Visual effect causes Type 3 error under Mac OS 8.0

[John Kiltinen]

This is a little detail I discovered because I use such an old version of
the Macintosh operating system, and because I am starting to use the latest
version of MetaCard.  Folks who want backward compatibility with older
versions of the operating system might find this information of help.

I have a stack that uses visual effects.  I have had problems with one of
them--iris open--using MetaCard 2.4.3 on a Mac which uses version 8.0 of
the operating system.

The default visual effects method in this version of MetaCard is to use
QuickTime visual effects.  It seems that this is a no-no with Mac OS 8.0.
When the command visual iris open executes in a script, MetaCard shuts down
immediately, and I get a Type 3 error message.

The fix is to set the dontUseQTEffects property to true.  This causes
MetaCard to use its own visual effects.  This fixed my problem.

Interestingly, the barn door and ventian blinds effects did not cause the
problem when the dontUseQTEffects property was set to false.

John Kiltinen


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 John Kiltinen (kiltinen at nmu.edu)        Home              Office
 Professor, Dept. of Math. & CS   Tel.(906) 228-8035 or (906) 227-1600
 Northern Michigan University     Fax (906) 228-4667 or (906) 2272010
 Marquette, MI 49855 USA
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