SCOUG-Programming Mailing List Archives

>> Next Message >>

Date:	Tue, 15 Dec 1998 18:56:18 PST
From:	Peter Skye <pskye@peterskye.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-programming@scoug.com
To:	scoug-programming@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Programming: "Become" tab in Properties notebook

Content Type: text/plain

The "Become" tab in the Properties notebook appears when a data file has
extended attributes, and does not appear on files which have zero-length
extended attributes.

And, the "Become" tab's Help button says it is for changing an object's
Workplace Shell "Class". The "Become" tab allows you to choose a
different "class handler" to manage the "object" (the file).

Further, the current Workplace Shell "Class" apparently is stored in the
.CLASSINFO (and .PREVCLASS) tags in a file's extended attributes. (I
used The Graham Utilities to dump the EA's of some of my data files, and
the .CLASSINFO and .PREVCLASS extended attribute tags appear to contain
the "Class" info.)

Questions:

1. What is the "class handler" referred to by the above-mentioned Help
button? Is it some code that executes in the Workplace Shell?

2. How do you set a file's Workplace Shell "Class" if it doesn't have
one already (or if it has one and you want to change it)? For example,
the RexxUtil SysCreateObject function may do this, but I'm not sure of
the syntax. And how do you do this in C?

3. What is the purpose of the Workplace Shell "Class"? What uses it?
What is it used for? Are there programs that check this tag before
opening the file to see how it should be processed? Does the Workplace
Shell check this tag when you click on a data file object to decide how
to handle it?

Thanks.

- Peter Skye

=====================================================

To unsubscribe from this list, send an email message
to "steward@scoug.com". In the body of the message,
put the command "unsubscribe scoug-programming".

For problems, contact the list owner at
"rollin@scoug.com".

=====================================================

Return to [ 15 | December | 1998 ]

SCOUG, Warp Expo West, and Warpfest are trademarks of the Southern California OS/2 User Group. OS/2, Workplace Shell, and IBM are registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. All other trademarks remain the property of their respective owners.