


JB wrote:
> Since you come from a SuperCard background could
> you answer a question for me?
>
> I am a registered owner of SuperCard 4.6 and SuperEdit 4.6.
> The Xtend section allows you to export externals.  I contacted
> SuperCard Support and they said I could use the SuperCard
> externals in other programs that use externals as long as I
> abide by the EULA.  That is not a problem.
>
> I exported a external and tried to use it in Revolution and could
> not get it to work.  The next thing I was going to try is to make a
> empty external for LiveCode naming it the same as the external
> I want to use and from SuperCard install it into the resource by
> changing the type from .bundle to .txt and then change the type
> back to .bundle.  I have done that without making the empty
> external so I have not actually tried it yet.  Is that the proper
> way to install a SuperCard external in Rev or is it not possible
> at all to use them in Rev?

I'm very familiar with SC externals indeed: I started Fourth World in 
1994 primarily as a vendor of SuperCard add-ons, with a catalog of 
externals written by myself and many others, including one of the 
current co-owners of SC, Mark Lucas.

Even back in those days, not all externals could be used across the 
various apps that supported the HyperCard externals interface.   The 
SuperCard Internals Toolbox, for example, included many APIs not found 
in HyperCard, so many of the best SC externals couldn't run in HC (or 
OMO, or Microphone, or any of the other apps that supported the original 
HC externals interface).

The migration from 68x to PPC compounded the compatibility issue, as has 
the move from PPC to Intel.  Today, even SC itself can only run a subset 
of all the externals ever written for it; I don't think anything I'd 
ever published can be run with SC today.

With LC, the externals API is very different, so even if you had an 
Intel-compatible external and only needed to run it on Mac, it would 
still need to be recompiled to use the LiveCode externals APIs.

Fortunately, at least for the work I do, aside from the database 
externals included with LC I rarely use any at all.  Most of the things 
I'd written externals for in SC are included in LiveCode itself.

Which externals from Xtend do you need?

I'll bet there are LiveCode equivalents for most of them, or easily 
written using LiveCode itself.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
  Follow me on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/FourthWorldSys




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