MC 2.5 Script editor

[andu]

--On Thursday, December 12, 2002 14:22:04 -0600 Ken Ray 
<kray at sonsothunder.com> wrote:

> Personally, I like the approach that programs like Flash, Visual Basic and
> Homesite do - you type a word as part of the command, hit space, and a
> dropdown menu with the available options appears with none of the items in
> the menu highlighted. You can continue to type (doing so removes the
> popup), or you can use the up/down arrows to navigate the dropdown menu.
> As soon as you type the first down-arrow key, the first entry in the
> dropdown is highlighted; after that, you can type characters to jump to
> an entry, or continue using the arrow keys to find the item you want.
> Type Tab (or Enter, depending on the program) and it inserts it for you
> with the insertion point in the proper spot ready to continue typing.
>
> So for example, to do an "on openbackground", you'd type:
>
>   o
>   n
>   (space) [dropdown appears]
>   (down arrow) [highlights first item in the list - probably "arrowkey"]
>   o [jumps to "openbackground"]
>   (enter) [puts in "openbackground " after "on "
>
> If you ever want to bail on the dropdown, you can hit Escape, and it will
> disappear.
>
> It's really cool...

Cool it may be but I'm not sure enhancements like the one you describe make 
life easier for the scripter. The time one spends hitting the space key, 
reading a dropdown menu, choosing something and so on, is most likely 
longer then just typing the command. I used to get excited at script 
coloring until I noticed that reading text of different colors was just 
harder then plain black text. One of the reasons I never felt for 
Revolution was exactly this richness of features and controls with which I 
found myself spending more time reading and clicking then writing script. 
Maybe it's really helpful for the beginners though I remember when I first 
started with Supercard I spent most of the time in the less featured 
environment.
Considering the huge acceptance and love for Hypercard which was the bare 
minimum, I tend to believe that this hunger for artifacts has it roots in 
marketing rather then need for extra functionality, sort of like the 
popularity of hamburgers world wide.

>
> Ken Ray
> Sons of Thunder Software
> Email: kray at sonsothunder.com
> Web Site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/
>


Regards, Andu Novac