Protected stacks in 2.61 (was For goodness sake!)

[Ken Ray]

>>> It may be appropriate to bring up again the default setting of the
>>> destroy property for new stacks. Should it be made on or remain off?
>> 
>> 
>> Made on by default - more often than not, you want it set to true, IMHO.
> 
> In my own work it usually makes little difference.
> 
> What are the benefits each way?

Well, for me there are four reasons for having destroystack (and
destroyWindow too btw) turned on by default:

1) I like knowing that when I close something it's really closed. Not a lot
to ask, IMHO.

2) I sometimes like to copy a substack from one stack to another (i.e. one
product to another), and it is easiest for me to open the substack, clone
it, close the substack and it's mainstack, open the "other" stack, and then
set the mainstack of the clone to the new mainstack. In the process, I
change the name back to what it originally was, and if the destroystack
wasn't set to true in the stack I was cloning, I'll get a "purge" error
message (which is annoying).

3) It's a good way to manage memory (although with today's computers (as
well as those reaching several years back)) it's not as big of an issue, but
better to err on the side of *not* keeping everything loaded in RAM. It
seems to me to be extremely rare to have a circumstance where you actually
appreciate that your stack opens faster since it's already "in memory" -
MetaCard is pretty darn fast regardless. Perhaps this was important "back in
the day", but it doesn't seem so now.  (Side note: I've *never* had a *need*
to have the destroyStack false, and I've been using MC for 8 years+.)

4) It just *seems* like the right thing to do - it's kind of like having the
default itemDelimiter as "|" and you're always having to set it back to ",".

Anyway, that's my 2 cents...

Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software
Web site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com