Sivakatirswami wrote:
> John wrote:
>
>> No. No. No. And, again, no. There should not be an author (a.k.a. "edit")
>> mode in MC. That was/is (at least one of) the major problems with
>> Supercard. It violates the underlying metaphor: anything one does anywhere,
>> anytime in MC (and hypercard) can generate messages that can (but need not)
>> be responded to.
>
> Since I participated in precipating this thread moons ago before I had a
> grip on MC's mode of operation, I would like to chime in here
> and agree with Professor Volkey on the above. As a long time user of
> Supercard before, when the new "Project Editor" turned about to be a
> "dead" environment, it was really very disappointing, and I had to basically
> build into every single project under development my own development
> interface tools to avoid having to go back into the project editor for the
> slightest changes. Either that or shell out more money for Tangerine... MC's
> interface was a "quantum leap" out of that hobbled context. Agreed, let's
> not go back.
I think by "author mode" the request may be for something very much like
SuperCard -- in fact, to date it is unique to SuperCard. Let me explain:
Yes, I think most would concur that SuperCard's Project Editor sucks. It's
over-designed, and doesn't take into account the unique strengths and
weaknesses of building such an editor in an xTalk. But the Project Editor,
being written entirely in SuperTalk, is very much akin to MC's dev
environment and Revolution in that regard.
What SuperCard brought to the table that no other tool has yet provided (and
which is probably the single most misunderstood and under-utilized part of
the package) is SuperEdit: a separate application dedicated for layout
tasks only, with all of the scrips turned _off_. Being C-based, it's
lightning fast to work with, and being layout-only without scripts running,
you can do things there that might be problematic if your project has
handlers that respond to the "pointer mode" messages.
Which reminds me: Another SuperCard nicety I've enjoyed is the suite of
"pointer mode" messages which compliment the "browse mode" messages for
mouse gestures. By separating the two, the author has a little more
control over how the app responds in contexts which provide a pointer tool
for the user. See the SC Script Language Guide for details on those -- an
interesting read.
Of course, there are so many things that MC does much more intelligently
IMHO, such as the more flexible Group objects as opposed to backgrounds, the
Player objects and their smooth-as-silk syntax, and
often-better-than-I-ever-imagined language extensions like "repeat for
each", arrays, etc. But as much as MetaCard has proven the most capable
xTalk I've worked with (makes the $10,000 Gain Momentum look like a
dinosaur), there are a couple things SuperCard did that were very useful,
and SuperEdit is probably the least appreciated of those. I wouldn't
advocate building such a critter for MC (far too expensive with so many
platforms to support), but there may be some benefit to taking a second look
at SC's separate handler sets for browse and pointer modes.
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World Media Corporation
Multimedia Design and Development for Mac, Windows, UNIX, and the Web
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