HyperCard question

[LarBob]

I believe Tenon may have shipped a broken version of ManTen with MachTen 2.3. Professional MachTen is basically a 4.3BSD running on top of Mach on top of Mac OS. ManTen is a HyperCard viewer for the man pages shipped with the distribution. If you don't know about the structure of MachTen, then basically you have a "MachTen" root folder somewhere on your disk, and then within it is MachTen's filesystem with all of the UNIX-y folders you expect (var, usr, etc.). Running ManTen with this setup results in the man pages have not been installed error pictured below, but moving MachTen's usr folder to the root of the actual Mac disk allows them to be loaded. Is this a mistake in the stack or am I missing something here?

Amending the path to :MachTen 2.3 Root:usr:man:Man for each button in the script does work around the issue as well.

Ideally, I'd like to make this a relative path. ManTen sits in a folder deeper than where usr is, but changing the path to ::usr:man:Man didn't seem to fix it. I believe :: should lead to the parent directory in classic Mac OS, but the path above doesn't work. Any ideas? I've never messed with HyperCard at all before this really.

 

[cheesestraws]

Where is GetManDir (in the second image) defined? Have a look in the stack script. That looks like the thing that is responsible for working out where the manuals are stored.

 

[LarBob]

Where is GetManDir (in the second image) defined? Have a look in the stack script. That looks like the thing that is responsible for working out where the manuals are stored.

It isn't in the stack script, through another error I was able to get to this, but I have no idea how to get to it without seeing the error ("File not open" if usr isn't at the root of the disk still). Sending a message such as "edit script of field id 42" results in "There is no bkgnd field id 42". I've never edited HyperCard before this, so I'm not sure I quite understand the way it's structured. The stack script is just the second image.

 

[cheesestraws]

It isn't in the stack script, through another error I was able to get to this

Hmmm. Can you attach or send me the stack? I'll have a poke.

 

[LarBob]

Hmmm. Can you attach or send me the stack? I'll have a poke.

The stack is in the first download here: https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/professional-machten-68k

You're going to need to install the man pages as directed on that CD as well.

Thanks!

 

[MrFahrenheit]

Those calls like Get*Dir look like XCMDs.