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From: matthews@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Jim Matthews)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Checking for MF (was Re: Need some MF help)
Message-ID: <12904@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Date: 5 Apr 89 13:35:32 GMT
References: <1562@neoucom.UUCP> <28689@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <1179@internal.Apple.COM>
Sender: news@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU
Reply-To: matthews@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Jim Matthews)
Distribution: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Lines: 22

I don't have any good reasons for wanting to detect MultiFinder's
presence, but I would like a call to find out whether my program is
in the background.

I know about suspend and resume events, but I want to find out where my
program is *right now*.  The reason is that it's easy to drop a suspend
or resume event, particularly when ModalDialog or one of the Alert
calls is getting the events.  It's uncommon for major switching to
occur with a modal dialog is in front, but it isn't impossible -- the
foreground application can quit, and setting startup to multiple
applications can cause it also.  Dropping one suspend or resume
event can leave the application out of synch for a long time, with ugly
effects in terms of cursor tracking, notification of asynchronous
events, and other application-specific things.

One alternative is to compare my name to CurApName, but it isn't
impossible for the user to run two identically-named programs.  So is
there a sure-fire way to tell whether I'm in background, or any plans
to provide one?

Jim Matthews
Dartmouth Software Development