Re: [MacPerl] droplets

[hal@dtor.com (Hal Wine)]

At 09:52 96-05-01, Bart Lateur wrote:

>There are only futile arguments against this:

Well, you left out a non futile one.  When Matthias was first adding
droplets, it was not at all clear whether or not native PPC
applications would be allowed to have a data fork.  (I believe they
can, but I don't do PPC native code, so I'm not sure.)  Therefore, the
resource fork was the only "safe" place to put it.

So, while the decision might be questioned at this point, it was the
correct one, IMO, at the time.  To change it now would have to be
thought out carefully, as there may be subtle interactions not
immediately apparent.  (I believe some folks make use of the TEXT
resource for packaging require'd files into a single droplet -- a topic
discussed quite a while ago on the list.)

As with any long term project, early decisions often seem strange in
the newly evolved context.  That doesn't mean they didn't make sense.
Or that they aren't too costly to change (look at some of the baggage
Perl 5 still has from Perl 4).  That's one of the major downsides of an
interpreted language -- any change to the interpretor can break
existing code without warning!

Of course, what would help would be having this feature more clearly
documented in the FAQ.  I clearly do not have the time to maintain the
FAQ these days -- any takers?

--Hal
Hal Wine <hal@dtor.com>     voice: 510/482-0597