Re: Facespan 3.5.1: Is it good, or bad, for you?
Re: Facespan 3.5.1: Is it good, or bad, for you?
- Subject: Re: Facespan 3.5.1: Is it good, or bad, for you?
- From: "Mike Miller" <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 11:30:29 -0600
What does not kill you only makes you stronger <email@hidden> replied:
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on 02/20/01 6:46 PM, email@hidden wrote:
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> I have only once hit the 32KB limit when writing a FaceSpan application, and I
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> consider that app to be very poorly designed.
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Oh, yeah. I have some that are larger (Not including shared
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libraries/scripts), and they *could* use some cleanup, but when that client
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needs the "update/fix" yesterday because they decided to change some aspect
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of their workflow and you hit that character limit the first thing to go is
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the comments.
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"Jeez, maybe I can fit this in if I delete those comments I won't need to
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rewrite too much. I shouldn't need those.." Been there, done that. Not a
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real cool idea..
My situation was rewriting a horrendously designed application. Everything
was in the Project Script, it wouldn't launch without giving you the "Where is...?" dialog for three different apps (two of ours and the Scriptable Text Editor), the preferences and setup dialogs were ugly and confusing, it broke the UI guidelines for colors and whatnot, there was no real error handling, and once the app was started there was practically no interactivity.
While I was unable to fix everything, after the rewrite it was much
cleaner and faster, had decent layouts for preferences and setups, lost its direct dependencies on outside apps, no longer used the STE, mostly followed the Platinum Appearance, had OK error handling, and you could pause, stop, and
restart the app's assigned tasks midstream.
However, I also continued adding things to the Project Script and actually went over the 32K limit. I wound up moving a number of routines that were only called during the "work" section of the app to the app's Status window. I also deleted some of the old code I had only commented out.
Afterwards, I've been designing around this limitation by keeping routines broken up, and it's worked out nicely. I don't think I've ever hit the 32K limit again.
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I consider the 32kb limit to be a sign of a poorly written aplication, as
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are the dependencies on the QuickDraw Extensions.. (Those are my 2 biggest
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complaints with this product. And the only ones I might add..;-)
The ongoing argument over the 32K limit amuses me (some scripters get a little too worked up over it). It will be nice when they remove the limitation, but for now I just work around it the very few times it's a problem and get my job done. Admittedly, my AppleScripts tend to have shorter and less flow-breaking comments than my C++ code, but AppleScripts are usually easier to read than C++ code.
I'm not sure what they added that caused the QuickDraw 3D dependency. I'd also prefer FaceSpan not require it, but as I haven't had any questions about it yet I'm not that worried. :)
Good luck!
Mike Miller
ESG Labs
http://www.esglabs.com/