Carbon backdrop plea for help

[Tereza Snyder]

Hiya all,

My long-suffering application is in its final birth throes - about to go to
the QA company for testing - and I have a problem that will probably cause
me to withhold the Carbon version, unless someone can help me work around
it.

I usually develop in a Mac Classic environment and test in Windows - for
this app, Carbon is a tertiary concern. My problem revolves around a bug in
MetaCard Carbon that I've reported, but isn't yet fixed and I can't wait for
the next MetaCard release.

My app allows the user to create documents, perhaps many of them will be
open at once. In addition, it has a couple of palettes and auxiliary
windows, it has a "cover desktop/reveal desktop" option in the file menu
(which sets/empties the backdrop property) so users can declutter their
workspace. 

In the Carbon version running in both Classic and OS X, when the user
switches out of the application and then back in (by whatever means), the
document windows move behind the backdrop. In the Carbon app running in
classic, the documents even move themselves behind the backdrop when they're
updated after being created!

SuspendStack/resumeStack are stack- (i.e. Window-) level messages, not
application-level. AFAIK there's no way for my application to know when it's
been suspended. 

The only way to bring the document windows to the front is for the user to
pick "reveal desktop" (i.e. set the backdrop to empty) then pick "hide
desktop". No user will stand still for that.

I'm open to any suggestion.

tereza



+ Tereza Snyder 
+ Senior Software Developer
+ Attainment Company, Inc.
+ <www.attainmentcompany.com>
+ 800.327.4269