I’ve been thinking about this feature request and wasn’t sure if it would even be possible, but thought it would be a nice addition if it can be implemented. Not even sure if someone had requested this before or not.
Anyway, what I was thinking is the possibility to use Stacks “sets”.
Basically, I have so many stacks right now, that I don’t want to load them all at once and slow down my system. And, those that I don’t load, if I need them then I need to quote RW, install it and then restart RW. I bit of a pain.
And I tend to use a certain set of stacks for certain projects so all the other stacks are just taking up resources. Take for example, if I am working on a Foundation project, I don’t need Foundry stacks loaded and vice versa.
So, if we could setup a “set of stacks” and name it, then from RW load that stack set and only those stacks. All others would be “unloaded” so that only the stacks that I want to use are available and the others aren’t taking up space.
Another example would be a site that doesn’t need any CMS or carts - setup a stack set that doesn’t have any of those in it and just load those when working on that project.
It would save time and I think it would make things easier for those of us with hundreds of stacks (they add up fairly quickly).
Hope I explained it well. I don’t know if this is possible to do and even if it would be something others would be interested in. Or, maybe this is already available and I just didn’t realize it.
You can organize your Stacks into groups that you define in the sidebar. I think that this featu4 will get you most of the way there with wha you are trying to achieve.
What Joe describes works really well. The only thing I would like to see if @isaiah happens to see this is I would love for the groups to have an editable icon instead of just a plain folder.
While the name of the group displays to the right of the folder icon, horizontal real estate in the RW app is so precious I would much rather just have unique icons for the different groups. Being able to sort them would be great too.
Yes, I have some groups set up, but groups just does that - groups stacks together. All stacks are still loaded - whether I need them or not.
So, either I need to get rid of all stacks, then install just the ones I want to use for a project, or I keep all of them installed and they take up resources and make it harder to find one or two that I want to use.
What I was hoping would be possible is to setup a “set” of stacks then have RW install just the set I want to use - say maybe 10 or 20 that I want to use on a project and all others would be uninstalled.
Otherwise, what I need to do is install the stacks I want to use and uninstall all others. Then if I want to use a different set on a different project, I have to do the same - uninstall all stacks, install what I want to use, restart RW, etc, etc.
Oh, well, was hoping that might be possible, but maybe it would be a RW option rather than a stacks option.
You could do it this way, but it would be a lot of self management on your end.
Determine the grouping of stacks for each set you want.
Make the folders in the Stacks folder with the name of each set.
Copy (and I do mean copy) each stack to each set. Copy them as if you have the same stack in multiple spots, then you do not have to go to other folders to find the stacks you need
Once all stacks are in their folders. Make one more folder, call it All Stacks and move all of your stacks inside that folder. Now you should have nothing but folders in your stacks folder. To use a set, open the folder and drag the stacks into the Stacks folder. I would suggest you NOT have RapidWeaver running when you do this, not sure if it would be an issue or not. Just being safe. When you are done with that project, quit RapidWeaver and move the stacks back into the folder of the set they belong to.
To make this easier, I would also suggest putting a shortcut to the Stacks folder somewhere. I have one in my finder window sidebar. Again, this is not ideal, but will do what you want until @isaiah finishes his short list and makes it available. (sidetone - I have not tried this, so not exactly sure it will work, but make a copy of the Stacks folder before hand, just in case. And if @isaiah comes here and tells you NOT to do this, LISTEN to HIM!! )
I also want to add, you might get faster results from him on questions like this by joining his slack channel: http://slack.yourhead.com
A very good resource and place to get Stacks related questions answered.
Customizing icons is definitely on our short-list of features.
Adding groups of differently loadable sets of stacks probably isn’t I’m afraid. And there are two reasons:
Loading/Unloading stacks while RW is running is a dicey business – it’s both very complex and has the potential to affect the open files a lot.
Complex + Risky = Bad
That would be a huge amount of engineering and affect only a few users. The majority of time I put into stacks should affect the majority of users.
I think instead I’ll give a potential recommendation and work around for issues like this. I’ll start with a few basic facts about this:
Loading an unused stack into the library takes has a very small performance overhead.
Even an older machine should be able to install and use EVERY stack in existance and still be usuable. I know because this is one of my performance tests – a 2010 MacBook loading about 900 stacks (with many sub-stacks). It does take longer to launch RW and scrolling through the library is jerky – but it does not affect performance for other tasks (like publishing) in any perceivable way – even under this maximally bad corner case.
In order to see ANY perforce hit on a modest machine you need to have a crazy set of stacks loaded.
With a crazy number of stacks it’s usually very easy to identify quite a few that are rarely/never used.
I would recommend doing a quick triage and see if you can eliminate a few stacks. I suspect that eliminating 20% – even in that worst-case scenario – would get you back into the not crazy number of stacks installed where performance hit of simply loading the stacks into the library is negligible.
While the work of triaging your library and clearing away deadwood is non-zero, I actually think that it might be a LESS time consuming than creating, maintain, updating many different sets of stacks.
And one last word on this subject: If you think your library is running exceptionally slowly – and you do not have anywhere near 800 stacks installed – then it’s not time for a new stacks feature – that would be time to contact YourHead support and send a copy of your Stacks folder so that they can help you identify the problem.
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