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@cleobuline cleobuline released this 30 Sep 13:03
· 74 commits to main since this release
HC-0.7.3
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Learn about vigilant mode.

HC-0.7.3 — Cmd-period stops a script

One subject: you can now stop a running script. Press Cmd-. and HC stops the script, along with every handler that called it.

Until now nothing could stop a script. A repeat forever ran until the ten-million-iteration cap, or until you quit the app — losing whatever had not been saved.

The project also gets a README, in French and English, and a licence: MIT.

At a glance

  | 0.7.2 | 0.7.3 -- | -- | -- stop a running script | not possible | Cmd-. repeat forever, then Cmd-. | runs to the 10-million cap | stops at once the handler that called the loop | — | stops too put total() into field "Sum", total stopped mid-way | — | the field is left intact wait 20 seconds, then Cmd-. | waits 20 seconds | returns at once error dialog on Cmd-. | — | none README / licence | none | French and English / MIT the hcVersion, "About HC" | 0.7.2 | 0.7.3

Installing: macOS will say the app is damaged. It is not.

This release is not notarised. macOS quarantines anything downloaded from the internet, and Gatekeeper refuses an app it cannot trace to a notarised Developer ID — with a message that says the wrong thing:

"HC is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Trash."

The app is not damaged. It is unnotarised, which is a different problem, and the wording sends people to the Trash for no reason.

Copy HC.app to /Applications, then clear the quarantine flag once:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/HC.app

It opens normally after that, and the flag does not come back. An app you build yourself from this repository is never quarantined — it is only the download that triggers this.

The binary is universal — x86_64 arm64. Deployment target is macOS 10.13.

1. Cmd-period

"We need a Cmd-. — it's essential."

What it does. Cmd-. stops the running handler and every handler that called it, the whole chain, without an error dialog. A real error that happened before the stop is still reported. Loops and wait stop at once. Typed in the message box, repeat forever stops too.

A stopped function leaves no damage. A HyperTalk function stopped mid-way returns empty. Without care, put total() into field "Sum" would have finished its line with that empty value and wiped the field. The line that called the function does not run, and the field stays as it was.

Why there was none. There were two missing pieces:

  • The kernel had no way to stop a script at all.
  • The key never arrived. During a script, HC keeps the window alive, but nothing takes keystrokes out of the queue: they wait for the script to end. Cmd-. waited for the end of the very script it was meant to stop.

Now:

  • Kernel: each handler in the chain checks for the request before its next line, and every loop and wait checks too. The request clears once nothing is running. Pressed when no script runs, Cmd-. does nothing, and it cannot stop the next script.
  • App: while a script runs, HC looks for Cmd-. in the event queue up to sixty times a second. The other keystrokes are put back, in order, and handled after the script as before. Cmd-. is recognised by its character, so it works on an AZERTY keyboard, where the period needs Shift.

Tried in HC by its author: "it works very well."

2. A README and a licence

The repository had neither. README.md (French) and README.en.md (English) now say in a few lines what HC is: HyperCard's scripts run as they are, 99.7 % of a corpus of real stacks, and HC adds colour — paint, icons, and backColor / foreColor / textColor on objects.

The licence is MIT: free to use, modify and redistribute, provided the authors are credited — Patricia Benedetto and Claude (Anthropic).

3. What is not measured is written down as not measured

  • What HyperCard does on Cmd-. is not measured: a dialog, a beep, or nothing? Do the callers stop too? HC assumes everything stops, silently. To play in HyperCard: 
    on mouseUp
      put "before" into msg
      repeat forever
      end repeat
      put "after" into msg
    end mouseUp
  • The key check in the app is compiled on macOS and was tried by hand; it has no automated test.
  • A script that neither loops nor waits cannot be stopped: it finishes on its own.

Test status

  • C kernel: 261 checks, all green, including under AddressSanitizer, UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer and LeakSanitizer. One new one: cmdpoint, fourteen cases — loops with and without a body, callers, a stopped function, wait, the message box, no dialog, back to rest.
  • Zero warnings, gcc at three optimisation levels and clang with Xcode's families.
  • The Cocoa layer still has no automated tests — CI only proves it compiles.

Decided against: cantAbort

HyperCard has a stack property, cantAbort, that disables Cmd-. HC will not have it. Cmd-. is the only way out of a runaway script without quitting and losing unsaved work; a stack must not be able to take that away. This is a decision, not a gap.

Known, and not fixed here

  • Keystrokes typed during a script are put back at the head of the queue, so they now come before a click that preceded them.
  • After a fault raised by a command (hide, set, a message nobody handles), the handler carries on and the dialog comes at the end. HyperCard probably stops on the spot — to play in HyperCard.
  • A fault inside a user function stops the function but not its caller.
  • visual effect followed by go, without lock screen, still plays after the script rather than inside go.
  • Still standing from 0.7: named windows, patterns, resource-fork icons, HyperCard 1.x, private-access stacks, the proportional period fonts. CFBundleVersion is still hard-coded to 1. Not notarised; see "Installing".

Changes in this release

  • #83 — Cmd-. stops the running script and every handler that called it (6bc0fcc)
  • #84 — README in French and English, MIT licence (c90c474, 18f3b09)
  • this release — version 0.7.3 in all three places, and this note

Full changelog: HC-0.7.2...HC-0.7.3

HC-0.7.3 — Cmd-period stops a script

One subject: you can now stop a running script. Press Cmd-. and HC stops the script, along with every handler that called it.

Until now nothing could stop a script. A repeat forever ran until the ten-million-iteration cap, or until you quit the app — losing whatever had not been saved.

The project also gets a README, in French and English, and a licence: MIT.
At a glance
0.7.2 0.7.3
stop a running script not possible Cmd-.
repeat forever, then Cmd-. runs to the 10-million cap stops at once
the handler that called the loop — stops too
put total() into field "Sum", total stopped mid-way — the field is left intact
wait 20 seconds, then Cmd-. waits 20 seconds returns at once
error dialog on Cmd-. — none
README / licence none French and English / MIT
the hcVersion, "About HC" 0.7.2 0.7.3
Installing: macOS will say the app is damaged. It is not.

This release is not notarised. macOS quarantines anything downloaded from the internet, and Gatekeeper refuses an app it cannot trace to a notarised Developer ID — with a message that says the wrong thing:

"HC is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the Trash."

The app is not damaged. It is unnotarised, which is a different problem, and the wording sends people to the Trash for no reason.

Copy HC.app to /Applications, then clear the quarantine flag once:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/HC.app

It opens normally after that, and the flag does not come back. An app you build yourself from this repository is never quarantined — it is only the download that triggers this.

The binary is universal — x86_64 arm64. Deployment target is macOS 10.13.

  1. Cmd-period

"We need a Cmd-. — it's essential."

What it does. Cmd-. stops the running handler and every handler that called it, the whole chain, without an error dialog. A real error that happened before the stop is still reported. Loops and wait stop at once. Typed in the message box, repeat forever stops too.

A stopped function leaves no damage. A HyperTalk function stopped mid-way returns empty. Without care, put total() into field "Sum" would have finished its line with that empty value and wiped the field. The line that called the function does not run, and the field stays as it was.

Why there was none. There were two missing pieces:

The kernel had no way to stop a script at all.
The key never arrived. During a script, HC keeps the window alive, but nothing takes keystrokes out of the queue: they wait for the script to end. Cmd-. waited for the end of the very script it was meant to stop.

Now:

Kernel: each handler in the chain checks for the request before its next line, and every loop and wait checks too. The request clears once nothing is running. Pressed when no script runs, Cmd-. does nothing, and it cannot stop the next script.
App: while a script runs, HC looks for Cmd-. in the event queue up to sixty times a second. The other keystrokes are put back, in order, and handled after the script as before. Cmd-. is recognised by its character, so it works on an AZERTY keyboard, where the period needs Shift.

Tried in HC by its author: "it works very well."
2. A README and a licence

The repository had neither. README.md (French) and README.en.md (English) now say in a few lines what HC is: HyperCard's scripts run as they are, 99.7 % of a corpus of real stacks, and HC adds colour — paint, icons, and backColor / foreColor / textColor on objects.

The licence is MIT: free to use, modify and redistribute, provided the authors are credited — Patricia Benedetto and Claude (Anthropic).
3. What is not measured is written down as not measured

What HyperCard does on Cmd-. is not measured: a dialog, a beep, or nothing? Do the callers stop too? HC assumes everything stops, silently. To play in HyperCard:

on mouseUp
  put "before" into msg
  repeat forever
  end repeat
  put "after" into msg
end mouseUp

The key check in the app is compiled on macOS and was tried by hand; it has no automated test.
A script that neither loops nor waits cannot be stopped: it finishes on its own.

Test status

C kernel: 261 checks, all green, including under AddressSanitizer, UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer and LeakSanitizer. One new one: cmdpoint, fourteen cases — loops with and without a body, callers, a stopped function, wait, the message box, no dialog, back to rest.
Zero warnings, gcc at three optimisation levels and clang with Xcode's families.
The Cocoa layer still has no automated tests — CI only proves it compiles.

Decided against: cantAbort

HyperCard has a stack property, cantAbort, that disables Cmd-. HC will not have it. Cmd-. is the only way out of a runaway script without quitting and losing unsaved work; a stack must not be able to take that away. This is a decision, not a gap.
Known, and not fixed here

Keystrokes typed during a script are put back at the head of the queue, so they now come before a click that preceded them.
After a fault raised by a command (hide, set, a message nobody handles), the handler carries on and the dialog comes at the end. HyperCard probably stops on the spot — to play in HyperCard.
A fault inside a user function stops the function but not its caller.
visual effect followed by go, without lock screen, still plays after the script rather than inside go.
Still standing from 0.7: named windows, patterns, resource-fork icons, HyperCard 1.x, private-access stacks, the proportional period fonts. CFBundleVersion is still hard-coded to 1. Not notarised; see "Installing".

Changes in this release

[#83](https://github.com/cleobuline/hc/pull/83) — Cmd-. stops the running script and every handler that called it (6bc0fcc)
[#84](https://github.com/cleobuline/hc/pull/84) — README in French and English, MIT licence (c90c474, 18f3b09)
this release — version 0.7.3 in all three places, and this note

Full changelog: HC-0.7.2...HC-0.7.3

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