At 11:10 PM +0100 9/3/02, Ross wrote: > > I'd like to see conditional compliation directives and preprocessor >macros, >> so we can put assert statements all over the place and do other cool >things >> you can do in C/C++. > >This statement has got me thinking. Are we going overboard now in what >Director, or more specifically Lingo, can do?
no - there are things that Director still needs (another discussion) >With real OO functionality >now, and fellow users now interested in C++ elements like conditional >compilation and exception handling, are we padding a scripting language out >with more features than it needs, or are we pushing Director into a role of >application development that can rival the greats like C++ and VB? Dir has always played that role (on & off) & Dir always been better for some things >For example, I can do OO techniques when creating full apps in VB, but I've >never used them in Director - even the most advanced projects I've worked on >just haven't required it. The same goes for Imaging Lingo. Now I admit I'm >not too familiar with it, but apart from a little colour matching and a drop >shadow routine for nav menus, I've simply found no use for it. Do we really >need to manipulate and process images in Director? IL does LOTS more than that - it's currently my favorite post-d7 feature. >Don't get me wrong - I'm all for Director getting as advanced as it can >(partly as bragging rights for those who have poo-pooed Director to me), but >I'm curious as to what people think on this. > >The question is this: can Director do more than we really need? I hope so. There are thousands of properties & functions that I never need to use. But someone else might use those every day. This is one of the beauties of Director - it is many things to many people. >Further to that, if anybody has used some of the real kick-ass scripting >stuff (like extensive Imaging Lingo or OOP) in a real-world situation I'd be >keen on hearing what you did and why (benefits, etc.) IL is great. It lets you do all sorts of subtle & handy trickery. It's perfect for temporary dynamic overlays. many of the tricks that it helps with could've been done before, but they were cumbersome & convoluted. one example (& a trivial one at that): In a project handed to me, there was a point at which I needed to disallow the use of certain controls. I grabbed the stage image, cropped it, & popped that into a placeholder member/sprite that I had in a high channel. This blocked the controls' use (like a plastic overlay). I even used blend to tint it slightly. When I was done, I changed that member back into a single pixel & moved it bcak to (0, 0) until I needed it again. another: http://kettles.best.vwh.net/demos/connect.dcr (as before, the lines are being drawn into a IL member/sprite in a high channel) another (similar technique) http://kettles.best.vwh.net/demos/drag-n-drop.dir the objects being dragged are fabricated using IL as the sprites are clicked on. I also used IL to brand the ESSO sprite when they get released & IL also does do the reset. another: I made a blur routine to make a transition with hth -Buzz [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi To post messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo. Thanks!]
