OpenEuphoria

1. For Rob et.al.

• Posted by Irv Mullins <irv at ELLIJAY.COM> Dec 01, 1998
• 402 views

I have a program which uses several include files.
Most of the includes do not contain any code that the user
needs to modify (or even see). There is a high probability
of a user deleting a file by accident, sooner or later.

I could bind them, right? Yes, but: there is one file which
DOES have some user-modifiable data:
-- prefs.e
 video_mode = 256 -- a global integer defined elsewhere
 vesa_mode = 1    -- or 0 for no vesa (ditto)
 fontpath = "C:\\EUPHORIA\\FONTS" -- set this to point to your font dir

Now, to get this into my bound program, I must include an ini reader, which
must: check for the existence of a prefs.e file, parse the file, check for
correct spelling (fontpaht, for example, must produce an error message),
type check the values (can't assign "NO" to use_vesa() for example,
and assign the values to the proper variables.

If I bind all this into my package, then as soon as someone says:
"I'd like to change the font", I must re-write the ini file handler
to include reference to "default_font", re-bind, and send new copies
to everyone who is using the program.

Awful lot of work when Euphoria can do all that reading and type-checking
and assigning already, if you just don't bind the code!

Rob, why can we not have, as mentioned in Ralf's letter to Santa last week,
something like: include unbound prefs.e
which would do just what it says: go out and get this file and include it
prior to running?

Irv