On Thu, 18 May 2000, Richard Gaskin wrote:
> On 5/18/00 4:00 AM, Kevin Miller at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> > On 18/5/00 1:12 am, Scott Raney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> >>>> We considered this, but rejected it because I've seen many stacks that
> >>>> change the current directory to select different sets of images or
> >>>> movies (e.g., to support multiple languages), something that wouldn't
> >>>> work if you hard-wired the image/player paths to be relative to the
> >>>> stack path. This isn't an issue with stackFiles AFAIK, probably
> >>>> because using separate *stacks* for the different languages isn't a
> >>>> good design. Any other suggestions?
> >>>
> >>> I get it. I do have another suggestion: search the directory first as is
> >>> done now. If (and only if) that results in file not found, search relative
> >>> to the current stack?
> >>
> >> Sounds kind of unreliable to me. Sure it may be unlikely, but what if
> >> the current directory happens to have a file of the same name as some
> >> media file you're trying to access in the folder where your stack is?
> >> You might get the wrong image displayed, or worse, it would display
> >> the right image in your development environment and then fail later on
> >> in the distributed version because that image really *isn't* in the
> >> folder with the stack like you thought it was...
> >
> > An alternative might be an object property useDirectory or similar that
> > defaulted to the current behaviour but could be turned off? Or perhaps this
> > should be a global property? (I'm sure someone could think of a better name
> > for it anyway.)
>
> I probbly won't get any points here by using HTML as a baseline, but
> whenever we think about storing media separately from the document at least
> it makes a familiar model:
>
> In HTML, the default behavior is to have media reference partial paths
> relative to the document making the reference. There is an option which
> allows one to specify a different base path, kinda like the directory
> property, but this is an option which must be explicitely set up by the
> user.
Right, and it's specific to a document rather than global like the
directory. The equivalent would probably be a stack property.
> I don't have a strong argument for the technical merits of such an approach,
> but I would suggest that the model would be immediately graspable to users.
Me too. And it'd be relatively safe, both WRT predictability and
backward compatibility: If the stack property is set, it would use
that, otherwise it would use the current directory. Any suggestions
for the name of the property?
Regards,
Scott
> --
> Richard Gaskin
> Fourth World
> Multimedia Design and Development for Mac, Windows, UNIX, and the Web
> _____________________________________________________________________
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com
> Tel: 323-225-3717 ICQ#60248349 Fax: 323-225-0716
>
>
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Scott Raney [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.metacard.com
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