Stack name conflicts resolved?

[Richard Gaskin]

I've grown weary of stack name conflict over the years, and this morning 
decided to take some time to assess where we're really at with that and 
see if perhaps there's a way to handle things more liberally than how 
the IDE does now.

TL/DR version:  It seems there's actually no real problem at all.

Long version:


Setup
-----
I checked revfrontscriptlibrary and found that preOpenStack calls 
revIDEHandleNewStack, which resides in revbackscriptlibrary.

In that handler I found this line #3199, which I commented out:

   revCheckStackCollision tStackName

That handler is apparently the one that compares the stacks in the stack 
file being opened against a list of stacks already open, and if any 
stack of the same name is found it brings up the stack name conflict 
warning.

After commenting it out I made two stacks:

mainstack:  tA
  substack:  foo

mainstack   tB
  substack:  foo

On each mainstack is a button with:

   on mouseUp
      toplevel "foo"
   end mouseUp

Each foo substack contains an object to distinguish the stacks from one 
another, so I can tell which foo stack is which at a glance.

With that prep out of the way, I began my experiment:


Experiment 1
------------
I started a fresh session in LC, and opened tA.

Then I opened tB.

And since I'd commented out revCheckStackCollision, no warning was 
presented.

So then in stack tA I clicked the button, and it opened the foo substack 
belonging to it.

Then I clicked the button in stack tB, and it opened the foo substack 
belonging to it.


Experiment 2
------------
I created a third stack file, and added a button with the same script as 
above.

When clicked, it opens the foo window belonging to the stack file which 
had been opened first.



Results
-------
It would appear that the resolution of substack names follows a logical 
path that looks for matching stacks in this order:

1. Within the same stack file as the script referring to it.

2. Within another stack file, in the order in which they were opened 
during the session.

This seems more or less what I've been hoping to find for years:
http://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1061

Unless there's something here that I've missed, it would appear that 
stack name resolution is nearly as logical and useful across stack files 
as icon ID resolution.

And just as we don't need to go through contortions to ensure that every 
icon ID is unique across all stacks, as long as we remember the 
resolution rule we can safely use stacks of the same name within the 
current session.

That is, once we modify the IDE to allow it.

Is there something I've missed here?

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com