Director???
4 messages in this thread
I tried to call Right Answers today for some help. I was informed that
there was no phone support for the Amiga users of the Director. What gives?
Has Right Answers, apparently now suppporting Apple users over the phone,
abandoned the Amiga community?
Coupla questions. Can anyone shed light on two problems I'm having with the
director version 1?
First, I am getting "Math Stack Imbalance" error messages. I don't know
what I'm doing wrong. I have several for next loops in the program. Each
has a for statement at the top and a next at the bottom as required. In
between there are copy (from fast to chip buffers) display and pause
commands–nothing exotic. There are no goto's exiting the loops, no loops
within loops. The script looks okay to me but it keeps booting me out.
Second, I have another script using some images made in DPaint at
320x200x32. If I use View for the director toolkit, all the images are
displayed and the filenames are listed at the end…everything's normal.
Now, when I run the Director script, I get a "Can't Load Directory
filename" error message. with the name of the picture where I have filename
in this example. What gives? Any ideas?
Math Stack Imbalance occurs when certain invalid expressions get past the
compilation portion of The Director without detection, and result during
runtime in an extra numeric parameter on the stack after the expression has
been evaluated. This usually occurs as a result of some kind of error in
an expression, and in fact, now results in an "Invalid Expression" error
which is probably a little more helpful. Take a close look at any
expressions used in the statement where the error occurs and see if you can
spot anything unusual. You could als post the offending line here to see
if I can spot what might be wrong.
As far as the image file name problem, note that if a complete pathname is
not used, the pathname is considered to be relative to the location of the
.film file. The film file will be generated at a location that depends on
the Configure selection in the DEdit Project menu. If "Film Output
Directory" is not empty, it specifies an explicit pathname (usually the
location of your project, or RAM:). If "Film Output Directory" is empty,
then the .film file will be located in the same directory as your script
file.
When you use "View" to look at an image, and then paste its name into your
script, it will look at the name and the "Film Output Directory" and reduce
the name to a relative specification if possible, so that your image file
names will not be complete pathnames. This is desirable, because it makes
it easier to move an entire directory that includes your
film files and image files onto a floppy from your hard disk, or to another
location on your hard disk without having to go back and readjust all of
the image file names.
Keith
Thanks for you reply Keith. I was working with some students, and, during
the interim, we figured out what was wrong. The Math Stack Imbalance was
returned because the script contained a statement followed by a REM on the
same line without a colon to separate the statements. The pic files
wouldn't load because of some scrambled data. The student made new images
for the offending files and the problem disappeared.
Care to comment on the Apple connection and what that may mean for us Amiga
users who've known and loved RIGHT ANSWERS for years???
Best, George
Well, to be frank, it has been getting more difficult to continue to do
business strictly on Amiga profit margins. Because of that, we have been
taking several steps in the direction of multi-platform. However, don't
automatically assume this means that your Director scripts will port
directly to a MAC or PC, as the problem is neither platform will support
some of the more interesting things the Director does and most of you are
using. It requires some rethinking of several problems to provide
effective multi-platform programs.
Originally, I was greatly influenced by other companies who took special
advantage of a given platform's unique features. As an owner of such a
platform, I was particularly aware of programs that made use of the special
capabilities of a machine that I bought for just those special
capabilities.
However, all of those particular companies ultimately went out of business.
In addition, we are beginning to see that the distinction between the
different machines are a lot less significant than they once were, and in
any event, it can not only be very risky for a company to place all of its
eggs in one basket, but it is also a big advantage when a company can offer
in its products, inter-platform compatibility which becomes more and more
important as businesses and even individuals more and more are using a
variety of computers from different manufacturers.
The one factor I can promise is, that our new products will be unique. We
are not afraid to try completely new and untried ways to solve some of the
interesting problems that are out there. The company was dubbed Right
Answers, not because we think we have an exclusive on right answers, but
because we feel that for a given problem there is not only one right
answer, there are many. Answers is plural. Hopefully, we will provide one
that is right for you.
Keith