Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site wanginst.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!wanginst!vishniac
From: vishniac@wanginst.UUCP (Ephraim Vishniac)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: Startup Applications
Message-ID: <1021@wanginst.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Sep-85 08:01:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: wanginst.1021
Posted: Wed Sep  4 08:01:00 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Sep-85 04:58:58 EDT
References: <20800037@smu>
Organization: Wang Institute, Tyngsboro, Ma.  01879
Lines: 35

> Hi.  I have a small ignorance problem in the area of startup
> applications.  Can an application figure out if it's being run as the
> startup?  Is there something strange about the startup environment
> (like what does it mean if a program runs from the finder but not as a
> startup)?  Can the finder be told to pass an argument to the startup
> application?
> 
> CONFUSED IN DALLAS
> 

Dear Confused:
	I don't know of any sure-fire way for an application to tell
that it is being run as the startup application.  It can take a guess
by inspecting the boot sectors of the startup disk: if the startup 
application listed there has some other name, then the present program
was certainly *not* the startup.

	The only strange feature of being run as the startup is that
no application has run before.  That means you can't cheat on all those
initialization calls.  Often, programs that neglect some initialization
calls will still run because some program has called them before and
(probably) left things in a useful state.  If you run normally, but not
as a startup, this may be the problem.

	The finder can't pass an argument to the startup application
because the finder doesn't launch the startup application: the system
does.  When you appear not to have a startup set, the finder is the
startup application.  So far as the system's concerned, launching the
finder is no different from launching anybody else.

-- 
Ephraim Vishniac
  [apollo, bbncca, cadmus, decvax, harvard, linus, masscomp]!wanginst!vishniac
  vishniac%Wang-Inst@Csnet-Relay