This is a cross-post from Direct-L. My apologies if that offends.
Hello, everyone. I have an important series of questions regarding the
distribution of proprietary Lingo "libraries".
I'll use the term "library" loosely (because I am aware of the fact that a
Director Library is defined as an external cast that resides in the "Libs"
folder of a Director installation, and whose cast members can be accessed
via the Library palette). In my case, I'm talking about an external cast
containing nothing but parent scripts -- nothing that can be dragged to the
score or dropped on a sprite. This external cast is meant only to be linked
to by another movie, and then accessed via the API exposed by creating a
specific child object.
The Lingo in this external cast is proprietary, and took many man-months to
engineer. The intellectual property embodied by this work holds great value
for the creators, and they trust it will hold great value for its licensees.
As such, it needs to be protected.
Simple enough, you say! Just run the .cst through "Update Movies," and use
the "Protect" or "Convert to Shockwave Movie(s)" action. You end up with a
.cxt or .cct in which the textural representation of the Lingo is stripped
out.
Now comes my series of questions:
1) Is this enough protection? Meaning, is the readable Lingo in a .cxt or
.cct completely, and forever, inaccessible?
2) Is the .cxt or .cct file usable as a linkable external cast just as
easily and reliably as an unprotected .cst file? Are there any technical
"gotchas" here?
3) How about in authoring mode? You can still view the members of a linked
protected/compressed external cast while authoring, and you can bring up
blank script editor windows for the scripts in that cast. You can also type
into those blank editor windows and effectively replace the scripts for
those members, possibly rendering the entire external cast useless. Are
authoring mode edits of protected/compressed external cast members nothing
more than a support issue, or is there something else that can be done to
prevent this from happening altogether?
4) Could someone please characterize for me the opinions of the
"middle-user" community regarding protected casts? Are they generally
well-received, or frowned upon?
5) Could someone please characterize for me how a protected external cast
rates against an Xtra with identical functionality? When used within the
environs of Shockwave, isn't an externally linked cast easier to deal with
for the end user than an Xtra which must be downloaded through a secure
certificate? Or is that a false perception?
6) If the "product" (as an external cast) is just as much a demonstration of
the capabilities of Lingo to implement an open standard as it is to provide
functionality for the end-user, are there still strong arguments for
implementing the functionality as an Xtra?
Thank you in advance for your input. I'm looking forward to the responses.
Christopher Watson
Sr. Software Engineer
Lightspan, Inc.
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