Re: metacard Digest, Vol 12, Issue 7
Robert Brenstein [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote, May be you should post an invitation to vote also on the Rev list since not MC users are necesserily members of this list. Yeah, like me. :) As an aside... I use MetaCard 2.5 every day at work and am still annoyed by the acquisition. I tried Rev in the past and it crashed on me while I tried to use it. A couple of weeks ago when Rev announced DreamCard, I decided to give it another shot. I downloaded DreamCard and started playing around with it. I locked it up within 5 minutes of using it. Had to force quit it. I've used MetaCard 2.5 since it was released and have never had it crash or lock up once... -- Richard MacLemale Mac Network Admin - http://homepage.mac.com/richardmaclemale Songwriter - http://www.macidol.com/jamroom/bands/999/index.php ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: metacard Digest, Vol 8, Issue 18
On 5/15/04 12:00 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That's good to know. I'd like to revise my tutorial to mention this. I just tried setting permissions for the engine in my own /cgi/ folder to 555 and it works just as well as 755. So the question is: should the directions in the tutorial just tell people to use 555, or should it say to try both and see which one works? Chomd 555 removes the ability to write to the engine, but that's not possible anyway even with 755 (except by the owner.) The only difference practically speaking is that maybe some setups require 555. Anyone have a suggestion on the best explanation for the tutorial? Heh heh. I'm still here, I just pretty much never post. 555 will work just as good as 755 for the mc engine, because as you say, you'll never have to actually write to the engine. There's only one exception I can think of, and that is if you wanted to replace the mc executable with, say, a newer one. In that case, you being the owner, you'd need it to be 755 instead of 555. That's the only reason I can think of for going 755. I just use 755 out of force of habit because in most cases I do want to be able to modify the files I own. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: PHP versus CGI
On 2/20/04 12:00 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks, that's interesting :-) I placed the files in the specified folder, according to read-me... But I have still a number of questions: - where to place the engine? - is the MC engine (which went with MC 2.5) good? - may I use this server locally? and how? I could never FIND the rev engine for darwin mc - thanks for posting the link, Jacqueline! The rev engine appears to work the exact same way the darwin mc engine works. But the engine is NOT identical... It's slightly smaller than the darwin mc engine, and looks like it has a later created date. I'd love to know what the difference is - probably not much. As far as where to place it, I opted for the traditional location for stuff... I put it in /usr/bin. On OS X, if you want to get to that folder in the Finder you have to use Go To Folder from the Go menu and type /usr/bin. From that point on, any scripts you write must begin with the header, #!/usr/bin/rev And if you plan on writing scripts using a text editor, I recommend BBEdit Lite, which can save with UNIX line breaks, which is what you need. Or you could write your own text editor in MetaCard or Revolution that saves using UNIX line breaks, I guess. :) Once you drag the rev executable to the /usr/bin folder, you need to give it the ability to run. In the command line, type sudo chmod 555 /usr/bin/rev As far as running scripts locally, you can do that. You can write any script to do anything you want, and then schedule that script to run any time you want, for example, or put it in the CGI-Executables folder and do cgi stuff with it and whatnot. There's a free program called Cronnix that is a GUI tool for setting cron jobs. That's how I schedule my server scripts to run. The other cool thing about Cronnix is that you can click on any script you've got scheduled to run and run it immediately. Actually, our district has a filemaker pro server available with all of our students in it, and I use a combination of filemaker pro and darwin mc to automatically add new students to ldap. Darwin mc scripting (and thus, rev scripting) is c-o-o-l for programming servers! -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: PHP versus CGI
Um, OUCH! There is ALREADY a file named rev in /usr/bin. So much for storing the rev runtime executable in /usr/bin under OS X. Fortunately, it appears you can just rename the rev file to something different, like runrev. It still works... There is no default file in /usr/bin named mc, however... -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Storing cgi data in stacks
I use the darwin mc engine extensively on our servers on our network. I've probably got thirty or so scripts that help me run the network, process forms, all kinds of stuff. Hypothetically speaking, say you had an html web page that sent info to a metacard cgi script, that in turn added data to a stack. MetaCard stacks can be read by more than one process at a time, but they can't be written to that way, can they? What would happen if you had two cgi scripts both writing to the same stack at the EXACT (within a thousandth of a second) same time? I'm thinking that while one script is writing to it, the other script would not have write access, but I'm running OS X Server, so maybe I'm wrong? And what if they were both writing to the same field in a stack? And, more importantly, what steps could be taken in a cgi script to make this approach work, if any? Like, if a stack was currently being written to, would darwin mc know that? Is there some message returned like stack is in use or something that you could trap for? And maybe make your own timeout? I'm starting to look at more online calendar stuff and I'm wondering if I can get away with using metacard stacks instead of learning MySQL. Stacks are, well, so much more fun to work with. I'll learn and use MySQL if I have to, but it looks like a pain in the ass compared to just making a stack. The stuff I'm looking at is for small group use - not something that's going to be hit a kabillion times from the web. Thoughts? -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Storing cgi data in stacks
Brian and Pierre and others, Thanks for the ideas and input. So here's two more questions: 1. Would everyone say that PostgreSQL is better in performance and robustness than MySQL, and 2. Is one considerably easier to learn than the other or are they both similar in that regard? -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Intelligent Agents......
I apologize in advance for the length of my post! I've been following the AI discussion with GREAT interest. I've always wanted to write some server based software using metacard that would control a simulation that teams of 8 people on separate computers on a network would interact with. AI is not necessarily mandatory but the more complex the program, the cooler the simulation would be. Specifically, this: Years ago, when I was a 5th grade teacher, we took our kids to the Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa, FL (MOSI) and they had a space ship simulator - the kids dressed up in pseudo astronaut type outfits, like flight suits, that fit on over their clothes, and then they went into this room that looked like the bridge on the Enterprise, in the sense that it had different workstations that did different things. Kids paired up and they wore headphones with microphones. Each station had a set of directions... One station operated a robotic arm that was outside the spaceship and you could see it out the window (really it was in a closet set up to look like the surface of the moon, with a robotic arm. Instead of a closet door, there was a door with a window in it, and the door was worked into the wall so that you didn't know it was a door.) Each station did something different, and all stations had controls and monitors. Over your headphones, mission control would tell you to do certain tasks, and the card instructions told you how to do them. You and your partner had to accomplish the tasks. It was AWESOME. It was also expensive. At the time, pretty much all of the stations were Apple IIGS computers. And mission control was a separate room, manned by 4 people - they'd be talking to the teams in their mics and switching between teams and they used several Macintosh computers to monitor the progress of the teams. And those 4 people had to be on their toes, obviously, because the kids would do unpredictable things - mistakes they had not anticipated. It left a huge, lasting impression on me, because it was educational and it was extremely fun! It was learning and playing and acting and just about the coolest thing I'd ever seen as a teacher. I thought about how cool it would be to be able to put something like that together, but obviously it was too expensive. Fast forward to now. For a couple of years I've thought about how cool it would be to write software that would do something similar to what MOSI had. On one level, it could be done purely as entertainment - get 6 people on six computers in one lab, get six people on six computers in another lab, and they're each on a ship. Naturally they'd do battle, hiding from each other behind planets, and whatnot. Each station would have directions, and each team would have a Captain. To be a captain, you'd need to participate in each position at least once and achieve a minimum score - the server program would track the response time and decision making of each person and assign a score for that position. The person with the highest score would be the Captain, though you could work out some other system. The server program would throw in random elements like suddenly appearing hostile ships and whatnot. This would be an OUTSTANDING project for some of our seniors to put together - writing the code, designing the stations, filming video to be triggered by the server program when a hostile ship shows up out of nowhere (You know, wearing an alien mask and screaming We will DESTROY your SHIP into the camera.) What could be more fun? OR I could see writing something more like the original MOSI simulator, and selling a kit with the software installers for Mac or Windows. That would make money but would not be as much fun. Anyway, Alain's post got me thinking of how the server software might operate... Great discussion here. I think everything I stated above could be done in MetaCard (or Revolution.) -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: An informal poll....
On 8/7/03 5:00 PM, Shari [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote, Subject: An informal poll Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] All of this talk about something working with a licensed Home stack versus as standalone make me wonder How many, who have purchased licenses, use MC/Rev to build standalones, that will be distributed to others? That was THE REASON I purchased. Instead of migrating from Hypercard to C/C++, I moved to MC. I don't create much for my own use. 99% of everything I do, is for distribution, to produce income. The rest of you? I use MetaCard in two ways - I use the darwin mc engine to do ALL of my CGI scripting at work (high school network, 2,300 users, 600 computers,) and I use MetaCard 2.5 as a swiss army knife to solve all kinds of problems... mostly rearranging data. I was looking at maybe doing some more shareware, but I lost my tech assistant to budget cuts so now I have zero free time. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: OS X Educational Shareware Market? (Curry)
On 7/17/03 12:02 PM, Curry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote, I understand. For myself, I'm planning to do both Mac and Windows. That way, even if I don't have time or money for the best Windows marketing, I think the sales will still be higher, and I can promote with confidence that almost any home or school could be a customer. That means you can also promote in places which wouldn't have otherwise been feasible. Also the knowledge that there won't be any barriers to word-of-mouth from customers to people they know, etc. What you say makes a lot of sense. My main concern was in marketing time, but it is true that I COULD market in more places if I have a cross platform version. Darn! I do not enjoy working with Windows and was hoping to avoid it but you make sense! -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: metacard digest, Vol 1 #708 - 14 msgs
On 7/12/03 12:01 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Subject: Re: OS X Educational Shareware Market? From: Richard Gaskin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Richard MacLemale wrote: So I'm wondering if anyone might be willing to share their thoughts about the OS X educational software market? With OS X adoption riding optimistically at 30%, and with Rev able to deliver to OS X, Classic and Windows, what's the interest in OS X in edu? Just curious It's a really good question. I think that OS X adoption will increase over the next 5 years... It has to, because new Macs can't boot into OS 9. And there's a serious lack of educational software compared to OS 9 or Windows. In the elementary education market, where I've got 4 titles I plan on releasing, the Mac still has a decent market share. I think it's easier to get noticed in the Mac community. Being a one man operation and doing the whole entire thing, and also having a full time day job, I don't have much time to allocate, and have to account for every hour. The time invested in making a Windows version of a program is small in MetaCard or Revolution, but the marketing isn't. That's what takes the serious time. I think my game plan is to be OS X only, and maybe support Classic too, and see how that goes. If I'm doing well, I may take whatever is selling best and create a Windows version. That's in the educational shareware titles. I've also got three other server-based software titles that require either OS X or OS X Server. One is a video broadcast program that does all kinds of stuff. Another is a calendar scheduling system so that teachers can schedule ibook labs and computer labs and stuff via a web page. And the third creates teacher web page templates. In the case of those titles, it would be difficult to do a Windows version and also support it, as Windows is not based on UNIX. So it's a small market, schools and colleges that use OS X or OS X Server to host a web site, but there's more OS X web hosting in education than people might think. The biggest advantage of the 3 server based titles I've made is that you install them and then forget about them. Everything is done via web interface. So the person running the web site runs the installer and then doesn't have to do anything else. No UNIX skills required. Like I said, I think the OS X market in education will grow, and there's not much stuff there right now, so it's a decent time to get in the water and see how things go. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Why maintain Metacard
On 7/11/03 12:03 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: RCS [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Why maintain Metacard To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The user license is different for MetaCard... JR In short, (putting it bluntly) why would anyone want to spend effort maintaining/updating MetaCard's development environment when the Revolution environment is also customizable? Let me see if I understand this correctly, and if not, someone correct me... 1. The MetaCard engine was bought by RunRev. 2. Under RunRev, the same rules about the engine still apply... Meaning you can get the engine itself for free - it's the whole RAD toolset that you pay for. 3. RunRev will continue to improve the engine and the engine will be improved by the same folks who have always done it, meaning Scott Raney and whoever else. 4. The MetaCard user interface will be maintained by volunteers who will keep it up to date with the latest Rev/MC engine. 5. The volunteer-sponsored MetaCard-based GUI under some sort of open source deal, so it's not going to cost money, but it's going to be updated and maintained by volunteers. So, hypothetically speaking, say I've got a friend who is interested in MetaCard but never wanted to put out a grand to buy it. The engine has always been a free thing. Now the GUI is open sourced, and free. Does this mean that MetaCard 2.5 is now free? And if so, wouldn't that put a bit of a damper on Revolution? Making MetaCard an open source free alternative? I must be understanding this wrong. I mean, on one hand, I did several posts debating whether or not Rev should upgrade MC customers for free - mostly because I am broke, and also cheap by nature. But on the other hand, I want Revolution to succeed and grab tons of users and become huge, because I'm a huge believer in xtalk. And like I said, when it evolves a little more and I feel it's worth the money I'll dump MetaCard and spend the money on a small business license. But if the improvements in the engine, at that time, are going to also impact a free, open source version of MetaCard, then... Well then, couldn't you just use Open Source MetaCard and save the money? The biggest difference between Open Source MetaCard and Revolution will be the extra add-ons that Rev gives and the price tag. For most users, the extra add-ons, help, support, and documentation would be worth the money. But Open Source MetaCard could end up developing quite a following, too, couldn't it? Some open source projects have gone on to become very successful... Am I reading this situation correctly? -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Why maintain Metacard
Scott Raney and others who answer my questions, Thanks for the clarification. That makes more sense. So we should think of the license as basically being able to write long scripts. What threw me, but what I didn't put in the last message, was that with the Darwin MetaCard engine, there IS no script limit for CGI scripts. I remember discussing this on the list like a year ago... I was surprised that you could write any length CGI script you wanted and the Darwin MC engine would run it, and wondered if that was a mistake, and Scott (Raney) said no, no mistake, basically. I wonder if this will continue under Rev? I also wonder where the Darwin (OS X) engine for Rev is on their downloads page. There's no OS X or Darwin engine of Rev listed for downloading... I've spent 90% of my time with MetaCard doing CGI work, lately. MetaTalk is the coolest language around for CGI scripting, especially under OS X. Hopefully this will continue in the same manner under Revolution. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
RE: CD update...
On 7/11/03 5:14 PM, Shari [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote, Subject: RE: CD update... Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yes, would be much better to put them in a form that anybody (who uses a REAL operating system) would recognize such as .tar.gz -Glen You and my fella would get along well. He is a high level IBM tech support dude. When the field techs can't figure it out, they call in. And when THOSE guys can't figure it out, they call my fella :-) And he uses those exact rotten words about my computer ;-) So he went and bought a Compaq laptop just so that I could compile for REAL computers too ... Boy am I GLAD to see a Mac vs. PC thread. NOT! All kidding aside, I think any serious computer user would think that Apple's OS X is a huge improvement over the old Mac OS. My best friend is a UNIX snob who only ran Linux at home, and once in a while Windows when he had to. And he always slammed the Mac as a toy. After OS X came out, he went out and bought two iMacs for his home. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
OS X Educational Shareware Market?
I used to program educational shareware, about 5 years ago, and I'm wondering if it might be time to hop back into the Macintosh educational shareware market, and I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts on that. I think that, with many schools doing Mac OS X migration, there's a whole market of educational users looking for elementary level OS X applications that are NATIVE OS X and don't require Classic. Speaking for my own county I know this is true. There are titles available for OS X at the elementary level, but nowhere NEAR as many as were available in the OS 7 and OS 8 days. It's certainly easy to get out on the Internet. But there's three huge problems with shareware on the net today: 1. Piracy, and piracy of registration codes. (I found my old program Mr. Fixitup's registration code on 12 different websites, and the program hasn't been sold in 5 years!) 2. Competition from free online Flash games and activities. 3. Consumer apathy about paying for shareware. Seriously, there's still plenty of people who are wondering where Napster went because they don't understand why it was ILLEGAL. But there's a serious excitement over OS X in schools, and elementary schools are just now in the process of thinking about making the move. The number of elementary schools that run OS X is increasing and it will keep going up for probably the next 5 years as schools slowly switch over. So I'm wondering if anyone might be willing to share their thoughts about the OS X educational software market? -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: METACARD ACQUIRED BY RUN REV!!!
On 7/10/03 11:19 AM, Jeanne A. E. DeVoto [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote, At 7:23 AM -0700 7/9/03, Richard MacLemale wrote: Existing customers will get a free upgrade to Revolution with their next subscription renewal. Which is essentially a paid cross-grade. It means that the next time I get ready to fork over 300 bucks to MetaCard I give it to Rev instead and then I get Rev. Which means I'm paying 300 for Rev. Not exactly. You pay $300 for your normal upgrade, and get a Revolution cross-grade for free along with it. So the outcome is that if you want to switch at the time of your next renewal, you can do so for free, but you retain the option of staying with MC. OK, let me be MORE specific. I currently have a legal license to run MetaCard 2.5. That means that I can program in MetaCard 2.5 from now until eternity without dishing out any more cash. I ALSO have the option of paying $300 to MetaCard for another year of upgrades. Since MetaCard 2.5 does everything I need it to, I probably would not do this. What I was saying was this - If Revolution transferred my MetaCard 2.5 license, right now, to Revolution 2.0.1, for free, I would switch from MetaCard development to Revolution development immediately and not look back. Revolution is the future. Right now, I have three choices: 1. Continue to run MetaCard 2.5 for the forseeable future, for free. 2. Purchase Revolution for Teachers for $99, but not do anything commercially. 3. Purchase Revolution for Small Business for $299, and get everything but the hardcore database stuff. 4. Renew my MetaCard license for $300 but trade it for a pro license of Revolution. Which would get me the hardcore database stuff plus direct e-mail support (for I assume one year.) Obviously, for me, 3 doesn't make any sense, because the cross-grade option of number 4 is better. And since I would maybe want to make commercial software, I've decided that 2 is out. That leaves choice 1 or 4. I can either continue to develop in MC for free, or pay $300 and end up with Revolution. Since Revolution doesn't give me anything I really need beyond what MC can do right now, I'm not going to spend 300 bucks to get it. It's not worth it to me. Now, like I said... If I were to be able to trade my 2.5 license right now for a Rev 2.0.1 license, in an even trade, I would do it and Revolution would have one more user. Revolution wouldn't make any money off of me right now, but they're not going to anyway because I'm not going to spend $300. Don't get me wrong. I TOTALLY understand why Rev is doing it this way and if I were them I'd maybe do the same thing. I do not blame them at all, because this is business. I will follow Revolution's progress, and if it ever gets to the point where it's worth $300 more than MC 2.5 to me, I'll consider purchasing it. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
RE: METACARD ACQUIRED BY RUN REV!!!
Let's be realistic. If RunRev own the engine they can afford to wait until you need a new Rev feature or some new feature of Panther breaks your apps. Monte MetaCard 2.5 runs awesome under Panther. :) Heh heh heh... I feel that the odds of me, and some other MC developers, being Rev customers increase greatly if they cross grade us now without the fee. It's not like it's never been done before... Emagic did it. They said that they were no longer going to make the Windows version of Logic, and so they offered a cross-grade to the Mac version for free. OK, so that may or may not have brought some extra folks to the Mac platform, and Apple owns Emagic, but still the point stands. They were making a switch and they wanted to bring as many of their users along as possible. RunRev would certainly like to have all of the MetaCard developers convert to Revolution, but we have to basically do the equivalent of buying their small business edition to make the change. So unless you need direct e-mail support and a lot of extra database stuff, it's really not a huge bargain. I think that there will be plenty of MetaCard users who will not upgrade right now to Rev... They'll wait around and see what future versions of Rev bring, and then maybe they'll upgrade and maybe they won't, depending on what fancy new features Rev adds. And in the meantime they will continue to use MetaCard. Let's face it, if we thought Rev was better we would have already jumped over. And we don't KNOW what we're missing. We don't know how fast RunRev responds to bugs, or how fast they respond to complaints, or how willing they are to listen to user input. People who use Rev give the company high marks in those areas, but those of us who still use MetaCard have not experienced that first hand so we don't know it. If we switched to Rev right now, and had a chance to experience being a Rev user first hand, we might become enamored with the experience and the community and it might make us more likely to renew and give them money. Which is a valid point... I think that I, and maybe some other folks, would be more likely to update Rev in the future if I could migrate without getting charged right now, as opposed to not using the product at all. Like I said, it's a calculated gamble. RunRev is gambling that MetaCard users will pay to upgrade MetaCard and then migrate, and they realize that they're going to lose some folks (like me) at least temporarily, and maybe forever, but they're willing to take that risk. They hope that at some point in time in the future we'll decide we want to buy in, and they'll take the money then. But let's not jump to the conclusion that the next version of the Mac OS will break MetaCard. There's a decent chance that MetaCard 2.5 will run on the Mac OS for another 5 years without breaking. You never know. Maybe even longer. RunRev could have pretty much every single MetaCard developer if it wanted them right now, by offering a free cross-grade. Instead, MetaCard/RunRev is going for another $300 to make it happen. They're going to make some money and they're going to lose some people. And some people they lose will come back, and some won't. In the long run, which way is better for them? I don't know. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: METACARD ACQUIRED BY RUN REV!!!
I have a lot of respect for the folks at Revolution, but I chose to remain with MetaCard for a reason. Revolution's interface is bloated and overly complicated. There are some nice features, to be sure, but I chose MetaCard over Revolution for the same reason that I chose AppleWorks over Microsoft Word... I've got work that needs to be done. I need to have a simple but powerful tool, not one where feature creep has made a nightmare out of the user interface. Every time I use Word to do anything I feel like I've been in a knife fight. I can program in MetaCard in my sleep (and often have.) The idea of relearning a complicated interface and paying for the privilege does nothing for me. If Revolution wants the remaining hardcore MetaCard users, they have one serious shot at it... They need to offer a FREE cross-grade, right now. Everyone who is running MetaCard 2.5 legally should get a free cross-grade. Otherwise, what is to prevent us from just running MetaCard 2.5 for the next 4 or 5 years? I will not pay to switch to Revolution. I would, however, probably be willing to give it a fair shot if I could cross-grade right now for free. If not, well, MetaCard 2.5 runs really really well and I don't think I'll need much more than it for a while. Heck, most of the stuff I do uses the Darwin mc engine anyway. I know this post sounds harsh, but, well, I have a religious attachment to MetaCard. I totally intend on using it until it won't run on the Mac any more, and that could be another 5 to 10 years. The only thing that could possibly change my mind would be a free cross-grade. Otherwise, I don't see me seriously considering Revolution. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: METACARD ACQUIRED BY RUN REV!!!
On 7/9/03 4:05 AM, Richard Gaskin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote, Thank goodness it wasn't acquired by Micro$oft. ;) Please... Don't even joke. Their first order of business would be to drop Mac and Linux support and insert bugs... From the FAQ on the press release page at http://www.runrev.com/metacardpr.html: What happens to existing MetaCard customers? Existing customers will get a free upgrade to Revolution with their next subscription renewal. Which is essentially a paid cross-grade. It means that the next time I get ready to fork over 300 bucks to MetaCard I give it to Rev instead and then I get Rev. Which means I'm paying 300 for Rev. Which I can do anyway if I simply buy a Small Business License. So there's no real benefit, other than the fact that, I assume, my pro MC license would cross grade into a pro Rev license, which gives me access to some databases that I don't need. Don't get me wrong, for people who need to do MySQL stuff this is a decent deal. For me it's not. However, I teach students at a high school, though most of my day is network admin, so I probably qualify as a teacher. Rev's price for teachers is only $99. I had to read that twice to make sure I had the correct price. I guess I would be willing to spend 99 bucks to give Rev a shot and see if it's for me. If I ever wanted to put something out commercially I'd have to grab the small business license. I must admit that seeing some of the list's big names come out in favor or Rev has me thinking that I ought to be more open to this idea. I posted, years ago, my opinions on MetaCard and where it should head, and I said it needed a more sophisticated interface, better marketing, and a lower price. I admit that Rev has all 3. I also admit that this will lead to more programmers, which is always a good thing. Lots to think about... -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
UNIX help?
For those CGI gurus out there using MetaCard, I have a question... I want to send a mail message from my OS X machine that has sendmail on it. I put the message in a text file, and from the Terminal it runs perfectly. The command is: mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] /textmessage.txt where textmessage.txt is a text file with the message. When I run that in Terminal, it works PERFECTLY. When I run it from a mc cgi script, I get an error message and it sends a blank e-mail. Has anyone come across (and solved) this problem before? And if so, how? Thanks in advance for any help! -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Try, try again
List, About every 6 months or so, I pose this question in hopes that someone has run across and solved this problem. The previous times I've asked it, no one has responded. I remain ever hopeful... Situation: You want to make a cool GUI for some UNIX commands using MetaCard for OS X. It's easy using the shell command. Example: The tool Carbon Copy Cloner is the perfect example of what I'd like to be able to do. It was made in AppleScript Studio, and it is a GUI interface for some UNIX commands. It asks the user for the root password, and that allows the program to execute commands as root. Problem: No one has been able to tell me how to do this in MetaCard and I can't figure it out. But no one has told me that it's impossible, either. So I remain hopeful. Say a user logs into OS X as a regular user, not root. And I want them to be able to run a series of UNIX commands that will need to be run as root, assuming they know the root password. In the Terminal, there's sudo and su. But neither work using the shell command. Is there a way around this? AppleScript Studio can apparently do it. I'm wondering how it could be accomplished in MetaCard. Any help would, as usual, be extremely appreciated. :) -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: metacard digest, Vol 1 #472 - 14 msgs
On 1/9/03 3:59 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Sadhunathan Nadesan) typed, Ok, I get it. Call me ignorant, but I had no idea what Darwin was. Sorry. I'm on so many Mac mailing lists that I forget sometimes that everyone else isn't the Mac addict that I am. OS X is not perfect, no OS is. But OS X is by far my favorite OS to work on, and at my job I work on many (Win 98, Win 2K, Win XP, Win NT, Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, Red Hat Linux.) The Darwin mc engine has been automating our network and providing all CGI scripts for 2 years now. If I have to write a CGI or shell script that will be shared with other folks, I try to write it in perl. But when I need to get a job done on our network, I use mc. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: darwin mc?
On 1/8/03 10:21 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Richard, thanks for the perspective. What is darwin mc ?? Sadhu It's the metacard engine for Darwin. You can slap it into your CGI-EXECUTABLES folder and then write MetaTalk scripts to do cool CGI stuff. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: cgi mc/large data reads
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Sadhunathan Nadesan) wrote, Subject: Re: cgi mc/large data reads I mentioned to you this was a good thing because it would be sad if our IT staff could not trust MC, we'd never be able to use it for anything. The entrance barrier is hard enough due to the lack of documentation, plus general programmer arrogance. We can't buy books on MC, there is no manual, etc. But I want to be able to use it, despite the fact that my staff are expert C and Perl programmers and resist anything that takes the power of IT out of the hands of the few (them) and into the hands of the many (much easier to learn MC than C). So the fact that it didn't work made it instantly rejected. I can relate, though from a different perspective. I run a high school network with about 2,200 users. We've got several servers and both Macintosh and Windows clients. OS X Server + Darwin MC = A Kick Butt Network, basically. I have metacard scripts automating the whole deal, for the most part, as well as running all kinds of web services for staff and students. Some of the mc scripts call UNIX commands. All of them work perfectly. But I had to seriously look at whether I should use MetaCard or Perl to automate the whole thing. Both could do the job. I'm a pretty good metatalk programmer, but a very slow Perl programmer. MetaTalk is way easier for me to maintain and way faster for me to code. But what happens when I leave my high school? The next person who comes in will not know MetaTalk and will have no serious resources available to learn it. But the fact is that in my county, school tech specialists are required to be people with teaching certification, which means they're all ex-classroom teachers. And out of 50 tech specialists in our county right now, probably 2 know Perl, and probably only 1 tech knows it well enough to actually do advanced stuff with it - me. The point being that it doesn't matter if I use MetaTalk or Perl to automate stuff, because the next person coming in won't know either. So I choose MetaTalk. :) It's too bad that more people don't take advantage of darwin mc. It's easy, powerful, and free... -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Hiding the Dock
Is it possible to hide the Dock when launching a MetaCard stack? I don't see a specific command to do this, but you can use the key combination command-option-D, and that works. So is there a way to cheat and issue that key combination without telling the user to do it? -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Testing on multiple platforms
On 11/12/02 12:03 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You better add WIN XP to the list. It has a lot of quirks and inconsistencies compared to Win 98, ME, and 2000. For example, many system file locations (paths) are different, and many registry entries are under different (and unexpected) keys. That's a good point for those who depend on files in certain locations and who use the registry. I haven't had to do any of that type of stuff for the Windows apps I've developed so far. I don't ever expect a certain file to be in a certain place, on either platform. Best to assume it won't be there. There are some circumstances where you have to do that kind of stuff, but I've been lucky enough in that I haven't had to resort to it. Well, that and 90% of the work I do is on OS X Server Jaguar. :) -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
RE: Testing on multiple platforms
To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Testing on multiple platforms Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 07:56:23 -0800 Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] It does not matter which OS I have. My testing will always be on that one specifically. Unless you have 5 or 10 computers, you CANNOT test on all OS's. A Window's developer would need at least 4 to test on the various flavours of Windows. Minimum. Or one copy of Connectix's Virtual PC. :-) -Glen Yates If your Mac is fast enough, you can maybe get away with VPC. Mine isn't... :) I don't think this is a black and white issue, like If you can't test your stack out on 10 different variations, it's not worth it. I think that for a cross platform app, I'd test under OS 9.2.2, OS X, and Windows 98. The biggest issue is not the little differences between say Win 95 and Win 98. The biggest issue for me has always been how stuff looks on the screen between the GUI's. Sometimes you have to adjust field sizes and font sizes to look good on all 3. There are also some slight differences in scripting, like the Mac supports the not equal to symbol that Windows doesn't, for example. I think you can get away with OS 9, OS X, and Win 98 if you want to develop for Mac and Windows. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: MC Book-other ideas
Andu writes, These users although very helpful on the mailing list don't seem to be the kind of crowd to invest a lot of time and energy in activities which don't present some possibility of profit And Phil writes, One possibility (maybe more easily doable, probably less fraught with ownership issues, and certainly more current, than a book) would be to create a MC documentation site similar to the one for MySQL (see http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/index.html ). I agree with Andu that we're not going to get a high percentage of MC users to contribute, but I disagree with the generalization that we won't be willing to invest a lot of time and energy. Some of us would. I would. The idea of doing a documentation site IS better, except for one detail... It would have to be hosted by MetaCard itself, or it would not work... Meaning that smart people would be reluctant to put a lot of time and energy into updating a db on a site that may vanish in 6 months. We did this in the Macintosh Manager world... A bunch of people all contributed to this guy's troubleshooting db, and the thing disappeared a few months later. I'll never, never do that again. I'd only post if it were hosted by MetaCard. Another alternative would be if it were hosted like 5 or 6 different places (mirrored) and MetaCard kept a list of the mirrors posted. That would work (but would require a whole lot more effort.) A third would be for MetaCard to fund someone else hosting it. Then it wouldn't be on their official site, but we'd have a promise that it wouldn't vanish in the wind. My 2 bits per usual... -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: MC Book-other ideas
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Think of it as open source book writing. Tim Bleiler University at Buffalo YES. Count me in. I'd love to contribute. I've posted some mc specific directions on our school website, but it would be great to have a book available that we could all work on. When people are interested in MetaCard, I can say that the mailing list is a great resource, but having a book available with extensive knowledge would be awesome. Distribution will be debated here, no doubt, so here's my 2 cents - The book, when finished, should be available in PDF format for free (downloadable from metacard.com), or you should be able to order a printed copy of it for a modest cost from... wherever. The cost of the printed version should be enough to cover the expenses (and time) of printing and mailing the thing. Really, really good idea, Tim. There isn't enough market for someone to write a 400 page book by themselves, but if we all chip in, it's certainly possible. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Funky XP Desktop
On 10/3/02 12:06 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Message: 3 From: Ken Ray [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Funky XP Desktop Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2002 15:42:19 -0500 Organization: Sons of Thunder Software Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Scott, I just checked my registry, and it's there: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop I can't tell you if it was installed there originally (I've had XP for many months now), or whether some other app created it when it went to install stuff, but just wanted you to know. Ken Ray Sons of Thunder Software It's there by default. Or rather, in our XP Pro machines it's there by default. Can't speak for XP home edition because we don't have that (nor will we ever.) Anything placed in the All Other Users/Desktop will show up on all desktops. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Bizarro Question of the month...
OK, time for my bizarro question for this month. HP laser printers have built-in web servers so that you can configure them via a web browser. On our network we've got about 30 HP laser printers. 4 times a year our district office asks us for page counts... Which means I have to go to each printer's web page and grab the page count. You can probably see where I'm going with this... I thought I'd use MetaCard to grab each printer's web page and then parse through it to grab the page count. But it won't work, because the web page is actually generated via JavaScript. Anyone have any ideas on how I could make this work? I figured it couldn't hurt to ask. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Can't hurt to ask...
This falls under the Yeah, right category, but you never know until you ask. What would be involved with having a MetaCard stack talk to a digital camera? (Stop laughing.) In theory, could a stack communicate via USB with a camera, and control it, as in tell it to take a picture, then download the picture to the hard drive... It's not like I need this feature, and I have no idea how it would be done. I'm just curious. The truth is that we have an ID badge setup with a digital camera and a Windows PC, and the included software is the worst piece of crap I've EVER seen. Take every mistake every Windows programmer has ever made and put it into a program, and you've got this one. I'd love to do something better. But I'll understand if it isn't possible. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
preOpenStack question
Maybe a simple question... MetaCard stacks by default always open up to card 1. I want to script a stack so that it will open to a different card - say, the last card a user visited. I put this in the stack script: on closeStack put the short name of this card into field starting card of card 1 save this stack end closeStack And that works well - when you leave the stack it remembers the last card you were on, in field starting card. Then I did on preOpenStack go card (field starting card of card 1) end preOpenStack But that does not work. if I change the handler to openStack instead of preOpenStack, it works fine, BUT the stack initially goes to card 1 and then jumps to the desired card... Which is ugly and confusing to the user. I've played around with locking the screen (didn't work) and setting the visible to false on preopenstack, then setting it to true after the go card line in openstack, and that didn't work either - still had the jumping problem. What is the best, easiest way to open a stack to a card other than card 1? As usual, thanks in advance... -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: preOpenStack question
ARGH!!! I just answered my own question. Sorry about the bandwidth waste. PreOpenStack in my stack script was not working AT ALL. It was being totally ignored. And I couldn't figure out why. The reason was that I'd moved the libURL stack with the resources and MetaCard had written a preOpenStack message on card 1, which was overriding my stack level preOpenStack message. In which case, shouldn't MetaCard honor both preOpenStack scripts? It doesn't, but moving the card preOpenStack script to the stack preOpenStack script solved the problem. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Practical Maximum number of fields on a card
On 7/30/02 12:01 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote: Traditional spreadsheets use one list field for display, and create an editable text field on the fly when the user clicks a cell. Suck an approch reduces your object count to 2 -- just hide the editable field on closeField, and when you need it again calculate its rect and show it over the cell the user clicked on. Then again, if your current layout is working well, there may be no need to change it. -- Richard Gaskin Hmm. I hadn't thought of that. That's an interesting approach. The math to determine the rect of a field based on the clicklocation on the fly might be hairy, and I'm not sure that MC would hold up to some users who machine gun click. 'Course I could be wrong. It could probably be done. But like you said, what I'm doing is working well (and I'm almost done!) so I'll probably just go with it... Thanks also to Wilhelm Sanke for his posted benchmarks about MC and multiple fields. It does seem that MC can handle 2,000 - 3,000 fields pretty well. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Practical Maximum number of fields on a card
On 7/28/02 12:07 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote: 2000? It's hard to imagine a UI that needs that many editable text regions. What are you making? The downsides to high object counts are RAM and hit testing. And of course depending on what's in those fields it may take a while to redraw. Can't say I've ever put 2000 fields on a card, so I can't say for sure how gracefully MC would handle it. It seems easy enough to test with a repeat loop creating new fields in a test stack. Please let us know how that comes out. Offhand my first hunch would be to think of a solution which would allow a lower object count if possible I'm making a gradebook. Figure it this way - with a maximum of 50 students in a class, and a maximum number of 50 assignments per quarter, that's 2,500 possible individual grades. My idea is to have those fields grouped and then add scrollbars to scroll the group. I've done a prototype and this approach works fine - even with a grade entered in all 2,500 fields, and with 2,500 fields on each of 50 cards! Scroll speed is good and it seems stable. This is under OS X. Essentially what I'm doing is an imitation spreadsheet with each cell being a field. I agree that this is an extreme number of fields for a card, which is why I wanted to see if there were some magical number of fields per card that should not be exceeded. I looked at other approaches to this and I haven't thought of anything better. You can simulate a spreadsheet with a locked field with the lines showing, but I wanted users to be able to easily and instantly click on any cell and edit the info there. That feature is mandatory. Another approach would be to only show 5 or 10 columns of the spreadsheet, and have the user view the assignments that way, using the page metaphor (this page has 10 columns, turn the page, the next page has 10 columns, etc.) The data could then be stored on separate cards, or in a separate stack, or in a text file, or even right there in the fields, but then the user has to page through their gradebook. I really wanted to stick to the idea of being able to see and scroll through a whole quarter in one scrollable field. Other gradebooks can do it and it is expected. Like I said, the prototype is working fine under OS X. I have launched it under Classic, and it runs fine there, too, but I can't tell how much RAM it's using until I try it out on an actual OS 9 Mac. If MetaCard had a spreadsheet object, I'd just use that. But using a field to pretend it's a spreadsheet is not the same because you can't interact with it in the exact same way. This prototype is working fine, but I wanted to know if there were theoretical maximums I was ignoring... -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Practical Maximum number of fields on a card
MC Gang, I already searched the archives... What is a reasonable maximum number of fields you should put on a single card in MetaCard? Could you, for example, have a stack with 50 cards, and each card have 2,000 fields on it? What are some (if any) of the disadvantages of putting 2,000 fields on a card? If there are problems with this approach I can work around it, but I'm working on a project which would really benefit from having 2000 fields, grouped together with scrollbars on the group. Any input would be appreciated. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Nuther ?
Nuther question... And yes I did search the archives first... What's the best way to determine the mode of a list of numbers? MetaCard does mean (average) and median, but mode in MC is not mathematical mode. Is there a comparable command? I can write a subroutine to find it but I'd always rather use the cookie cutter if it's available. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Darwin question
I'm drawing a HUGE blank tonight and I don't know why. I'm trying to write a darwin mt script that will write info to a field in a stack. Only it's not working. I can read info from a stack, but can't write to it. All permissions are fine. I can write to a text file with no problem. To sum it up: The script has permission to run as root. (chmod a+s) The script IS running as root (verified with whoami) The script can read from field 1 of card 1 of the test stack. The script cannot write to field 1 of card 1 of the test stack. The stack itself is set to 775 and owned by root. The script can write to a text file in the same directory as the stack. Anyone see what I'm doing wrong? I do this all the time with plain text files with no problem, but have never used stacks in this way. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Darwin question
Never mind. Answered my own dumb question. I was using open stack thisStack put duh into field 1 of card 1 of stack thisStackcClose stack thisStack close stack thisStack instead of open stack thisStack put duh into field 1 of card 1 of stack thisStack save stack thisStack close stack thisStack It's the little things that count. As stated in a previous post, MetaCard can read/write faster to 30 fields in a single stack than 30 individual text files, so I'm trying to use stacks to store data. And so, apparently, when writing to a text file you can do open/write/close, but when working with a stack, it's open/put/save/close. I should have known it'd be something easy... -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Menu Bar Help under 2.4.3B2X
I've built an app with 2.4.3B2X and it's ready to go, but the menus are working funky. I have just two menus... File and Help. But when I choose an item from my Help menu, the menu bar reverts to MC's standard menu bar while it displays my help, then switches back to my menu bar. And though I put Quit in the File menu, it doesn't actually show up there. Weird. And when I build a standalone, the app runs fine, but none of the menus do ANYTHING. I don't think I've done anything wrong, because I've built menu bars countless times the exact same way. I even used MC's built-in menu bar tool, but got the same effect. So is there a mystery to this process, is this a beta bug, did I miss something? Any help appreciated, as usual. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Running CGI's locally on OSX
On 7/5/02 12:02 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Premature end of script headers error message in the error_log when trying to call this script: ==test-mc.cgi #!/mc on startup put Hello into buffer put Content-Type: text/html cr put Content-Length: the length of buffer cr cr put buffer end startup = I don't know if this means that the MC Darwin engine is working or not... Anyone else have clues? Again, seems simple, but doesn't work. Couple of things to try. One, I use #!mc and not #!/mc, but that's probably not your problem. However, make sure that the script file you wrote is saved with UNIX line breaks! Not Mac line breaks. If you haven't already, grab a copy of Bbedit lite, which is free, free, free and awesome. It can easily save your script with UNIX line breaks. I'd guess that's the problem. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Cgi stuff...
I figured out my own answer by looking at ads for existing groupware calendar programs on the Internet. Each user will have his/her own calendar, which will actually be a stack. The stack will have 12 cards (one for each month) and 31 fields per card (for each day.) Each user will also have configuration info in their stacks, including group membership. Users can choose which group calendars will have access to their personal calendar. When a person chooses a group calendar, it will read each user's stack and compile the group calendar on the fly, including data only from the users that want their info displayed in that group calendar. By doing it this way, the only person who has write access to a stack is the person who owns it - so that gets around the problem of having multiple people trying to write to the same file at the same time. Two years ago I would not have imagined that I'd be programming groupware on a UNIX-based server. Ain't MetaCard great? :) -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: set directories with spaces
On 6/26/02 12:03 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Subject: From: Simon Lord [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] How can we set the directory to a folder with spaces? In the shell I would do the following: cd Mac OS X Under MetaCard I have to do the following which I would assume should work: set the directory to /quoteMac OS Xquote But that returns can't open directory, am I missing a step? Anyone see an error in that script? Sincerely, Simon As Klaus replied, you can always do: set the directory to /Mac OS X But for other UNIX stuff where you are using shell(), you can use \ which UNIX sees as a space. So Mac OS X and Mac\ OS\ X are seen as the same thing by UNIX. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Old hat question...
I'm sorry to ask these two questions, but... 1. The border that appears around the current target field... How do you get RID of that? And 2. What is the address of the online searchable MetaCard archives, so that I don't have to ask questions like #1 again? Thanks in advance... -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Shell question
Shell gurus, Is there any way to do the equivalent of su or sudo when using shell()? When shell() is called you are whoever you logged into OS X as. It'd be nifty if you could provide a way to authenticate as root from within mc, so that the user would not have to literally log into OS X as root. I know that you can't log into OS X via the Chooser or ftp or telnet as root... You have to set up rsh or ssh to do it. Is the same type of restriction applicable to shell()? Of course this is not a show stopper by any means, but if there's a way to do this I'd be interested in hearing what it is. PS - By using do thisstring as applescript, where thisstring = do shell script (whoami), you can issue UNIX commands with MC 2.4.2... That was what I was doing before 2.4.3 happened. But handing things off to AppleScript is a hack, and it requires AppleScript 1.8 or 1.8.1. What's nice is that MC 2.4.3 can issue shell commands 2 to 4 times faster than doing it through AppleScript. VERY nice to be able to directly make the calls. :) -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: metacard digest, Vol 1 #195 - 10 msgs
On 5/5/02 12:01 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Simon Lord [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] How much closer are we to having put Shell() work in OSX? Scott may answer, but my guess would be no closer. MetaCard for OS X is a Carbon app, and from what I understand there's no way for Carbon apps to be able to issue UNIX commands. Cocoa apps can do this, but rewriting MetaCard in Cocoa from the ground up would not be a lot of fun for MetaCard, and from what I hear Cocoa isn't totally all there yet. But what about an external which could issue UNIX commmands and act as a go-between between Carbon and OS X? I'm with you... There are a MILLION different things I'd like to do with MetaCard for OS X, but I can't do them because MC for OS X doesn't allow shell commands. I end up using mc (darwin), or AppleScript, and I'd much rather use MetaCard (OS X version.) There are a bunch of us who could write some serious kick-ass apps if MC could do this. -- :) Richard MacLemale Network Administrator J. W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Multiple Platform Release info
I'm in the process of releasing software for Windows, Mac OS 9, and Mac OS X simultaneously. Aside from some bizarro printing differences betweeen OS 9 and OS X, I think I'm about done. But I was wondering if anyone has posted any how to web pages for creating full fledged standalone apps for the three platforms I mentioned (or any one of them.) I've done final apps for all 3 before, but remembering how I handled icons for Windows, for example, is tough... It's easy up until just after creating the standalone. After that, you've got type and creator issues, icon differences, memory allocation (OS 9), and on Windows creating an installer for the app (got that one covered, actually.) But a nice tutorial on the three platforms would be great, if someone's already done it. If not, I'd be willing to collaborate and host a web page, or just collaborate. Is it my imagination, or has this list gotten a lot smaller since Revolution was released? AND is it just me, or are the questions and issues here more hardcore in general now? I'm wondering if all the newbies went to Revolution, leaving us hardcores here to discuss cgi and xml... :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School http://mitchellonline.pasco.k12.fl.us ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Go Stack
But I still can't get a stack to search its own fields. Are field searches a GUI thing that is impossible in an mt script? I think that IS the case. So you probably have to work around that by using offset or something else. One other thing that doesn't apply to your problem right now but you may run into... when darwin mc runs, it runs as whoever calls it. So if you call it from a web browser, it's run as the user www (I think.) This can cause serious problems if you want mc to, for example, write to directories that you DON'T want anyone else to write to. There is a way to set a metacard script (.mt file) to run AS root. It's chmod a+s myscript.mt (when logged in as root.) Then anytime the script runs, it runs with root permissions so it can do pretty much anything. This is, of course, a security hole, but it's probably better than making www the owner of a bunch of folders... :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School http://mitchellonline.pasco.k12.fl.us ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
mc cgi question
OK, here's a question. When darwin mc is running, what is it running AS? It can write to files with read/write (everyone), but cannot write to files with read only (everyone.) If I knew what it was running AS, I could put that into a group and simplify my life. When I use the shell command whoami, it returns root. But that's what the shell commands are run as, NOT what the metatalk scripts are run as. I can get around this by using shell commands to write files instead of metatalk commands (open file, etc.), but the question remains. Anyone have the answer? :) :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School http://mitchellonline.pasco.k12.fl.us ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: metacard digest, Vol 1 #122 - 8 msgs
Subject: mc cgi question From: Richard MacLemale [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] OK, here's a question. When darwin mc is running, what is it running AS? It can write to files with read/write (everyone), but cannot write to files with read only (everyone.) If I knew what it was running AS, I could put that into a group and simplify my life. When I use the shell command whoami, it returns root. But that's what the shell commands are run as, NOT what the metatalk scripts are run as. I can get around this by using shell commands to write files instead of metatalk commands (open file, etc.), but the question remains. Anyone have the answer? :) I answered my own question and wanted to share with the group. I set the owner of the actual mc file (program) to root. When mc runs, it is running as whoever calls it, according to the Process Viewer. So if you call it from Terminal it will run as you. If you call it from a web browser it will run as www. ALSO, I found it VERY interesting that under OS X Server (and I assume also OS X) if mc is tied up handling a request, the OS will launch another instance of it! I wrote a script that said basically wait for 10 seconds, so that I could run it from command line and then watch the process viewer. It came up as mc, run by root. While in the process viewer, a user hit a web page that called mc and another instance of mc popped up, this time owned by www. So this is very cool. I always wondered what would happen if mc was tied up running a script and someone else requested another script, and now I know. VERY cool! :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School http://mitchellonline.pasco.k12.fl.us ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: metacard for CGI
Subject: metacard for CGI Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I am putting together some documentation regarding the use of metatalk/rev for CGI scripts and I wanted to ask the list for some feedback: -how many of you are currently using metatalk/rev for CGI I am... -the context(tasks performed) it is being used as well as the environment (production/tests/platform) I use Darwin mc running on both OS X client and OS X Server to do the following tasks for teachers myself... 1. Darwin mc works with FileMaker Pro and AppleScript to automatically add new students pulled from our district FMP server into our Macintosh Manager 2/OS X Server network. New student accounts are created and home directories are created with proper permissions and ownership. 2. Darwin mc generates a web page form which can be used to add new users to the network manually. 3. Darwin mc lets teachers update their mailing list membership via a custom generated web page. 4. Darwin mc lets teachers create their own web pages from a template web page. 5. Darwin mc lets teachers look up student demographic and scheduling information via a password protected web page. -the approximate amount of traffic handled by the CGIs Traffic is pretty small. We have over 100 staff members, but one copy of Darwin mc handles everything above with no problem. Darwin mc can process the above requests extremely quickly. -your location (if this is sensitive in any way, please send it to me off the list, I only need this info for statistics) High school with 1800 students. -if any of you are using other script languages for CGI (PHP, ASP, etc.) I'd appreciate some feedback as to how does metatalk/rev compare in terms of productivity/performance with the other language(s) I have some students using PHP on our school web site but I'm not using it myself. There's no point in learning PHP because I know MetaTalk! :) -the main disadvantage you see in using metatalk/rev for CGI scripting *besides some difficulty with debugging* The biggest disadvantage is that no one has ever heard of it, and so you have to explain to people what it is and what it does. And that's not a huge disadvantage when you are the network admin, but it's probably no fun when you are at the mercy on an internet provider. And debugging is a pain in the butt. :) :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School http://mitchellonline.pasco.k12.fl.us ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: metacard for CGI
Andu wrote: I have an even better one; after having convinced people to go with Metacard for various reasons the next question that needs to be answered (and a good one too) is what happens if you, the Metacard programmer, get hit by a car tomorrow (knock on wood), is there a viable replacement in sight? And debugging is a pain in the butt. :) Yes, we should get at least a line/word number in an error message but since the number of Metacard/CGI users is 4 so far, I don't expect we can dare ask for features. Good points. MetaTalk is s much easier to learn than Perl, so it's unfortunate that more folks aren't into it. I've been in love with Darwin mc since I ran the first echo.mt test. As far as the debugger is concerned, I usually end up copying my whole script and pasting it into a button script in MetaCard for OS X, and then hitting the enter key and seeing where I've made a syntax error. Crude, but helpful. Darwin mc is the coolest thing I've used in a long, long time. Between OS X Server and Darwin mc, I've got the ability to schedule and automate just about anything I want on our network. The more work the computer does, the better. :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School http://mitchellonline.pasco.k12.fl.us ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
MetaCard to MetaCard conversation...
I do a real lot of work with MetaCard Darwin under OS X Server 10. I understand the complications with trying to make MetaCard for OS X do shell commands, and while I hope that one day those problems will be resolved, I basically do most of my stuff directly with the darwin engine instead, which works fine, but of course has no GUI. So I was wondering if anyone has explored the possibility of MetaCard for OS X talking to MetaCard for Darwin, in any way, shape, or form. One obvious hack example would be to use MetaCard for OS X to modify a cron file to schedule a mt script to run (with darwin mc running the script.) That's really hacky, but you get the idea. Has anyone walked down this path? I guess the usual methods of AppleScript and AppleEvents are out, but maybe there's something (besides cron!) that I'm missing? :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School http://mitchellonline.pasco.k12.fl.us ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: metacard digest, Vol 1 #78 - 14 msgs
I wrote, then Andu wrote, on startup put Hello put shell(ls -l) end startup When I run it from the command line (./test.mt), I get this: Hello I can run other metacard scripts and everything else works perfectly. Sooo What am I doing wrong? Nothing. It just doesn't work. It works on Linux though so it must be a Darwin thing. OK - Scott Raney said you could do shell commands in darwin mc, and someone else verified that you could, but the above script doesn't work, s... What would be an example of a script that WOULD work? Please? :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School http://mitchellonline.pasco.k12.fl.us ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: darwin mc
From: Scott Raney [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: darwin mc Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Tue, 22 Jan 2002 Richard MacLemale [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I know that MetaCardCarbon does not honor shell (as in put shell(ls *) into field 1)... Am I correct in assuming that the darwin mc engine is also unable to do shell commands? I tried and it didn't work but wanted to verify it here. Works fine here... OK, can someone provide a really simple example of a .mt script that includes a shell command? I created a text file (with UNIX line breaks) called test.mt with the following script: on startup put Hello put shell(ls -l) end startup When I run it from the command line (./test.mt), I get this: Hello I can run other metacard scripts and everything else works perfectly. Sooo What am I doing wrong? :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School http://mitchellonline.pasco.k12.fl.us ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: OS X Standalone Question Rerun
Subject: Re: OS X Standalone Question Rerun From: Simon Lord [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yep. It was answered a few night ago by Mark Talluto Snip: My bad - reading too quickly is my excuse... I did the fix and it worked. Hooray! Thanks for the reply. Things are rolling right along now. :) :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School http://mitchellonline.pasco.k12.fl.us ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
OS X Standalone Question Rerun
Sorry to post the exact same question a second time, but it's driving me absolutely insane and I'm somehow hoping that the question wasn't answered because I phrased it poorly. So here goes... Under MC 2.4.1 and OS X, create a standalone application using the carbon engine. Everything is fine, except that the very first menu in the menubar of your new application is MetaCard instead of the name of your application. This is naturally very, very undesirable because it gives away the fact that you're running a MetaCard stack. The whole point of building standalones is to create programs that function like normal, real applications and the illusion is shattered by the big old MetaCard menu. S there must be a way around this. Surely someone has solved this problem already? What's the secret? :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School http://mitchellonline.pasco.k12.fl.us ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
OS X Standalone...
A couple of questions for making an OS X standalone I'm hoping someone can answer... 1. The about... trick where you put your about message at the end of your help menu - does that work different under OS X, or the same? 2. Under OS X, standalones that you build still have the MetaCard menu like stacks do running under MetaCard Carbon. Obviously if I'm building a standalone application, I don't want it to be named MetaCard in the menu bar. How do I change this? Other than that, everything else seems very straightforward... :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School http://mitchellonline.pasco.k12.fl.us ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: why MetaCard?
My nickel tossed into the pot... IF you are the type of person that likes to build things from the ground up (like me) MetaCard seems less intrusive. It feels more like a toolbox, whereas to me Rev feels more like a wall mounted set of fancy tools. And I agree with the statement about problems, in that you don't know if you've found a bug in the MetaCard engine, of it it's in Rev. However, I think the Rev folks have done a really, really good job so far and the product is constantly improving. In this sense they take after MetaCard. The very first Macintosh beta of MetaCard was pretty bad, but it's just evolved and evolved and evolved and gotten better and better, to the point where I wouldn't ever want to use anything else. I expect the same will happen with Rev over time. I don't think you can go wrong with either choice - MetaCard may require you to invent your own widgets, but then the widgets are built with your vision... :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School http://mitchellonline.pasco.k12.fl.us ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
OS X Printing?
OK, another OSX question... Under MC 2.4.1/OS X... I created a new stack and pasted in my usual printing script, which was lifted verbatim from MetaCard 2.3.2 itself (adapted from the Print Field stack.) I then discovered that when I tried to use it I ended up in an infinite loop and nothing printed. I looked at MetaCard 2.4.1's printing script (the way Print Field is scripted) and it's not the same as under 2.3.2. It's similar but it's been rewritten. Since I know that the Print Field menu choice under MC 2.4.1/OX X works (I tried it), I know that I can spend an evening figuring out how to modify its script so that I can just print a variable... But if someone else has already done this, would you consider posting it here? If not, I'll post it here after I've rewritten it. I just don't wanna reinvent that darned old wheel, if I don't have to... :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School http://mitchellonline.pasco.k12.fl.us ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Printing a variable under 2.4.1
OK, never mind... It wasn't that tough, once I had some more coffee... To print a variable in MetaCard 2.4.1, you can use the hacked version of the MC Print Field script. I've got it posted at: http://www.maclemale.com/classroom/metacard/print_variable.htm That's a start... You can further hack it to do whatever you need... -- Richard MacLemale Network Admin, Programmer, Macintosh Manager Guy www.maclemale.com ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Much about nothing...
OK, after all THAT, I discovered that you CAN use the old print script with 2.4.1 and it works OK. I must have had something scripted wrong, because I'm now opening all of these older stacks I wrote and they can all print fine under OS X. Sorry for the waste of everyone's bandwidth. -- Richard MacLemale Network Admin, Programmer, Macintosh Manager Guy www.maclemale.com ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: metacard digest, Vol 1 #47 - 10 msgs
Subject: Re: How to get striped OS X background Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Mon, 31 Dec 2001 Gregory Lypny [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Everyone and Happy New Year, How do I get the OS X striped background for my windows? You need to make sure that the backColor and backPixmap for the card, stack, and all other stacks in the hierarchy (i.e., a mainstack and/or the Home stack) are set to empty. The same rule applies if you want to use the system background color on Win32 systems. Regards, Scott Gregory's question was essentially the same as mine. But when I set the backcolor and the backpixmap of a brand new stack to empty, I don't get an OS X striped background... I get a plain white background. This is with no other stacks open, and the look and feel set to OS Native, with MC 2.4.1 under OS X version 10.1.2. Also I notice that the palettes (Preferences, Tools, basically any window I bring up) DO have the striped background, but the home stack itself has a plain white background. So is this atypical, or am I missing something? :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School http://mitchellonline.pasco.k12.fl.us ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
OS X Question
When I create a button and set the appearance to tabbed, the background of the button turns into that cool OS X looking striped background... Which is the same as the default background look of OS X windows, System Preferences, etc. This is a cool look that I really like. How do I get this look as the background of a stack? Aside from making a tabbed button, that is. I guess I could do it by making a huge tabbed button, taking a picture and saving it as a graphic which I could then reuse, but if there's an easier way I'm all for learning it... :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School http://mitchellonline.pasco.k12.fl.us ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Stupid CGI Tricks
OK, I do REALIZE that this is stupid, but since it involves MetaCard and the mc Darwin engine and it works, I decided to post one of my MetaCard cgi-driven pages here... In elementary schools, they do these activities called Mad Libs. You fill in a sheet of paper with a bunch of labeled lines, such as: Noun: __ Adjective: And then they are inserted into a story. The results are usually very silly, and elementary children find them very, very funny. Adults do not usually find them funny, unless inappropriate language is used to fill in the blanks. Anyway, I did an example of this with Metacard's darwin engine running on a stock OS 10.1.1 iMac running Apache. The page is accomplished with two elements - a web page named madlib.htm, and a text file named madlib.mt. The link is: http://mitchellonline.pasco.k12.fl.us/madlib.htm While this is obviously a primitive example, it does show what can be done with the mc Darwin engine. This is really, really exciting stuff. Using these same concepts it should be pretty straightforward to build all kinds of neat server-based services like calendars, planners, etc. I will eventually get around to making a step by step web page for doing this stuff, but I decided to post my silly example in the meantime for folks to see. Thanks to all on this list for being so extremely helpful. There's no other authoring environment like MetaCard, and there's no other mailing list like this one! :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
Re: Darwin, CGI Question
Andu wrote, The more empirical way: put home, tools and help stacks in the same folder with the engine and do ./mc and see if metacard starts in gui. Also try .cgi instead of .mt for the cgi file. Test with a cgi known to work just in case the server may not have the proper settings. That works. I wrote a text file named test.mt with a simple script which created a text file and put it in the same directory (in this case CGI-Executables) as mc and the other stacks. The first line of the file is #!mc followed by on startup and then the script. Then in command line, I typed ./mc test.mt, and wonder of wonders, the script was instantly run and the text file was created. Cool! Making the jump to being able to active the test.mt script via CGI, however, is not working. Both the test.mt file and mc have proper permissions (755). I've got a test shell script which works fine when called from a browser. But when I attempt to hit the test.mt script, no dice. Renaming the script to test.cgi does not help. One thing - I can run my test shell script (named echo.sh) by typing: sh echo.sh in the command line. But typing mc test.mt in the command line will not run the test.mt script, yet typing ./mc test.mt in the command line does. Being a UNIX newbie, I don't know what the ./ does, but you can't execute without it. So perhaps this has something to do with not being able to execute a script from a browser? I gotta believe that at least one MetaCard developer has already done all this. I can't be the first person to try to run MetaCard Darwin engine on OS X as a replacement for Perl, can I? :) This is SO close and yet so far. The idea of, on OS X, being able to run METACARD scripts is so cool I can hardly sleep at night. Anyone have any further suggestions, or is this the end of the line? :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
Darwin, CGI Question
OK, After spending an hour in the list archives this morning and getting bits and pieces of the info I need, I gave up and decided to just post the question... Here's what I think I know: 1. You can download the darwin metacard engine and it will run under OS X. 2. This will allow you to write scripts and save them as .mt files which can be placed in the CGI folder. 3. An example of such a file is echo.mt, included with MetaCard. I downloaded the darwin engine, I double-clicked it and it uncompressed (via Stuffit). This created a folder with two files - gunzip and mc.gz. If you double-click the mc.qz file, it unzips and you have a file named mc. Putting that file into the CGI directory is NOT enough to make it work. OS X doesn't know that it's an application. I surmise that the directions that tell OS X about mc being an app are contained in the gunzip file. Finally, the question - How do you DO this? What are the step by step instructions for installing the darwin mc engine? I've got the darwin.tar file from the MC web site, and I know where the CGI folder is (Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables). Thanks very much in advance, :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
Darwin question again...
Sorry if this ends up being posted twice... For some reason I got bounced off the list and had to resubscribe. Was it something I said? :) Anyway, After spending an hour in the list archives this morning and getting bits and pieces of the info I need, I gave up and decided to just post the question... Here's what I think I know: 1. You can download the darwin metacard engine and it will run under OS X. 2. This will allow you to write scripts and save them as .mt files which can be placed in the CGI folder. 3. An example of such a file is echo.mt, included with MetaCard. I downloaded the darwin engine, I double-clicked it and it uncompressed (via Stuffit). This created a folder with two files - gunzip and mc.gz. If you double-click the mc.qz file, it unzips and you have a file named mc. Putting that file into the CGI directory is NOT enough to make it work. OS X doesn't know that it's an application. I surmise that the directions that tell OS X about mc being an app are contained in the gunzip file. Finally, the question - How do you DO this? What are the step by step instructions for installing the darwin mc engine? I've got the darwin.tar file from the MC web site, and I know where the CGI folder is (Library/WebServer/CGI-Executables). Thanks very much in advance, :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
Re: Can someone turn the light on?
Thanks for the speedy replies, folks! Not sure if anyone's interested, but here's what I learned... 1. Setting the screen rect vs. setting the individual height, width, and loc in the openStack handler brought back the problem (didn't work.) I had to continue to set them individually. 2. Tried setting the rect in the preOpenStack and that didn't work. 3. What DID work (very well) was setting the visible to false in preOpenStack, and setting the visible to true in openStack AFTER I set the height, width, and loc. Not the perfect solution, but at least it looks great! I have always had an aversion to using the visible property unless I absolutely had to, because it is technically possible using a runtime solution to end up with one invisible stack open, and it is also possible to to set up a scenario where the user cannot close that invisible stack. That would be... bad. But my app now opens the way it should and I am a happy camper. I write the owner's manual today and the alpha version of this program will be tested with live users tomorrow. Thanks again to the list for the fast help. :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
Can someone turn the light on?
Dear list, This is annoying me because I like everything to be neat and tidy. I don't like hacks. Here's the deal. I'm just finishing up an app which needs to be able to be run on 640 by 480 Macs (this is education.) Before the old argument flares up about what education wants, believe me, there are still schools with old Macs and in this case they specifically asked for this screen size! Anyway... I'm trying to cram everything I can into this limited screen real estate, and I've got the stack size set to 621 by 427. I crammed everything in, and all is cool, until I put my screen into 640 by 480 resolution to test it. Suddenly MetaCard decides that when I open the stack it's going to resize my stack and remove about 20 pixels from the bottom of it! So I set the stack height and width in the stack on preOpenStack script, and then it opens at the correct 621 by 421 size... but it opens too high! The title bar of the stack is sitting underneath the Mac OS menu bar. Obviously this won't work, so I decide to set the location. I enter this: on preOpenStack set the loc of this stack to 319,256 set the width of this stack to 621 set the height of this stack to 427 end preOpenStack Here's what happens... it opens at the correct size but it ignores the location I entered. So I change it to: on preOpenStack set the width of this stack to 621 set the height of this stack to 427 set the loc of this stack to 319,256 end preOpenStack Does this work? NO! It THEN opens with the correct position, but ignores the height I set and changes it to 395! ARGH. This is really annoying. So I change the handler to on openStack and THEN it works fine. But of course you see the stack first come in at the wrong size and then jump to the proper size. This is visually annoying and makes my app look amateurish. OK, I realize I'm not programming in Objective C here, and if this is the only way to get it done I'll chalk it up to compromise. But if I'm missing something here, could someone please turn the light on for me? I'm not sure why MetaCard would want to (by default) ignore height and location settings in a preOpenStack handler. If it's supposed to be a feature, I'd disagree and argue that it's a bug... anyone run across this before? :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
MetaCard app on a server...
OK, hypothetically speaking... Suppose you create a standalone app on the Mac. And the app has a collection of data stacks that it uses, and they are in the same directory as the app. And you set the shared flag to true (via ResEdit) and you put it on a server. Now two Mac clients both launch the app. And they both use it to open the same data stack on the server. What would happen? A. Both users would get a copy of the data stack loaded into their own RAM, and when they did a save, the save would be rewritten back to the data stack on the server, or B. The first user to get to the stack would win, and the other user would get a stack is in use error Furthermore, suppose you have a global variable named myName (not that I would do this, but just supposed.) If two people would run the app at the same time, would they both get the same global? Would it be different for each? I can test this all out at work, but was sorta hoping someone had already walked down this path. I could see some cool local network gaming possibilities for my school based on the answers to these questions... Anyone know? :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
XML...
Sorry I'm late to the party... I just finished a (MetaCard) software project where teachers create stacks, and the stacks are essentially thematic unit plans correlated to our curriculum. Since we have 30 elementary schools, we decided to set up a server which could host stacks written by teachers from all over the county. I built an ftp engine into the program with one button uploading and downloading of stacks. The server is an iMac running WebStar. The whole thing worked great, except for one thing... the stacks were 600 - 700K, and so transfer times were not super-zippy. The reason the stacks were so large was because they had a lot of curriculum listed, as well as other resources. Enter XML. Instead of sending a 700K MetaCard stack, the program now sends a 20K XML file. What I did was to essentially write each card as an xml entry into an xml file, then send the file. On downloading a theme, MetaCard then makes a copy of an empty template stack, then parses the data into the stack. A simple example would be a card named "A1" with a text field named "activity." On creating the xml file, the xml code would look like this (I'm using parenthesis instead of the usual less-than, greater-than symbols, because that might screw up this post!) (entry) (card_name)A1(/card_name) (activity)Students will write an essay.(/activity) (/entry) The downloading script is simple - it just reads each entry and places the info into the appropriate fields of each card. Worked perfectly. Then I made it a bit more complicated by putting the htmlText of each field in to keep the formatting, and that worked fine also. Our district IS folks were VERY happy to see the size of the files we're sending go from 700K down to 20K! And the download and upload speed is, of course, a katrillion times faster. Everyone is happy. It gets better. Since the xml files can be indexed by WebStar, I was able to build a search engine into my program which lets users look INSIDE of uploaded themes. So a teacher can search for "whales" and WebStar will return any units that have that word in them. Cool! XML in this case proved to be very, very useful! :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
Re: HyperCard Price
Simon wrote: "The only thing keeping the Mac around nowadays is Shareware - and Mac OS X is the only killer app to appear on scene in the last 10 years." Hmm... I think graphic arts, music, and education (schools) are the ones keeping Apple going, and OS X is going to bring more developers to the Mac. But as far as killer apps, how about iMovie? iMovie is one of the best designed programs ever, IMHO, because it does something very complicated (video editing), but is extremely easy to use. Very powerful, AND very easy to use... this is an extremely difficult thing for a program to accomplish. OS X will bring many UNIX programs and programmers to the Mac, which is both good and bad. Good in that it will bring more cool programs to the platform, bad in that some of those ports will be terribly ugly. As stated before on this list, UNIX folks think that having a great gui interface means using more than ONE shade of gray. But anyway...:) MetaCard should be pitched as a tool that is easy for beginners but will be able to keep you happy as you grow in ability. Many of us ex-HyperCard users would still be using it if we hadn't hit the wall with it's limitations (and there were many.) MetaCard is expensive, but there's no real competition for what it does (card-based design that's cross platform and powerful.) The problem is that it is priced out of reach of general hobbyists, and those are the people who would really benefit from starting on MetaCard. So the pricing is aimed squarely at people who can make money with MetaCard (ie programmers), but who are not already schooled in a different language such as C++. This is, to my mind, a small market. I think MetaCard needs an influx of newbies, because the target crowd here is just too small. I'd say that a good way to do this would be to ditch MetaCard's current price ($995) and charge $499 for it. Then charge $299 for the subscription price. I'd wait until the Mac OS X version is ready, then spend a little on marketing, and sell MetaCard for $499. This would grab a ton of HyperCard users, and also some other newbies, most of which would consider $499 to be expensive but not unreasonable. The other piece to the puzzle is a beginner's book. But that's another thread... :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
Re: HyperCard Price
I had written: MetaCard should be pitched as a tool that is easy for beginners but will be able to keep you happy as you grow in ability. Many of us ex-HyperCard users would still be using it if we hadn't hit the wall with it's limitations (and there were many.) And Simon wrote: You lost me, HC limitations or MC's? What do you use it for? Don't say database and QuickTime...that's become the default response. Valid mind you, but it would be good to know more - that way it helps Scott. I was referring to HyperCard's inability to do a multitude of things, which causes what many call the "HyperCard Wall"... you say, "Gee, I could make this cool software if only HyperCard could do this, this, and this..." And you go out and get externals to compensate for what HyperCard couldn't do. I have yet to use an external with MetaCard. Doesn't mean I never will, but means I haven't had to yet! I think that calling iMovie a hack of Final Cut Pro which was bought from another company sells iMovie short. It's not like they just took Final Cut Pro and removed half the menus. While iMovie uses much of the same code, its user interface was carefully designed to appeal to novice users, to be easy to learn, and to be powerful. Despite the origin of it's code, it's an example of a great application. The same argument could be said about OS X, that Apple just took BSD UNIX and slapped a pretty face (GUI) on it, but no one yet has done a great GUI for UNIX (at least not the ones I'VE looked at via Linux... some of that stuff makes Windows look good!) Apple is the first. But I'm arguing over nothing here, so I'll stop. I sort of suspect that we're both wrong. I think that lowering MetaCard's price will NOT result in HyperCard users bolting to MetaCard, whether it's a permanent price drop or a temporary one. Those who would switch may have switched already, as in maybe the handful of top notch HyperCard programmers... your way would definitely be less expensive, this is true. I guess it'd be better to try your way to see what happens... :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
Re: Read this?
As a former HyperCard advocate, I have to say that I agree that making fun of HyperCard users is lame. Yes MetaCard blows HyperCard away, but at 10 times the price. We need to remember that MetaCard is not priced for beginner programmers and hobbyists. It's priced for pros. If HyperCard could do what MetaCard could do, I never would have left. We should morn the death of HyperCard also, because it will be one less xtalk product out there, and I think you all know how hard it is right now talking clients into an xtalk solution... In a small way, the death of HyperCard makes it just a little harder to talk clients into using MetaCard. This is utter nonsense, of course, because there's no logic involved, but when has logic ever been a huge factor in technology? What on earth made people choose Windows 3.1 over the Mac? (For that matter, Windows Me over OS 9, but that's another story...) So let's all lay off the HyperCard folks. Many of us here may look down on HyperCard, but somewhere there may be a person who graduated from MetaCard to C++ who is laughing at us. And that's not right either. :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
MetaCard SQL revisited
I've been exploring the archives on this topic, and have found bits and pieces of the whole puzzle. I know there are many of us who'd like to be able to link our MetaCard stacks to other databases which use ODBC. So what I'm hoping is to summarize this and either (a) get more pieces to the puzzle, or (b) have someone jump in and say "Ya got it all wrong, rookie!" That said, here are my "assumptions"... 1. ODBC is a protocol, and SQL is a language (the language that ODBC uses.) 2. Learning SQL commands is only part of the battle of getting MetaCard to talk to an ODBC database, because you have to be able to send those commands to whatever database you wish to talk to. 3. The best way to do this would be via MetaCard's support for ports and sockets, because since ODBC is such a HUGE standard, then SURELY you should be able to use it with TCP/IP... 4. Even though you can use AppleEvents and/or AppleScript, or other proprietary languages, SQL/ODBC/TCP-IP would seem to be the way to go, because they are cross-platform and fast. 5. So the trick is that you need a database on a server on a network listening on a certain specific port, AND you need MetaCard to be able to speak SQL to that port and also read results from that port. And I'm assuming you can't just send straight SQL commands to the port, because it couldn't be THAT easy... So where am I right and where am I wrong? :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
scrolling question...
I've seen this before, but could not find it in the archives... Suppose I want a stack with one field and two buttons, named "Start" and "Stop." When I click "Start", I want the field to auto-scroll and keep scrolling, until I click the "Stop" button. Obviously a simple repeat loop in the Start button won't work. Anyone done this? :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
Re: Scrollbar issue?
Thanks to Kevin Scott for posting solutions to the scrollbar field problem I had. Kevin's solution works very well. My problem is that I have some fields that I purposefully WANT to have no scrollbar on no matter what (it would take too long to explain why,) and some that I did. Given enough time, I could script around these problems. But time is something I ain't got. D-oh! Scott's point about web browsers working Kevin's way is well taken. Reading Scott's response made me take a couple of steps back and say, "yeah, he's right." Us Mac users want the whole world to look like the Finder, even if the new way is a better way... which in this case it is. In the end, I'm going with Scott's solution of setting the proportionalThumbs to true. That way, if anyone bitches, I can tell them, "Hey, it's the default in OS X! You're ahead of the game." Heh heh. As far as not catching things in gamma and beta, I'm as guilty as anyone, because I didn't use 2.3.2 until the last minute... been using 2.3. Next release I'll hop on board quicker. My thanks once again to both Kevin and Scott for immediately helping, despite the bitchiness of my first post. The MetaCard development community is the best in the world. :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
Scrollbar issue?
Forgive me if this has been covered already, but... I have upgraded to version 2.3.2, and noticed something very strange. On my PB G3 500 Mhz, running OS 9.0.4, when you make a field and make it scrollable, the scroll bar is shaded and a draggable handle appears EVEN with nothing in the field. In other words, normally on the Mac, an empty scrollable field has an "all-white" scrollbar, ie there is no shaded area. And no draggable handle. When the text exceeds the height of the field, the scrollbar area turns gray, with a draggable handle appearing. Forgive me if I'm using the wrong terminology. This is also the way MC has always been... Now, w/MC 2.3.2, the scrollbar ALWAYS draws a shaded scrollbar with a draggable handle, which you CAN'T DRAG if the length of the text does not exceed the height of the field. This gives the user the distinct impression that the text field is full, even if it isn't. And when you go to drag the handle, you can't move it of course. This is a really annoying violation of user interface. Why this unfortunate change? And how did I miss this discussion... surely someone else has seen this? I'm hoping that there is a solution, and I'm also desperate for one... as quickly as possible!!! :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
Re: Scrollbar issue?
Kevin Miller stated: This is just a minor glitch - the only workaround I know of for the moment is to turn off the scrollbar if the text fits. Nah, it's not a minor glitch if I have to spend hours figuring out the best way to turn off the scrollbar for the HUNDREDS of fields in my project, due to go beta shortly. And having a scroll bar magically appear IF the text does not fit the field is a user interface violation in my book. Reason - fixed fields (ie without scroll bars) imply that you can only type a limited amount of text into an area (at least on the Mac), which of course I do not want to imply. And putting a scrollbar complete with draggable handle that DOES NOTHING if the text does not extend beyond the height of the field is even worse. I myself spend some time trying to drag the handle in the scroll bar and wondering why it wouldn't move. The fact is that anything that makes my program look unprofessional make ME look unprofessional. Attention to detail is very important in software design. Especially on the Mac, people get used to living in a predefined universe of rules, which make it easier to learn new programs. I know my customers, and as petty as my complaint sounds, I'm going to have to make excuses. And I haven't had to do that before with MetaCard. With HyperCard, in the "old" days, yes. Remember explaining to people why they couldn't put more than 32K in a field? Fortunately, I think I can safely step back down to version 2.3.1, which I know DOES draw scrollable fields properly. I only hope that the version of 2.3.1 that I still have is the FAT binary version, or I'm in trouble. What I'm really more pissed about is the fact that somehow I didn't notice this bug until the last minute. I should've caught it much, much sooner. :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
Windows Question...
On the Mac, you have type and creator settings to tell the Mac which app created which file. On Windows, you have those 2 or 3 character DOS extensions (MetaCard's being ".mc"). My question is this: If I create an app for Windows, what do I do about the DOS extension? How do I know what has and has not been used? What do I have permission to use? Apple has a database online of creators. Does Microsoft have a similar database for Windows and DOS extensions? Do I have to fart around with modifying the registry? Yuck. Thanks in advance for any replies... :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
RE: Installers
Another recommendation for Install Maker from clickteam.com - I've used this for about 2 years, and it rocks. But the price is only $39, not $50! Even better! Install Maker is very easy to use and works very well. Even if you could build an installer in MetaCard, hey, why bother, when you can get this one for only $39 (and it's easy to use and works great)? Clickteam is kinda like MetaCard... most people have not heard of them, but those who know their products are religious about them. :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
OS X
OK, the official release date for OS X is now March 24... How about the MetaCard engine for OS X? Is there any chance that we can get an idea as to when this blessed event may occur? I can't wait to start designing on OS X. I also recommend that we (MetaCard developers) pool our resources to come up with some common solutions to making our apps look more "OS X-like." I'm thinking specifically of ask file, answer file, answer password, etc. This is one of the VERY few areas where I think MetaCard is still weak. Yeah, I know, you can create your own versions of ask and answer, but the default is pretty ugly. It ain't gonna cut it with folks looking for those nifty throbbing capsule-looking buttons. I'm thinking a JPEG file for the backdrop and maybe an animated GIF to simulate the new buttons? Anyway, since OS X is so close, I wonder if we might possibly catch a hint of when MetaCard will have an engine for it? Hey, can't hurt to ask. :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
SuSE Linux
All, I've just installed SuSE Linux 7.0 (PPC Edition) on to one of my Macs. Will any of the Linux versions of MetaCard run on this? Which version should I try? This is going to be a VERY popular version of Linux for the Mac, from what I've seen so far... :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
Re: Desperately Seeking Help
Bill Williams wrote:
This is an
elementary school and only MM connections are made to the server, file
sharing only. The only two AS users are "Multiple Users User" and "aefw". I
have the same set up at two other schools with no problem. Three weeks ago
I used another computer and copy only the MM folder, Secure-1, and the MM
server extension 1.2.2. This failed so I put in a new MM extension and that
also disconnected. During vacation week, last Friday, I updated 1st aid to
8.6 and the installed 9.0.4 updater. I rechecked all the settings: AutoPush
disabled, VM off, Sherlock is not indexing. I used the new first aid,
Norton, Disk Warrior, AS 1st Aid, Defrag, and rebuilt the desktop. Today it
happened again.
Couple of things...
1. You state that there are only two AS users - Multiple Users User (used
internally by MM) and aefw. Do you mean that you only have one login name
for all of your students to share? If true, this will cause you mondo
grief. Even at elementary, you can set up individual accounts... I just set
up a MM network for one of our county's elementary schools and made each
student an individual user - yes, even the K and 1st grades! We also had a
lab of iMacs, and they were numbered (1 - 20, I think), and we made users
for the numbers 1 to 20... that way, the really young ones could log in to
the lab computer by it's own number, and all was unique.
If you have tons of MM users but you only have 2 ASIP users on the MM
server, there's a problem. MM creates disabled ASIP users for each MM user
you create. Or at least that's what it's supposed to do. So if you have
500 MM users but the ASIP server running MM only has 2, I'd reinstall the OS
and MM and start over. Maybe someone who's done this before can give you
advice on backing up user docs and prefs...
As an aside - we just took a FileMaker Pro database of all students and
exported three fields as tab delimited text... student name, student ID
number, and student homeroom teacher. Then we imported the file into MM,
with the name being the user name, the ID number being the password, and the
homeroom teacher being the workgroup. Probably took only about 8 minutes!
2. The easy fix... move the server to another room and connect it to the
network with another cable. If the old room's wiring was the problem,
this'd fix it ('less the new wiring's bad too.) Probably not the case, but
worth trying...
3. When we had some serious mystery problems at another school, and nothing
I tried worked, I did what I normally do with Macs that misbehave when
conventional fixes won't fix... I wiped the HD (after backing up all data)
and reinstalled the OS. Then I did the updates. And then all was well.
My personal opinion is that any time you have to use a utility program other
than Apple's, and other than to defrag, you might as well reinstall the OS.
Norton is infamous for telling you "OK, everything's fixed!" and you say
"YES!" and then you come in the next day to a flashing question mark.
One more comment, while I'm on my cyber-quarter...
You state "I have the same set up at two other schools with no problem."
In the Mac world, we tend to do things like this (myself included), and it
gets us into trouble. It's the old "if A = B and B = C, then A = C" rule.
Problem is that B never truly equals C. No two schools are identical... not
even with the exact same equipment and identical software, because the users
are different. Some obscure software bugs are only triggered by weird
combinations of events... which can occur at one school and not another.
The fact that a certain setup or way of doing things works at one school
does not guarantee that it will work at another. Usually it will, but it's
not a guarantee. It's also not a given that if a setup works at one school,
it must be set up correctly. It might not be, it might just be that the
problem with the setup is not exposed. In this case, if you really only
have one user, I'd say that's the problem. And if you have 500 MM users and
2 ASIP users, I'd say that's the problem too.
:)
Richard MacLemale
Instructional Technology Specialist
James W. Mitchell High School
Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/
Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm
Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
Re: Mac to Windows
Just to reiterate and add to what Simon said... Having a PC to do Windows MC testing, to my mind is a must. I'm doing most of my developing on a 500 MHz G3 PowerBook lately, and I have Virtual PC running Windows 98 on it. MetaCard for PC running in Virtual PC/Windows 98 on a Mac is slow (dat's a lotta emulation in dere). It feels like a very slow Pentium. On the other hand, I've got a Packard-Bell PC with a Cyrix 266 (no laughing out there), and it runs MC downright zippy. When you imagine how cheaply you could get a used 266 MHz PC today, it really makes sense to get one. My next project will be to get a second PC and run Linux on it. Anyone find it odd that Outlook Express does not recognize Linux as a real word? Anyway... Somewhere in the list archives there's probably a list of Mac to Windows issues. I know a few... 1. Windows does not recognize the Mac's "does not equal" sign (command/equal.) HyperCard users love that key, and we've had to change. 2. MC defaults to the Helvetica font for a good reason - it's got the best cross-platform compatibility. Even so, fonts size out slightly differently on each platform, so you have to watch that. 3. Sometimes Mac-created graphics (GIF or JPEG) look funny on Windows, depending on how they were created. Depends how they were saved. 4. The usable screen size is different. The mac has a main menu bar, whereas Windows puts a menu bar in each window, plus the task bar at the bottom of the screen. So your menu bar ends up taking up space in your stack, plus there's the task bar. There's less usable real estate. 5. Windows files of course need the "dot 2" extension so that Windows knows what the file is. MC for Windows won't recognize metacard stacks from the Mac immediately unless you put ".mc" on the end. There may be a few more I'm forgetting. Aside from these issues, cross platform stacks work extremely well. :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
Re: Multi-thread question...
Thanks for the info, Scott. Your answer brings up another question... Would running mchttp on a Linux box be significantly faster than running it on a Mac? All other things (processor speed, amount of RAM, etc) being equal... :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
Multi-thread question...
Thanks to MetaCard I've learned some basic TCP/IP, developed my own e-mail and ftp clients, and incorporated them into some software that I've sold. Neato! The next step, obviously, is to create applications like mchttp, which run on the server. I remember reading something here about MetaCard 2.3.2 being able to simulate multithreading using "wait with message"... So... Is this the solution for people who don't want to use mchttp because it handles only one job at a time and thus can't match the speed of web hosting programs such as WebStar? Will mchttp be updated to include 2.3.2's new "wait with message" feature? Using "wait with message", how fast would MC be able to serve up web pages and graphics? Compared to WebStar? If multi-threading is a possibility in future versions of MC, should I be wasting my time with "wait with message?" And finally... What would be a simple example of using "wait with message" to allow MC to handle multiple socket requests? Any answers to any of these questions would be appreciated, as usual. :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
'Nuther question
OK, another one... Suppose I had a MetaCard stack acting as a web host, and another MetaCard stack acting as an ftp server. Would it be better (speed wise) to have both stacks running as individual apps, ie build standalone applications and run both at the same time? Or would it be better to just have them both running from the same copy of MetaCard? Would this be different if the host computer was running the Mac OS or WinNT (or Linux?) Again, thanks in advance for any input. :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
Mac documents icon
For the Mac experts, a question... Suppose I have an application that I made with MetaCard (it's a stand-alone app), and I've given it it's own type and creator codes. And one of the things this program can do is create new "files" (which are, of course, really stacks.) I want the "files" that my app creates to have unique icons. How do I do this? (I'm not afraid of using ResEdit on my app, if need be.) :) Richard MacLemale Instructional Technology Specialist James W. Mitchell High School Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard@lists.runrev.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
