At 4:42 AM +0100 on 12/23/00, lcs@... wrote:

>Hi Heather,
>
>On Sunday last 17 Dec 2000 18:27:38 -0800 you wrote:
>
>>  This is probably a work in progress but I
>>  uploaded the FB^3 DropShell project:
>>
>>  http://www.slip.net/~heatherd/futurebasic/FBDropShell.sit.hqx
>>
>>  I added a splash screen if you double-click the application to launch
>>  it.  It doesn't show this splash screen if you drop objects on it...
>
>Here is some progress I need to see before I can seriously grok your
>project.

Well, I did say it was work in progress.  Also note that I am leaving 
my old ISP and that the version at the URL above is not the most 
recent version.  I'll post a new, better version (how about version 
0.01d?) as soon as I fix a few things.


>--- No app should ever crash any Mac ever sold, if a modicum of care can
>avoid it.  You are crashing all my 68K Macs. You should be bailing out
>with a familiar alert, or better an intelligible one.

Sorry, the app was compiled for PPC only.  That was how the project 
was made and compiled.  I used some Toolbox FN's that don't have 68k 
inline.  They won't compile for 68k without it.  I'll rewrite them 
using the Low-Level file functions like PBWrite rather than FSWrite.

In order for a PPC app to gracefully quit on a 68k machine, I'll have 
to check the hardware and throw up an alert if it's not PPC.


>--- A simple D&D application should at least run on all PPC's. Yours
>only runs on PPC Macs with systems >= 7.6.  Most programs compiled by
>FB3 *do* run under systems 7.5.x (and lower?). (Did the first PPC's came
>in at 7.1??)

I don't remember for sure.  I had a 6100 as soon as I could get my 
hands on one, traded in my LCII for one.  I usually like to work on 
the new stuff.  I probably should make the DropShell PPC and MacOS 9 
only. ;-)

I'm pretty sure drag & drop requires the drag manager, it will 
require at least System 7.5 or the Drag Manager extension on an older 
machine.  I can test for that at the same time as the 68k test and 
throw up an alert.  That shouldn't be too hard but I can't test on 
older systems than MacOS 9.


>Right away, could you please post the 68K binary? It's part of the
>overall picture.

Not any time soon.  It won't compile for 68k until I replace the 
high-level File Manager calls.  I like the high-level File Manager 
functions since I don't have to fill in a parameter block.  They 
conflict with some of the TBAlias that are defined in Tlbx 
Standard.Incl, that is why I have a different copy in the project 
folder.

>I do appreciate your working up a drop shell for FB3.  I imagine that
>the big message for the average list member is that modulo use of the
>Tech runtime, meaningfull PPC FB3 programs begin life weighing around
>40Ko. That's maybe 5 times less than for the FB2 compatibility runtime.
>That is really pretty good news and worth spending more time on.
>Incidentally that is where ZBasic programs weighed in before the
>remarkable FB1 mini-runtime (micro-runtime) effort by Andy G around 1991
>dropped the figure maybe 5-fold.

I don't think the average FB^3 programmer is using the Tech Runtime 
very much.  I did some initial conversion to the FBII runtime and it 
was about 200k.  That is a little large for a simple one-shot D&D app 
but it doesn't get much bigger to add a lot of functionality.  For 
most apps the FBII runtime is a great thing.

While I'll cleanup the DropShell project, I'll leave the pursuit of 
the ultra small, backward compatible applications to you.