RE: Opening MC files without creator type
Aloha, I downloaded all kinds of stacks from contributors, to "tear apart" and study. . . mcmail.mc and many others. . .they arrived on my MAC with no icon and I cannot open them in MC. . .what do we need to do? Open in RESEDIT and assign a type? but then this is not "an easier way. . ." In addition to ResEdit, which provides more info, and Snitch, you might like TypeShuffler from Bubble Pop Software for a drag-and-drop approach. http://www.bubblepop.com Regards, David -- David Cramer, Process Innovation Evangelist 87-1313 Border Street PBSC Computer Training Centres (an IBM company) Winnipeg MB R3H 0X4 Corporate Office Research Development Canada Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard%40lists.best.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm Please send bug reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], not this list.
Win2000 update?
I just reviewed a message from late last year regarding MetaCard for Windows' compatibility with Windows 2000. Has there been anything new to report on this? Scott noted that at most, there might need to be a minor update to deal with last-minute changes in the Win2000 code (I want you all to know I'm working REAL hard to be charitable here). And I know I will need to be working on Win2000 multimedia training starting Real Soon Now. By the way, I'd like to announce that I now have two software products that absolutely fill me with delight whenever I get to play/work with them: FrameMaker and MetaCard. Funny how they both started in the Unix world. Hey, are there any other Unix-based programs going cross-platform? I think maybe I'd better check them out! (I love Photoshop, too, but it's not quite 'fun' in the same way as FM and MC are.) Thanks all, David -- David Cramer, Process Innovation Evangelist 87-1313 Border Street PBSC Computer Training Centres (an IBM company) Winnipeg MB R3H 0X4 Corporate Office Research Development Canada This is the MetaCard mailing list. Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard%40lists.best.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm
Re: MetaCard for MachTen Unix?
On Mon, 14 Feb 2000 17:47:56 +, Peter Reid wrote: I already have MachTen installed and running which is why I asked the question. However, taking your advice, what's the best source of Linux PPC and do I need a dedicated machine for it or can I run it from a bootable Jaz cartridge or a special partition of an existing disk for example? Cheers Peter You might also be interested in Virtual PC 3.0 with Linux. The installation is sort of already done apparently; and I think the partioning of the drive is not necessary because of the way Virtual PC just takes over its whack of Hard Drive space with a sort of virtual partition effect that's much less hassle. On top of that, you can switch back and forth between your running MacOS and the Linux, managed on the fly by Virtual PC. All the other installations are at best dual boot. I don't have it yet, but am planning to do so in a month or two. Hey, maybe you could tell me how it works! ;-) Thanks in advance, Peter! David -- David Cramer, Process Innovation Evangelist 87-1313 Border Street PBSC Computer Training Centres (an IBM company) Winnipeg MB R3H 0X4 Corporate Office Research Development Canada This is the MetaCard mailing list. Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard%40lists.best.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm
Offset from right function?
Is there an offset-from-the-right function? I thought I had seen the use of a minus symbol with offset somehow that gave you the offset from the right, i.e., the end of a chunk of text. Yes? No? Regards, David -- David Cramer, Process Innovation Evangelist 87-1313 Border Street PBSC Computer Training Centres (an IBM company) Winnipeg MB R3H 0X4 Corporate Office Research Development Canada This is the MetaCard mailing list. Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard%40lists.best.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm
Re: Offset from right function?
Argghh!! Never mind even more. I do feel dmb for missing another message which provides a much more efficient approach for ensuring one has set the global "directory" variable to a particular open stack's location, by using item and itemDelimiter syntax instead of "offset". Here's what I ended up with, which I believe should be fairly bulletproof (I hope?) global vgPath on preOpenStack put the effective fileName of this stack into vgPath set the itemDel to "/" delete the last item of vgPath set the directory to vgPath end preOpenStack And to further explain, the point to all this is to allow someone to be able to open a stack using a link from a web page, and ensure that when the stack opens, all graphics, etc. will be correctly referenced by relative references in that stack's scripts. Regards, David At 5:39 PM -0800 2/11/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Aha! That's probably what I remembered seeing. I guess what I was hoping I had seen was a way of using the "offset" function with a from-right variation. Because it occurred to me that I could then do something like... put the short name of this stack into thisStack put the long name of this stack into thePath delete char (offsetBack(thisStack,thePath) to the length of thePath) of thePath ...and I would know that I was left with the correct path to a stack even if the its long name were something like: /PowerBook/MetaCard/MyStuff/MyStuff.mc Never mind 8-( Regards, David At 11:15 AM -0800 2/11/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 11/2/00 2:19 pm, David Cramer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is there an offset-from-the-right function? I thought I had seen the use of a minus symbol with offset somehow that gave you the offset from the right, i.e., the end of a chunk of text. Yes? No? Yes, you can use negative chunk expressions. For example: char -1 of "abc" is "c" char 4 to -2 of "abcdefghij" is "defghi" Regards, Kevin -- David Cramer, Process Innovation Evangelist 87-1313 Border Street PBSC Computer Training Centres (an IBM company) Winnipeg MB R3H 0X4 Corporate Office Research Development Canada This is the MetaCard mailing list. Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard%40lists.best.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm
Re: load url url [with message message] what message?
Endless thanks to Kevin, Scott, and Andu for answering my question so well. The examples were greatly appreciated! I had missed the point that the "message" had to be a quoted message handler name (not some text destined for the message box). I made a similar mistake when I first tried to use the "send" syntax, and forgot to quote the message handler I was sending. Sometimes the chameleon-like character of name reference syntax in scripting languages throws me off, although I usually do get it eventually ;-) Regards, David Kevin's example: At 2:14 AM -0800 2/8/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Try something like: on mouseUp load "http://www.xworlds.com/" with message "urlIsDone" end mouseUp on urlIsDone put "got it all" end urlIsDone Scott's example: The message is sent to the object whose script executed the "load" command: on mouseUp load url "http://www.metacard.com/index.html" with message "tellmeaboutit" end mouseUp on tellmeaboutit which put "Download of" which "done!" end tellmeaboutit -- David Cramer, Process Innovation Evangelist 87-1313 Border Street PBSC Computer Training Centres (an IBM company) Winnipeg MB R3H 0X4 Corporate Office Research Development Canada This is the MetaCard mailing list. Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard%40lists.best.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm
offset from end syntax?
I thought I ran across a tip, perhaps from Scott, about using a minus symbol somehow with the offset function to do the offset from the end of a chunk. Am I imagining that? David -- David Cramer, Process Innovation Evangelist 87-1313 Border Street PBSC Computer Training Centres (an IBM company) Winnipeg MB R3H 0X4 Corporate Office Research Development Canada This is the MetaCard mailing list. Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard%40lists.best.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm
Re: Path problem in Windows MC2.3?
Ah-hah! Now I can make a better mental connection with all the recent talk about setting the current directory. OK. I just got thrown off the track early because I had been developing on a Mac, and the browsers on the Mac don't seem to affect the directory of a MetaCard stack being run from an HTML link. The current directory when the stack opens is just automatically whatever directory the stack is in. When I read the following on Jan. 25, I think I misunderstood the implications for browser access. At 7:31 PM -0800 1/25/99, metacard-list-digest wrote: You shouldn't even need to set the original directory if you do this all correctly. The current directory should be set to the directory your application is in when it starts up and the relative paths should allow the engine to find all your stacks/images/clips from there. Because this is not the case in Windows, nor in *Nix platforms either, I suppose. Oh well, it's no big deal now that I finally realize what to do. On another note, I've been testing away with some little experimental stacks which have the engine in the same directory as the application. Just out of curiosity, what principles are involved in the relationship between stacks and engine when distributing final products? Especially in CD and web browser situations, what is the basic advice as to where the engine and stacks should be installed/located relative to each other? Regards, David Just out of curiosity, what is the current directory when MetaCard is started up from the browser on Windows 95? Short of scanning the entire disk, I can't think of any way to make this reliably work on *any* platform if you're using relative paths to your media files. You're never guaranteed to be in a particular directory when a stack is run from a browser window, so you *always* have to set the directory property as the very first step, before the stack even opens. Regards, Scott -- David Cramer, Process Innovation Evangelist 87-1313 Border Street PBSC Computer Training Centres (an IBM company) Winnipeg MB R3H 0X4 Corporate Office Research Development Canada This is the MetaCard mailing list. Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard%40lists.best.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm
Re: Scripting default menu picks? SOLVED!!
Darn, I hate when the answer to my confused question was in the Reference stack all along. I was looking for something to do with the menuPick syntax, when what I was missing was just the correct "send" syntax. To recap, I created an option button (called "recentStacks") that I stuck on the Home card, which keeps a list of the stacks I work on so I can just open them from the button instead of going through the File menu or whatever. At the end of the list I inserted a divider line and then an Other... item which just accesses the open file dialog box. That worked just fine. I added the following to the Home stack script to get the recent stack names to add themselves to the option button automagically: on closeStack if the short name of the topStack is not among \ the lines of btn "recentStacks" of cd 1 of stack "Home" then put the short name of the topStack return before line \ ((the num of lines of btn "recentStacks" of cd 1 of stack "Home") - 1) \ of btn "recentStacks" of cd 1 of stack "Home" end if end closeStack The script of the option button is mostly stolen from somewhere else in the provided MetaCard stacks, I think it was probably just from the MetaCard File, Open menu item itself: on menuPick which if which is not "Other..." then open stack which else local filterstring if the systemFileSelector then switch the platform case "Win32" put "MetaCard Stacks" cr "*.mc" cr "All Files" cr "*.*" \into filterstring break case "MacOS" put "MSTKSTAK" into filterstring break default put "*.mc" into filterstring end switch else put "*.mc" into filterstring answer file "Open stack:" with filter filterstring if it is not empty then set the cursor to watch topLevel it end if end if end menuPick This worked fine, too. The next thing I wanted to do was to make the option button act like a default button, so if I pressed Return/Enter it would open the stack whose name was currently showing on the option button. The solution was the following in the Home card script: on returnKey get the label of btn "recentStacks" send "menuPick it" to btn "recentStacks" end returnKey The reason I hadn't been able to make it work before was just because I hadn't figured out that I had to put the "menuPick it" bit in quotes. Arrghh! Anyway, thanks to everyone for helping. Regards, David -- David Cramer, Process Innovation Evangelist 87-1313 Border Street PBSC Computer Training Centres (an IBM company) Winnipeg MB R3H 0X4 Corporate Office Research Development Canada This is the MetaCard mailing list. Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard%40lists.best.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm
Re: Scripting default menu picks?
On Fri, 21 Jan 2000 22:23:54 -6:00, I wrote: If I use an option button on the Home stack to keep track of the stacks I have been working on so I can select which one to open (like a Recent Files feature, on a button instead of from a regular menu), how can I set up the returnKey message to open the stack name currently displayed on the option button? On Sat, 22 Jan 2000 00:23:36 -0500, Andu ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Try: on returnKey open stack (the label of btn "myButton") end returnKey Of course, since that's essentially what my option button script is doing already. But it's also including a menu item Other... which opens the Mac or Windows getfile dialog box to open a file that isn't listed already as one of the items in the menu. Since the script to deal with opening a listed stack or using the getfile dialog box is fairly lengthy, I would prefer to be able to simply send a menuPick with the currently visible option button item as a parameter, and let the button's script handle it just as if I had selected the item from the option button's menu. The question remains, is my workaround the only way to accomplish this? And is there a way to send a menuPick message to a button? Regards, David -- David Cramer, Process Innovation Evangelist 87-1313 Border Street PBSC Computer Training Centres (an IBM company) Winnipeg MB R3H 0X4 Corporate Office Research Development Canada This is the MetaCard mailing list. Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard%40lists.best.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm
Scripting default menu picks?
Here's a simple question regarding menuPick and menuHistory usage and syntax. If I use an option button on the Home stack to keep track of the stacks I have been working on so I can select which one to open (like a Recent Files feature, on a button instead of from a regular menu), how can I set up the returnKey message to open the stack name currently displayed on the option button? I tried using a send menuPick message to the button, but I guess I don't understand the correct syntax for it. I think I understand that the button's label property is always set to the previously selected item; and that its menuHistory property is the line number of that item. So I don't understand why the following didn't work: get the label of btn "myButton" send send menuPick, it to btn "myButton" Then I experimented with getting the menuHistory and setting the menuHistory to it, since I read in the Reference stack that menuPick is sent automatically to a button when you set its menuHistory. But it doesn't happen if you aren't *changing* the menuHistory value. So I had to first set the menuHistory to a dummy line number which contained a divider line, which I had scripted to always be just before the last item in the list. The following worked fine: set the lockScreen to true get the menuHistory of btn "myButton" set the menuHistory of btn "myButton" to \ the num of lines of btn "myButton" - 1 set the menuHistory of btn "myButton" to it But I'm assuming I'm missing something simple regarding sending the menuPick message directly? Regards, David -- David Cramer, Process Innovation Evangelist 87-1313 Border Street PBSC Computer Training Centres (an IBM company) Winnipeg MB R3H 0X4 Corporate Office Research Development Canada This is the MetaCard mailing list. Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard%40lists.best.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm
Re: Downloading images using URL
At 11:50 AM -0800 1/17/00, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The fact that there is no OS-level support for JPEG (or any other image, audio, or video format for that matter). Which means that MetaCard has to have a JPEG decoder built into it, a decoder based on the original JPEG implementation that was designed and built before progressive support had even been thought of. And just to avoid version problems (and a complete breakdown if QT isn't installed), this same decoder is used in the Windows and Mac engines. Updating the JPEG decoder and/or using QT for this if it's installed is on the to-do list, but its priority hasn't come up yet. Regards, Scott Yeah, as I suggested in another message to this thread, I'm not overly concerned as long as I know that *I* can ensure that any JPEGs or whatever that *I* create for a project will be encoded appropriately. And when I was messing around with GraphicConverter on the Mac, I just opened the error-producing graphics and resaved and they appeared just fine. If I were thinking of using MetaCard to just go and browse for miscellaneous graphics all across the Internet, I guess I would be worried; but whatever graphics we use will be internally produced, part of our own package, and therefore under our control. Regards, David -- David Cramer, Process Innovation Evangelist 87-1313 Border Street PBSC Computer Training Centres (an IBM company) Winnipeg MB R3H 0X4 Corporate Office Research Development Canada This is the MetaCard mailing list. Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard%40lists.best.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm
How does the among operator work?
Here's a simple operator syntax question. The list of operators shows
"is among" and "is not among" as Order 7 operators, along with
"contains". I had assumed that usage would be something like:
if "Fred" is among ("Adam","Fred","George") then doSomething
But this doesn't work. What is the correct syntax?
Regards,
David
--
David Cramer, Process Innovation Evangelist 87-1313 Border Street
PBSC Computer Training Centres (an IBM company) Winnipeg MB R3H 0X4
Corporate Office Research Development Canada
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Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm
Script references to objects in groups?
What is the correct scripting syntax for referring to the objects in a group? In a current situation, I have a group of buttons in a stack menu panel. If one of the buttons is hilited when the user presses the escape key, that button is still hilited the next time the menu opens. So I'd like to say something like: set the hilite of all the buttons in grp "mButtons" to false But this doesn't seem to work, although it seems to me I read of something like this earlier this year. If not, I can loop through the objects, but even then I can't find the syntax in the reference stacks. What am I missing? Happy New Year/Millennium! David -- David Cramer, Process Innovation Evangelist 87-1313 Border Street PBSC Computer Training Centres (an IBM company) Winnipeg MB R3H 0X4 Corporate Office Research Development Canada This is the MetaCard mailing list. Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard%40lists.best.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm
RE: Windows menu emulation?
At 2:10 PM -0800 12/30/99, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip I still would like to know what, if any, messaging is provided for while a stack menu is displayed in MetaCard. I can track the mouse position, for instance. But when you disrecommend a script-based workaround for this "problem", are the quotes to indicate it's not a problem for you? If so, it won't be a problem for me, either. I'll just tell my company that MetaCard is unfortunately unsatisfactory for our purposes, and we'll just have to continue to use Awfulware! But is really a problem for *your users*? As I said before, of the thousands of other people using MetaCard and MetaCard applications, none have reported it as a problem. Possibly you're the only one that noticed it? Well, it's going to be a problem for my users simply because of what I am attempting to provide, which is fairly precise evaluation as to whether the user has selected a particular menu item. If I intend to respond to the user's mistakes, I don't want those "mistakes" to include something that would have worked correctly under the actual application they're being trained on, but that becomes an error only because I don't or can't author the emulated interface accurately. I could certainly decide on a bare-bones implementation which has no rollover effects, provides some sort of generic menuing that doesn't particularly resemble the target application, and so on. Fortunately, I have so much optimism regarding MetaCard (having actually purchased it, woohoo! ;-) that I totally reject the typifying of my message as either harping or raising a stink. If I gave that impression, I really do apologize! I am having too much fun to be harping!!! Actually, I'm so close to accomplishing what I want that it's probably the tantalizing nearness of the goal that makes me sound more frustrated than I am. Right now I know I could quite successfully use a really simple combination of focusIn and focusOut handlers in the card script of the menu panel stack, along with a simple flag to ignore the first click that opens the menu. It seems I could handle everything simply and cleanly this way if I could now just get the menu to go away by any scripting message at all, like sending escapeKey or something. I understand that the menu behavior should be automatic. On the other hand, wouldn't it be useful to be able to script a robot user? So if you wanted to show a process of selecting a menu item you could use a stack menu panel scripted to operate on autopilot, as it were. Like I said, I have no problem determining that the user has clicked on the menu heading button while the menu is down. If I could just send an escapeKey message to the menu somehow when that happened, that's all I'd need. That's why I was wondering what messages (besides focusIn/Out and some mouseLoc stuff) are sent, and more especially, to whom. Basically, the most desirable situation from my point of view would be that MetaCard would allow the handling of mouseUp and mouseDown messages to the menu heading button *somehow* while the stack menu is deployed. The problem here is that menu behavior is automatic. So even if you got the messages, you wouldn't be able to do anything about it. The only way to allow fixing it via scripts would be to require that people use the "pulldown" command to open a menu and then add a "closemenu" command that would have to be called to close the menu after a selection had been made (or if they didn't). Pretty ugly. more snipping to be replaced by hundreds of my apologies for sounding grumpy Look and feel standard deviations *are* bugs, though of course they're class 4s (1 is crash, 2 is data loss, 3 is significant impairment of functionality. The priority for fixes is also a function of how common the problem is and whether or not there is a workaround). But regardless of whether you think it's a bug report or a feature request, you're better off just sending it in to [EMAIL PROTECTED] As long as you've taken the time to make sure that it's not already implemented, the more information we have about the problems you face, the better MetaCard will be at solving them. Regards, Scott If I can do something like send an escapeKey to make a menu go away, I don't even think there's anything to report, especially since I'm quite aware of how much non-standardness there is in interface features. Regards, David -- David Cramer, Process Innovation Evangelist 87-1313 Border Street PBSC Computer Training Centres (an IBM company) Winnipeg MB R3H 0X4 Corporate Office Research Development Canada This is the MetaCard mailing list. Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard%40lists.best.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm
RE: Windows menu emulation?
Hi Scott, Well, the issue of emulation fidelity is an unfortunate monkey on the back of anyone authoring interactive computer application end-user training. Even if you largely ignore the issue, it's probably because the authoring software won't give you the control you need to do it, or at least do it well/economically/quickly/whatever. Perhaps I have higher hopes for MetaCard in this regard than any of your other customers (which I somehow find a little hard to believe). I still would like to know what, if any, messaging is provided for while a stack menu is displayed in MetaCard. I can track the mouse position, for instance. But when you disrecommend a script-based workaround for this "problem", are the quotes to indicate it's not a problem for you? If so, it won't be a problem for me, either. I'll just tell my company that MetaCard is unfortunately unsatisfactory for our purposes, and we'll just have to continue to use Awfulware! And when you say my best bet is just to wait, exactly how long should I wait? Basically, the most desirable situation from my point of view would be that MetaCard would allow the handling of mouseUp and mouseDown messages to the menu heading button *somehow* while the stack menu is deployed. Incidentally, the 99% of Windows users probably aren't aware that in Word 97, for example, clicking the menu heading button closes the menu and leaves the button in the up/rollover state on mouseUp, while My Computer windows do it on mouseDown. At least Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on interface consistency. I would be happy to correspond further on the issues of event-handling and interface feedback states. (For example, guess how many button states can be found in Office 97 and Office 2000 products! Prizes may be awarded for the correct answer or for any reasonable justification for such byzantine interface design features.) To return to the value of the feature I guess I am requesting, remember that in the kind of interactive training I am developing, clicking in the wrong place should result in a response or error message. At this point, I can't respond to clicking on the menu heading button at all. If I were designing some kind of soft skills course, I could care less what MetaCard provided as long as it basically worked. But with closely monitored interactive stuff, I can't be so blasé. Besides, incompleteness bugs me. Speaking of bugs, should I report this as a bug? I really consider it more of a feature request, but I'd be happy to go the bug report route, too. Many regards and happy millenia to all and sundry, David (a stickler for completeness) At 12:10 PM -0800 12/29/99, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Scott Raney [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Windows menu emulation? Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 16:17:20 -0700 (MST) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In-Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Tue, 28 Dec 1999, David Cramer wrote: After a fairly hectic Christmas, I am going to be returning to work on the following challenge tomorrow. So far, I have not received any responses that get to the heart of the basic question "What messages/properties can be referenced during the MetaCard stack menu process?" I think the fundamental problem here is that the behavior you desire, clicking on the menu button to close an open menu panel, isn't built in. Any script-based workaround for this "problem" would be complicated, unstable, and likely to break when the feature gets implemented in the future. So your best bet is just to wait. If it's any consolation, no one has reported this as a problem before (or *still*, according to our bug list), a fact that I would consider significant since most look and feel deviations result in multiple bug reports. I myself wasn't aware of this "feature" and I'd be willing to bet that 99% of Windows and MacOS users aren't either. Clicking any place other than on that button does close the menu, which is the usual way people close menus they don't want. Regards, Scott Hoping for enlightenment, David At 4:20 PM -0600 12/28/99, David Cramer wrote: Well, I have just spent several days exploring all kinds of approaches to Windows 95 menu emulation, with the result that I now think I could get the results I need if only I could figure out one last piece of this whole puzzle of messaging and targets. Here goes...is there a way to *script* the clicking of a stack panel menu just as if a that stack or a menu item button on the stack had been clicked by a user? You see, the obstacle for me is still that clicking on a MetaCard button, which is being used as a menu heading, while the menu is already open, is a dead click, whereas standard menu behavior on both Windows and Mac is to close the menu. So what gives? Is there something simple I'm missing, or is there at least a workaround that still allows me
RE: Windows menu emulation?
After a fairly hectic Christmas, I am going to be returning to work on the following challenge tomorrow. So far, I have not received any responses that get to the heart of the basic question "What messages/properties can be referenced during the MetaCard stack menu process?" Hoping for enlightenment, David At 4:20 PM -0600 12/28/99, David Cramer wrote: Well, I have just spent several days exploring all kinds of approaches to Windows 95 menu emulation, with the result that I now think I could get the results I need if only I could figure out one last piece of this whole puzzle of messaging and targets. Here goes...is there a way to *script* the clicking of a stack panel menu just as if a that stack or a menu item button on the stack had been clicked by a user? You see, the obstacle for me is still that clicking on a MetaCard button, which is being used as a menu heading, while the menu is already open, is a dead click, whereas standard menu behavior on both Windows and Mac is to close the menu. So what gives? Is there something simple I'm missing, or is there at least a workaround that still allows me to utilize the convenience of a built-in MetaCard paradigm, the menu stack? I am losing sleep, fingernails, and hair over this. Help! Regards, David -- David Cramer, Process Innovation Evangelist 87-1313 Border Street PBSC Computer Training Centres (an IBM company) Winnipeg MB R3H 0X4 Corporate Office Research Development Canada This is the MetaCard mailing list. Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard%40lists.best.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm
RE: Windows menu emulation?
Well, I have just spent several days exploring all kinds of approaches to Windows 95 menu emulation, with the result that I now think I could get the results I need if only I could figure out one last piece of this whole puzzle of messaging and targets. Here goes...is there a way to *script* the clicking of a stack panel menu just as if a that stack or a menu item button on the stack had been clicked by a user? You see, the obstacle for me is still that clicking on a MetaCard button, which is being used as a menu heading, while the menu is already open, is a dead click, whereas standard menu behavior on both Windows and Mac is to close the menu. So what gives? Is there something simple I'm missing, or is there at least a workaround that still allows me to utilize the convenience of a built-in MetaCard paradigm, the menu stack? I am losing sleep, fingernails, and hair over this. Help! Regards, David -- David Cramer, Process Innovation Evangelist 87-1313 Border Street PBSC Computer Training Centres (an IBM company) Winnipeg MB R3H 0X4 Corporate Office Research Development Canada This is the MetaCard mailing list. Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard%40lists.best.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm
Windows menu emulation?
I've been having fun, sorta, working out how to emulate Windows menu emulation with the new MC version 2.3B3, and I think I've got everything worked out quite nicely except for one fairly minor obstacle. This is related to the whole issue of how to deal with the basic effect (which I personally abhor) of pulldown menu buttons popping up when the mouse rolls over them, then depressing on mousedown or mouseup. I can do that fine, but in Windows itself, when a menu heading has been clicked and its menu is open, you can click on the menu heading again and the menu closes and the menu heading returns to its elevated rollover state. I am unable to accomplish this, since I don't seem to be able to intercept that mouse click on an opened menu's heading button. With MetaCard's default mechanism, clicking on an opened menu's pulldown button doesn't do anything at all. Is there a message send, a target, or anything else that can be used in order to accomplish this? Please let me know if you don't get what I'm after, I'm operating on a certain amount of lack of sleep trying to prepare for a demonstration of MetaCard tomorrow morning and alasf ag ajga;g ;agjj afa aasdf;jf afaf asdfd ?!?@?#!#!?@$%^ Regards, David -- David Cramer, Process Innovation Evangelist 87-1313 Border Street PBSC Computer Training Centres (an IBM company) Winnipeg MB R3H 0X4 Corporate Office Research Development Canada This is the MetaCard mailing list. Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/metacard%40lists.best.com/ Info: http://www.xworlds.com/metacard/mailinglist.htm
