Macros don't have the ability to cascade

matt neuburg matt at tidbits.com
Thu May 20 16:27:24 PDT 2004


On Tue, 18 May 2004 13:08:38 -0700, Jeff Shepherd <JEFF.K.SHEPHERD at saic.com>
said:
>I have found a difference between the way Frontier used to work (at 
>least back in the 5.0.1 days) and with the current implementation of 
>Radio.
>
>When looking up a macro, Frontier's behavior was to look in the 
>#tools folder (e.g. websites.mySite.dir1.dir2.#tools) for the macro, 
>and then if the macro wasn't found, to go up a directory and look in 
>that #tools folder and up and up until getting to the websites.#tools 
>folder and then if not there finally look for the macro in the 
>user.html.macros folder.

That was never Frontier's behavior. If Frontier behaved like that for you,
then you were employing some third-party add-on or modification. (I wrote
such a modification; you may have been using it.)

>Radio seem to do this backwards.  When a macro is called, it looks 
>for a #tools folder first, going up until it finds it and then once a 
>#tools folder is found, it looks for the macro in there.  If not 
>there, then it looks in the user.html.macros folder for the macro.

That is also how Frontier behaved. 

>My biggest issue is this: if you have any global macros you use on 
>more than one site, you can't store them in the websites.#tools 
>(because that folder is trumped by your websites.mySite.#tools 
>folder) and you have to co-mingle user macros with system macros in 
>user.html.macros.
>
>This seems to break Frontier's concept of 'cascading'. For example, 
>the #bgcolor directive on a rendered page overrides the #bgcolor 
>defined in the #prefs table.

That is why people wrote third-party modifications such as mine.

>As such, my 'breadcrumbs' macro no longer works.

That's something I cannot speak to. It's your macro. m.
-- 
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