October 4, 1987 (Scabskins beat the Cards 28-21 -- yeah!)
FIRST OF ALL: If you consider yourself to be a ResEdit/HyperCard whiz, don't waste your time reading this damn document. You probably know what to do, or at least down to the "HOW TO USE" section. You're welcome.
ABOUT SHUTDOWN.XCMD:
There seemed to be a lot of HyperCard authors (including myself) who wanted to add a ShutDown feature to their stacks. After getting tired of waiting for someone else to do it, I took it upon myself to make a XCMD resource which does this very thing. It turned out to be alot easier than I thought. (I am a programming novice at best--this has boosted my confidence considerably!)
HOW TO INSTALL:
Any tool which copies resources from one file to another will work. ResEdit, REdit, etc. will do. There's even a Hypercard stack called ResCopier, or something like that, which supposedly will copy resources, although I haven't checked it out. Since most people have ResEdit, I'll illustrate with that. If you don't have ResEdit (yeah, well, there may be one or two...) it's available on virtually every decent Mac BBS in the country, as well as the major services like GEnie and CompuServe.
Depending upon your level of intestinal fortitude, you may or may not wish to perform these operations on a COPY of your stack (I'm no preacher...) Here's how to do it:
1) Open ResEdit.
2) Find the file "ShutDown.XCMD" and open it (double-click).
3) The window "ShutDown.XCMD" appears on the screen. Select XCMD (single-click) and perform "Copy" from the Edit menu.
4) Close this window, then close the "ShutDown.XCMD" file.
5) Still in ResEdit, find the stack you wish to install ShutDown on and double-click it. If the stack has no existing resources (which is likely) a dialog box will come up saying "This file has no resource fork. Opening it will create one..." etc. Click O.K.
6) A blank window will open. Perform "Paste" from the Edit menu.
XCMD will appear in the window.
7) Click the corner of this window to close your altered Stack. ResEdit will beep at you & ask if you want to save changes to your stack, which of course you do.
8) Quit ResEdit.
NOTE: If you already have one or more XCMD's in your stack, the above procedure is a bit different, but if you've done this then you're probably Mac-wise enough to figure it out. If not, what you do is _open_ XCMD (step 3), then copy ShutDown, and paste it in the XCMD resource of your stack.
That's it! Now...
HOW TO USE IT IN YOUR STACK:
In any script or in the message box, you may enter the command "shutdown" (NOT with the quotation marks, and capital letters don't matter) and that is EXACTLY what will happen. Example of a button script:
on mouseUp
shutdown
end mouseUp
HOW IT WORKS (without getting too damn technical, but assumes a slight comprehension of HyperTalk):
When you send a command that HyperCard does not recognize through a script or through the message box, it begins looking for an XCMD resource of the name identical to the command you typed. It searches up through the hierarchy: Stack >> Home Card >> HyperCard. When a match is found, the external command is carried out.
Indeed, if you wanted instant ShutDown ability from any of your stacks, you could copy the resource into the HyperCard application itself (yeah...that's the ticket!) On the flip side, if you're sharing your stacks with other people, you'd want the resource to be in the stack for it to do them any good (is that obvious or what?)
THIS COULD BE IMPORTANT:
This thing is designed to work with System versions 4.0 and 4.1 (mainly 4.1). Although HyperCard is supposed to be able to run on System 3.2, this XCMD may not. I haven't had the time to check. It will _probably_ work with the soon-to-come System 4.2 (unless Apple really screws things up).
TH-TH-THAT'S ALL, FOLKS:
This thing is free as the breeze (how could it not be) but if you find it useful, send me some E-Mail. I love getting E-Mail. Float this around to all the BBS's but try to keep this doc attached (for a laugh or two, if nothing else).
On CompuServe: 71360,3122
On GEnie: W.CATE
Twighlight Clone BBS: WILL CATE
Thanks to Alan Dahlbam for his super ResTools application (thanks for the bug-fix, Alan).
