marvel@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Howard P Marvel) (07/27/89)
I am installing some software on hard disk machines, but want student users to be able to keep their own floppies that track progress and record preferences. I don't want to distribute floppies to students but instead want them to be able to bring in floppies onto which I will copy a template preference stack from within HyperCard. I also want this to be as idiot-proof as possible, so I want to minimize what is done in the finder. Hence what I would like to do is check from within an openStack script or somesuch for whether a floppy is mounted and to give the student an opportunity to stick in a diskette if none is present. The problem is that the system only does a mountVol after it has had time to spin the floppy and make sure all is well. HyperCard, on the other hand, seems unwilling to give up control from within a script. That is, if I do a check for a valid floppy and the check fails and if I then put up an answer dialog asking the student to insert a floppy, then try to repeat the check for a valid floppy, the check will fail because the drive doesn't even spin the floppy until hypercard is finished with whatever it is up to. The trick of using an idle handler in hypercard doesn't work because HyperCard never idles. Is there some way around this from within HyperCard? By within HyperCard, I mean to include xcmd's, so if there is a toolbox routine I could use to force the os to check for a floppy, I'd appreciate a pointer.
dlugose@ecsvax.UUCP (Dan Dlugose) (07/28/89)
In article <56129@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Howard P Marvel <marvel@cis.ohio-state.edu> writes: >using an idle handler in hypercard doesn't work because HyperCard >never idles. Is there some way around this from within HyperCard? By An idle handler WILL give the system time to mount a floppy if you give it several chances (i.e. after the idler handler has executed a few times). So if you know that a student has a file by a certain name, you can try opening it and check the result. Not elegant, but serviceable if you want to avoid an XCMD. Dan Dlugose UNC Educational Computing Service