On Mon, 13 Mar 2000, Henrik Gedenryd wrote:

> Disables the new sources warning when the class uses a custom parser,
> like Prolog (or Squeak will warn you on every method you click on even
> if they are ok).
>
> Also adds Mac-specific info on the probable cause--if Bruce's recent
> tweak makes this never pop up, then so much for the better, but it
> should be there, still.

Good idea.  (The Mac/Stuffit problem hasn't gone away yet, so that's a
useful addition for now.)

On that front, at Dan Ingalls' request I did some more testing with the
Mac stuffit archive, to try to figure out what's going on.  Bruce's recent
tweak changes the .source/.changes file types from 'TEXT' to 'STdb' in the
current 2.7 archive on the ftp site, but I was still seeing the
munged-source problem after I expanded this archive on my Mac (if Stuffit
was set to convert text files, its default).

One odd thing I discovered is that installing Stuffit Deluxe 5.5 somehow
makes the problem disappear.  (Stuffit Deluxe 5.5 is commercial software,
not shareware/freeware... it's the latest version which lets you create
archives.  The expander programs are free.)  Even if I delete my Stuffit
preference files from the System Folder and try expanding the archive, the
problem is gone, once Stuffit 5.5 is installed.  Fortunately, I have
another Mac, which I haven't installed Stuffit 5.5 on yet, and the problem
still does occur there.  (The Stuffit on that Mac is Stuffit Expander 5.4,
no Stuffit Deluxe.)

This jibes with Bruce's report that he wasn't seeing the munged-source
problem, since he was also using Stuffit Deluxe 5.5.  (Does the
self-extracting archive actually run the latest installed version of
Stuffit to do the expanding?  I would've guessed that it would just use
its own internal code, since it is "self extracting", supposedly.)

So, I tried inserting a few non-text characters (>128) and linefeeds into
the intro comment in the sources file, and creating an archive with
that.  Expanding it on my non-5.5 Mac still munges the source,
though.  Poop.  I might still try a few more variations on tweaking the
sources file before giving up, though.  (Seems like it ought to be
doable.)

If that doesn't work, I guess we could consider something other than
Stuffit.  I know that Andrew Greenberg posted some sort of self-extracting
Squeak archive, but I haven't tried it.  I wasn't sure from the
description whether it compressed everything but the VM, or whether it
just compressed the sources and changes.  If the former, that sounds
great.  If the latter, the archives would be about double the current
size, so that seems a little iffy.

Anyway, at least Tim's fix (and Henrik's addition) will make the problem a
bit less ugly in the short term.

- Doug Way
  EAI/Transom Technologies, Ann Arbor, MI
  http://www.transom.com
  dway at mat.net, @eai.com