Confirming a Save command

[John Kiltinen]

I want users of my MetaCard application to be able to save changes to
stacks.  However if they are running the application off of the CD ROM on
which it will be delivered, or if for some reason the stack has been locked
or set for read only mode, the saving that they think they are doing does
not happen, and I want a way to detect this and let them know about it.

I have worked out a roundabout way to do this, but suspect that there is a
slicker method that I am missing.  I would like to stay within MetaCard
with the solution.

Here is what I currently am doing.

1.  Get a reading of the time (the seconds) and put this into a field in
the stack to be saved and also in a variable.

2.  Perform the save command.

3.  Close the stack, and delete it from memory.

4.  Open the stack again.

5.  Compare the time in the variable with what is in the field in the
stack.  If they are the same, the save happened.  If they are different, it
did not.

For my particular situation where confirming saving is crucial, the stack
can be invisible the whole time while this closing and deleting and
reopening is going on, so these steps will not be a distraction to the
user. If that were not the case, this method would be unacceptable.

There ought to be a better way to do this.  Anyone?

John Kiltinen


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 John Kiltinen (kiltinen at nmu.edu)        Home              Office
 Professor, Dept. of Math. & CS   Tel.(906) 228-8035 or (906) 227-1600
 Northern Michigan University     Fax (906) 228-4667 or (906) 2272010
 Marquette, MI 49855 USA
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