Hide/Show menu buttons

[Shari]

>
>Hi Shari:
>
>Try making different manubar sets and select the one you want on preOpenCard.
>
>/H

Very high maintenance.

In my first Metacard project (now defunct due to a highly unpopular 
subject, ah well!), I was green from Hypercard and did not put the 
menubar in the background.  When I changed one thing in the contents 
or script, I had to go to every single card and repeat the change. 
Big hassle!

I had considered having a menubar for each card for this project, but 
as several of the same menu buttons are on each card, one change 
would mean many changes.

This will be a high maintenance program to begin with, as I've 
already planned quite a few updates to come out over a period of 
time.  So ease of updating is a big factor.

I haven't implemented Jacques idea yet.  Her idea is workable, but 
adds to the maintenance both now and in the future, as combining the 
scripts of the 3 hide/show buttons is something I'd rather not do. 
They are big scripts, each one with a specific purpose, each button 
having a long list of items in it.  So I definitely want them kept 
separately.

If I use her idea, I'd create an additional button, permanently hide 
the three buttons, and then put their contents/script into the 
visible one on preOpenCard.  As one of the buttons gets changed on 
the fly by the user, I'd have to invoke the save handler that saves 
all user changes, and make sure that it saves to both the hidden 
menu, and the save data stack outside the program.

And I'd have to create an additional button so that whenever I 
changed the visible button's contents or script during development 
and updating, I'd have to remember to click my own private "save" 
button to save those changes into the hidden buttons, where the menus 
are really saved, and again into the save stack that saves the data 
permanently so that upon quitting, changes are saved.  (As this will 
be a standalone.)

Else moving to another card, the changes would be lost.

I thought of saving the menu contents and scripts into fields, but 
that prevents me from using the nifty "search all scripts" stack 
during development.  My lifesaver stack :-)

If I don't figure out how to hide/show, I will use Jacques idea, but 
I'm still looking for a hide/show solution.

 From the Metacard documentation, hiding/showing sounds like it's 
supposed to be possible.  But for some reason I've failed to get it 
to work.

Shari
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