>--No. MetaCard uses bold to indicate hypertext links. Since the WWW standard
>is to underline and change the color of links this standard is in fact a bad
>idea. But I am not going to argue it (do _you really want to chase down _every
>link and change its style? Manually? I do not, though a script could probably
>be written to do it).
Eric,
no need to care about this. Just use the bold version for our UI. FreeCard
will inherit HyperCard's "group" style for links anyway. If we add links,
we underline them. When Scott and his folks use our UI they will themselves
be able to choose whether they want to adapt their parts to use underlined
links or ours to use bold ones. And anyway, I guess one could also do this
using a script. It would take a night's processing to have this script scan
the help stack, but I guess it'd work.
>--Actually, the aesthetics are an aspect of the GUI that metaCard expects to
>get in exchange for its support of this project. Function determines form, but
>within function paramaters form should be aesthetically pleasing. Basically
>the Italians (see FIAT - fix it again tony) bought McLuhans BS that form
>defines function. Load of expletive. MC places function over form which is
>good, but there is plenty of room within functional parameters for
>improvement. MetaCard's demo is really generous and deserves to be supported.
Heh :-) You're not talking about the demo stacks ... :-)
Seriously, the things you're doing currently within the constraints of the
MC starter kit are nothing you wouldn't have been able to do without
Scott's offer. You didn't receive a free licence yet. We just won't be able
to just convert their editing environment to FreeCard format, but we can
certainly copy over the scripts you wrote, and we can use the layout and
design ideas you came up with.
So, so far we're not yet in MC's debt in this regard. Now, don't get me
wrong, I don't mind handing over the MC prototype UI for FreeCard to Scott
so they can use it to improve MC. I think MC and FC have a very sane
relationship. FC will always be "programming for the rest of us", while
people who want to do 100% professional stuff, the ones that want to be
programmers anyway, the geeks if you will, I would still refer to MC. They
get their money's worth there. It's just that "the rest of us" usually
can't afford that.
But I feel a little safer if we're not required to produce a working MC
UI, as FC's UI will probably be enough work already.
>--Regarding menus i have developed new menus. They work nicely (amazing what
>can be dones with the DO command). However adding submenus (lineSize,
>polySides) would, i think, require more than 10 lines. The new menus are "Go"
>(because navigation takes up a lot of menu bar) "Objects" and "Drawing". I
>would also like to move some menuItems within existing menus but script
>license limits are problematic for making major changes to the menuBar.
Did you try this? In MC you can just add the menu items to the buttons'
contents. Making them work could be done by scripting:
on menupick mitem
if mitem = "Quit" then
-- do it
else
send "menupick" && quote & mitem & quote to btn "firstmenuhandler"
end if
end menupick
I think something like that would work. This way you could handle about 3
menu items per object, I guess that would work, even though it'd be a
hassle to write. I guess MC doesn't support the menuMessage ...
BTW - your progress on menus sounds great. Can't wait to se it.
Cheers,
-- M. Uli Kusterer
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