Subject:
From:
Date: | RE: [ECS] Sending file through DDE link
Michael David
Mon, 31 Aug 1998 23:03:46 -0400 |
Hi Dan!
>Michael, you can set ace to look for the file every second, so there
>won't be too much delay in ecs creating the file and ace "seeing" it. Is
>1 second too long of a delay?
One second is a bit too long only when I need to spit out two complete
messages in that time frame. Then the second file would presumably
over-wright the first. However, ultimately there might be an answer here.
More a little later...
>However, ace's serial parsing routine can handle a message that comes in
>pieces. Just set the serial port up with some sort of termination
>character for each msg. That way, ace will concatenate all data received
>fron teh port until the term char is received.
Yup, that's how I have been doing it. And, indeed, no valid ACE command
that I could ever dream up is too long for this method. But now that I have
switched 90% of everything over to the DDE link, I am quite enamored with
the advantages of DDE over serial connection:
1) It's faster;
2) It requires WAY LESS event lines to support. So far I have been able to
eliminate 2230 event lines I had to support ACE before. Obviously, directly
controlling and getting status from items made the big difference here;
3) Most importantly, I get two serial ports back on my ECS machine! :)
>What type of message are you trying to send to ace? Maybe if I know this
>I can help more.
Some of my text messages I want to display in a MSG window are a bit long,
but I suppose I can look for ways to truncate. Also, sometimes I want to
use a BTN command to change the text and color of a button beyond the normal
state monitoring that ACE does. So, I can end up with a button command
something like this:
ACEC:0:BTN:5,7,22,<insert message here>,1,1,1,16777215,3806696,1,1
That's 45 characters, not including the message, which leave me about 20 for
the message. Arguably, it's only a button, how much text do I need to put
on it? I have some that have 40 characters or so of info on them. Yes, I
know I can be a bit extreme.
Let me also add that I'm definitely not advocating shortening your commands
here. The command structure you have laid out is extremely flexible.
Obviously the flexibility means slightly longer commands.
Now, the answer might be in Mark's suggestion for the Set/Char item and
going with ACES' file checking routine. Especially, if I only use that
avenue for these longer commands.
Cheers!
Michael David
michael@michaeldavid.com