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From: hi2cah@sdcc13.ucsd.EDU (John "Tushie" Ogawa)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: desk accessories
Message-ID: <890@sdcc13.ucsd.EDU>
Date: Thu, 4-Jun-87 19:22:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcc13.890
Posted: Thu Jun  4 19:22:44 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 9-Jun-87 01:59:08 EDT
References: <16225@cca.CCA.COM> <1432@ubc-cs.UUCP> <86@decvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: hi2cah@sdcc13.ucsd.edu.UUCP (John "Tushie" Ogawa)
Organization: U.C. San Diego, Academic Computer Center
Lines: 44


<<EAT AT JOE'S>> <<NOT AT MINE>>

As the author (unfortunately) of a desktop accessory (that I *am*
working on, it should be out on Sunday) I thought I'd throw my
(probably wrong) advice into this discussion:

It is entirely possible to have menus in DA's. It is also possible
to have separate RSC files. However, the latter requires some
special attention. You can (according to the documentation that I
have) only have one resource tree loaded with rsrc_load in memory at
a time per running program. Since DA's are constantly running (in a
sense) you can only have one RSC file per DA *and* application. This
means that if you have a DA with a separate RSC file loaded, you
*cannot* run an application that loads its own RSC file. Early
versions of SCHIZO.ACC that had separate RSC files would crash if
you tried to run them after leaving Uniterm. There are 2 ways of
solving this problem. 1)Write your own resource tree by hand or
include it as C code generated by a Resource Constructor, and
2)Free the memory allocated for the resource tree before leaving the
DA. I chose the first method for SCHIZO since it did not require
time consuming disk reads to load the RSC file *every* time the DA
was called. The second method requires the use of rsrc_free before
calling the evnt_multi loop again. You must also load the RSC file
with rsrc_load when coming out of the evnt_multi loop.

Whew! I realize the above discussion was not the clearest. I hope
that it does help future DA writers though. All information was
gained through hair-tearing experimentation and the patience of
several ST gurus. In other words, it may be wrong. But, it may be
right. Who knows :-).

I'd be happy to answer any questions concerning DAs and RSC files
until this account goes away (June 14th). After that look for me on
GEnie.

Happy Hacking!

John Ogawa

GEnie: TUSHIE
NET: ps136sag@sdcc13.ucsd.edu <or> ...ucbvax!sdcsvax!sdcc13!ps136sag

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