Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!torn!nott!cunews!dbuck
From: dbuck@superior.carleton.ca (Dave Buck)
Subject: Re: Help with visual works losing all of my comments
X-Nntp-Posting-Host: superior.carleton.ca
Message-ID: <DG2HwG.26J@cunews.carleton.ca>
Sender: news@cunews.carleton.ca (News Administrator)
Organization: Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
References: <DG1701.6zE@bton.ac.uk> <D> <DG1B7p.AxG@bton.ac.uk>
Date: Sat, 7 Oct 1995 07:24:16 GMT
Lines: 36

In article <DG1B7p.AxG@bton.ac.uk>,
Simon John Shurville <sjs16@itri.bton.ac.uk> wrote:
>Well I've since found a backed up changes file so I should be out of
>the woods soon, I hope. Thanks to evryone who mailed me directly. I
>still don't think it is very smart of VW to throw away one's comments
>though. There must be a way to avoid one's heart leaping into one's
>mouth for no good reason!
>

Actually I think it's very smart :-).  The problem is not that it
threw away your comments.  The problem is that Smalltalk couldn't even
locate your original code so in a last desparate attempt to give you
something you can work with, it decompiled the bytecodes for you.
Virtually no other programming system (with the exception of LISP and
a few others) can decompile the code for you when it can't find the
original source.  You should be happy :-).

I will agree, however, that losing the changes file can be a traumatic
experience.  The file in question (as you've discovered) is
visual.cha.  If you saved your image as something other than "visual",
the name of the changes file will match the image name.  These two
files (the .im file and the .cha file) must be kept in sync at all
times.  If you manually edit the .cha file or of you delete it, you
could be in for trouble.

David Buck
dbuck@ccs.carleton.ca

_________________________________
| David K. Buck                 |
| dbuck@ccs.carleton.ca         |
| The Object People             |
|_______________________________|



