🚀 go-pugleaf

>     I've been using the Desk Accessory Mover (1.4) to extract desk accessories
>      that were originally resources, not DAM documents.  Most DA's come out
>      OK.  Calendar, insect, and journal cannot be extracted from System
>      successfully using the DAM - when extracting them, they get
>      initiated as though I had selected them from the apple menu,
>      and DAM reports an error.
>      Is there something about these DA's that makes them unsuitable
>      to be made into DAM documents?  Is there a way around it?  I really
>      would like to keep them as DAM doc's; it's so much more
>      convenient.

I have noticed the same problem.  While I don't know why it happens I did
discover a 'work-around'.  DAM offers to name the accessory 'Desk Accessory'.
The solution is to accept this default name, then exit DAM and rename the
accessory to whatever name you choose.  This has always worked for me.

Good luck.
                                      Roy A. Standing (roy@nlm-vax)
                                      National Library of Medicine
                                       Lister Hill Center

I believe that the problem with some desk accessories not working with the
Desk Accessory Mover stems from the fact that the program assumes all desk
accessory names begin with a NUL.  Inside Macintosh recommends this
convention to avoid conflicts with files names that are the same as desk
accessory names.  The problem is that the DA Mover **incorrectly enforces**
this convention in a number of places.

You can usually tell if a DA is missing the NUL because the DA Mover sorts
the DAs by name, and those without NULs will sort at the end of the list --
apparently out of order.  Also, if you rename such a DA, the program will
chop off the first character of the name, because it expects it to be NUL.

You can fix everything by renaming the DAs that don't work.  The DA Mover
(correctly) inserts the NUL at the beginning of the string that you enter.
It is not necessary to rename them to an intermediate name first or copy
them into a separate file.

Programs that install desk accessories should automatically add the NUL to
the DA name (if not already present), but should not otherwise assume that
DA names begin with NUL.  

I have run into a similar problem with the sleep DA that was distributed
recently.  This is the one that comes packaged in an installation
application.  While you were in the installation program, certain DAs would
not work, because the program would prepend a NUL to the DA name that it
got out of the menu.  This made the OpenDeskAccessory call fail.  The
correct way to open a desk accessory is to get the name from the menu and
pass it unchanged to OpenDeskAccessory.

-- 
Larry Rosenstein

UUCP:  {nsc, dual, voder, ios}!apple!lsr
CSNET: lsr@Apple.CSNET

>> Calendar, insect, and journal cannot be extracted from System
>> successfully using the DAM - when extracting them, they get
>> initiated as though I had selected them from the apple menu,
>> and DAM reports an error.
> I have noticed the same problem.  While I don't know why it happens ...

In my experience, this happens when the file in which you are trying to
save the accessory has exactly the same name as the desk accessory itself.
I generally suffix the initials "DA" to the filename, e.g., "Calendar DA",
when saving it; the problem then does not occur.

						E. Roskos
						jer@peora.UUCP

> >> Calendar, insect, and journal cannot be extracted from System
> >> successfully using the DAM - when extracting them, they get
> >> initiated as though I had selected them from the apple menu,
> >> and DAM reports an error.
> > I have noticed the same problem.  While I don't know why it happens ...
> In my experience, this happens when the file in which you are trying to
> save the accessory has exactly the same name as the desk accessory itself.
> I generally suffix the initials "DA" to the filename, e.g., "Calendar DA",
> when saving it; the problem then does not occur.

This problem is due to the fact that a desk accessory is opened with the
same Open call that files are opened with.  If a desk accessory exists with
a given name, a file of that name cannot be opened.  The solution is to prefix
all desk accessory names with a null character (ASCII 0).  This is done
automatically by the rename feature in the Desk Accessory Mover (at least in
version 4.0).  So the SOLUTION is to rename the desk accessory before doing
anything else with it.  Rename it to the same name it had, and the Desk
Accessory Mover will add the null character.  (BTW, you should not have this
problem with an accessory that was named correctly to start with, e.g. the
Apple standard desk accessories.

Darin Adler
!ihnp4!tmq!darin