Testing STVi

[wado1971]

I've reread steps 5. & 8. (GKusnick's Studio Tools - STVI) a number of times and either I'm reading it wrong or my import is screwed up.

When I compare my stv (with new import) to the original stv the results looks good..... but I read the document as saying, "compare the stv (with new import) to the the modified stv saved in step 5 (which is my modified STV)"?? When I do this everything is less desirable!! Of course maybe the STV I've been modifying has a bunch of mods not related to my new menus (I've been saving the thing forever).

[GKusnick]

Sounds like you answered your own question. If you don't know the pedigree of the STV you've been coding your changes on, then you can't very well use it as a reliable standard of comparison. If comparing the stock STV + import against the stock STV alone shows all your relevant changes, then perhaps you'll have to be satisfied with that. But you're the only one who can decide which changes are relevant.

Of course there's no substitute for actually testing the imported code to see if it does what it's supposed to do.

[wado1971]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

If comparing the stock STV + import against the stock STV alone shows all your relevant changes, then perhaps you'll have to be satisfied with that.

Well - I was satisfied with the result of comparing the stock STV but then I had this great idea which I now regret. I assumed that a simple export & import of my new menus into a clean stock STV would be a nice test (using "Export Selected Menus..." from stock studio). Everything almost worked (almost is a killer) - so for the past couple hours I've been hunting down the "non functioning" bit of code. Turns out it was some broken references from my copy/paste extravaganza which I assume your STVi tool has so nicely pieced back together in the background for me. (now I'm starting to see a glimps of the value to your package - very nice!)

? So by using your export tools on my menus & importing into a stock STV will essentially clean up my modified & error prone STV - Do I have it right? Kind of like running the old STV through the car wash.
Thanks again for your reply

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by wado1971

Well - I was satisfied with the result of comparing the stock STV but then I had this great idea which I now regret. I assumed that a simple export & import of my new menus into a clean stock STV would be a nice test (using "Export Selected Menus..." from stock studio). Everything almost worked (almost is a killer) - so for the past couple hours I've been hunting down the "non functioning" bit of code. Turns out it was some broken references from my copy/paste extravaganza which I assume your STVi tool has so nicely pieced back together in the background for me. (now I'm starting to see a glimps of the value to your package - very nice!)

? So by using your export tools on my menus & importing into a stock STV will essentially clean up my modified & error prone STV - Do I have it right? Kind of like running the old STV through the car wash.
Thanks again for your reply

When I create a plugin and then do a test import, the first thing I do is a Search for "ref>>" (without quotes). That will list all of the broken references after import. Usually the problem is caused by not having all of the primary and secondary references properly set when the export was done. If the search returns no matches, then I do a test of the plugin functionality. HTH

Aloha,
Mike

[GKusnick]

Export Selected Menus does not encode references to themes and other shared code; it copies the referenced code instead. If you then import back into a stock STV, you'll end up with a lot of duplicated code, which is not generally what you want for an STVI.

Once you get your references adjusted, Export As STVI exports just the code under the menus you select, without pulling in shared code from secondary refs. Importing the result back into a stock STV should give you the cleaned-up result you're looking for (if you have the references right before export).

If you use the Import STVI command in my Studio plugin, instead of the regular Import command in the Detailed Setup screen, it should tell you about any broken references in the import. (But using Search to double-check can't hurt.)

[wado1971]

Alright - thanks for the tips guys. Looks like I've got some cleanup work to do in the near future. I guess this means the fun part is official over