Help
Help with your take-out app
This is the page the “?” button in your app’s own window opens. It covers opening the app, what the small window’s buttons do, where your records are saved, and getting your public page back online. It applies to any app you took home from an ivantohelpyou workshop, whichever one it was — keep this page bookmarked with it.
Getting your app
From your app, open Take out and press Download the zip. Once you have it, put the copy on your own machine somewhere that survives a broken hard drive: drag the zip into your OneDrive folder (Windows) or iCloud Drive folder (Mac) as soon as you can. Then unzip it — right-click the zip and choose Extract All (Windows), or double-click it (Mac) — and keep the folder in your Documents folder, or inside OneDrive or iCloud.
Opening it
Windows
Double-click the file whose name begins with Start — not the one marked Mac. Windows asks once before running a file that came from the internet, and calls it an unknown publisher. Click Run. Untick Always ask before opening this file and it won’t ask again.
Your browser opens on your app. A small window carrying your app’s name stays open — see below for what its buttons do.
Mac
The first time only: install Python from python.org/downloads. The first run needs the internet.
Double-click the file marked (Mac). If the Mac says it cannot be opened, that’s Gatekeeper: open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down, and press Open Anyway. On an older Mac, hold Control, click the file, and choose Open. It only asks once.
Your browser opens on your app. To stop it, close the Terminal window that opened with it, or press Control-C there.
The small window, and stopping it
On Windows, a small window with your app’s name stays open while it runs, with three buttons:
- Open in browser — brings your app’s pages back, if you’ve closed the tab or the browser itself. Closing the browser does not stop the app.
- Stop — stops it. Closing the window does the same thing.
- ? — the button you followed to get here. It only opens this page online; the app itself never needs the internet to run.
On Mac or Linux, there is no small window: closing the Terminal window it started in, or pressing Control-C there, stops it the same way.
“… is not running”
If a page you had open starts showing a card saying your app is not running, the app was stopped — closed, or the computer restarted or went to sleep. That page can’t save or show anything until the app is started again, but nothing you already saved is lost. To bring it back, open its folder and double-click the file whose name begins with Start again (the one marked Mac, on a Mac). A fresh page opens in your browser, and you can close the old one.
Where your records live
Your changes are saved in catalog.db, in the folder called files. To make a backup, copy the whole folder — catalog.db is the data; everything else can be regenerated. If it doesn’t start, the reason is written in launch.log, also in files.
Nothing in the folder ever goes on the internet on its own. The only thing here that needs a connection is the ? button, to open this page.
Your public page
The public page — the one visitors could see — went away when the copy on my server was deleted, once you downloaded your zip. Putting it back up at an address you own is free and takes a few minutes. Write any time and I’ll walk you through it.
If something breaks, call or write me.
Ivan Schneider · ivan@ivantohelpyou.com · 206-747-0175
Workshop resources: the field guide and the recording guide from the workshop.