Resumed: MC IDE v2.6b7 package

[Wilhelm Sanke]

 Back from my Scandinavia trip, I looked once more at the raised issues.

- Concerning the width of the answer dialog, I find that there are no 
such problems (cut-off buttons) on Mac OSX, but unfortunately on Windows XP.

I tested whether the different textfonts and textsizes could have to do 
anything with this problem.

The effective textfont on MacOSX is "Lucida Grande" with a size of 13, 
on Windows it is "Verdana" with a textsize of 12.
Changing fonts and size on Windows XP to "Arial", textsize 12, made no 
difference.

So adding a different value in the respective line of the repeat loop 
seems to be  necessary for Windows XP

 >> "repeat with i = 2 to nchoices + 1
 >>     show button i
 >>     set the name of button i to line nchoices + 2 - i of it
 >>     set the width of button i to the formattedWidth of button i + 32
 >>     add the width of button i + 28 to bwidth # this is the line
 >>   end repeat"

I now think that adding 30 instead of 28 gives even better results.

But having different dialog scripts for Windows and MacOS seems to be a 
very awkward solution. Either we add a differentiating script part like 
"if the platform is Win32..." etc. or we should return to earlier 
versions of the dialogs that work on all platforms without problems.-

- Concerning the cut-off menuitems of menubuttons "Tools" and "Help":

This does not happen on MacOS, but on Windows XP - and for that matter - 
only as long the "mcversion" property has not been synchronized, i.e.

after setting the mcversion to 2.6.1 (in msg: "set the mcversion of 
stack "mctools" to "2.6.1""),
saving stack "mctools", exiting Metacard, and restarting Metacard then
these menuitems now appear as normal.

 Interesting and puzzling, isn't it?--

Concerning Richard's still unanswered questions of July 27:

- Text font, style, and size:

> I'm not familiar with your dialogs, but I don't recall there being an
> API for altering the text font and size of the Ask and Answer dialogs
> (other than, of course, setting the font for the stack they're in).

There is still the possibility to alter text font, size etc. of any 
single control of the dialogs (e.g. set the textstyle of btn 2 of stack 
"answer dialog" to bold) - and - they have to be reset in the same way

- Resource Mover:

> >> - There is some "ambiguity" in the Resource Mover - and has been since
> >> the beginning of Metacard:
> >>
> >>  * checkbox "MetaCard Icons" only copies about 8 icons - needed for 
> the
> >> dialogs - into the stack
> >>  * "Icons Set in Scripts" should be renamed as it refers likewise to
> >> icons that are set in the properties dialog of buttons
>
> What should we call them instead?
> Or should we change the behavior of "MetaCard Icons" to copy the entire
> stack?



With "MetaCards Icons" 12 icons are moved that are used with the ask and 
answer dialogs.

I suggest to rename the checkbox label to "Ask and Answer Dialog Icons" 
(or to connect transferring these icons with moving the dialogs, and 
then abolish this checkbox).

The other checkbox "Icons Set In Scripts" could be renamed to "Icons Set 
in Scripts and Properties" for more clarity.

An additional option to move *all* Metacard icons would involve copying 
an extra 279 KB as a substack with 507 Metacard icons, of which the 
majority would not be needed in most cases. If the extra KBs do not 
matter, this would be of course a more convenient way; I have included 
the whole "Icon" substack into my "MC-Browser" (for Windows, see my 
website).

By the way, the first 34 cards of stack "Icon" bear the identical name 
"Icon 301" (for icons 301 to 334).--


- As I gather from the discussion, the question whether to include an 
option to "place" dialogs anywhere on the screen or relative to a stack 
has not yet been definitely decided - and need not be, of course.

Those that want such an option can easily insert my proposed two lines 
into the scripts of the answer or ask dialog, both for Metacard and 
Revolution (see stacks "Place Dialogs", page "Tools and Samples for 
Development" of <http://www.sanke.org> or my earlier posts).-

- Another very minor (and old) issue: When "locktext" is set to false 
for a field to do some editing of the text and later again set to true 
then "transversalon" is at the same time set to false.
This is not the case in Revolution: Setting locktext to true - in the 
object inspector or via script - does not change "focusable" (the 
"placeholder" for "traversalon" that by the way cannot be used as a 
keyword in Revolution; "set the focusable of fld x to true" does not 
have any effect, nor is "focusable" mentioned in the Transcript 
Dictionary; you have to use "set the traversalon..." to change the 
checkbox "focusable" of the object inspector).

The above minor issue in Metacard produced a mild annoyance in one of my 
last workshops during the summer semester, where the assignment for the 
students was to create a field with links inside the text (like HTML 
href and name anchors) that enable to scroll the field to the respective 
destination from a given link.

To use "linkclicked" and at the same be able to "select" text - to 
scroll to a text part by setting an invisible insertion cursor - both 
"locktext" and "traversalon" need to be set to true. It happened several 
times that students after having edited the text found that the links 
did not work any longer -  after editing and setting "locktext" to true 
again "Traversalon" was now "false".
The students discussed the possible rationale underlying this connection 
and did not come up with plausible answer. Neither did I.

I think we should disconnect "locktext" and "traversalon" like already 
done in Revolution (but without using the non-word "focusable").

Regards,

Wilhelm Sanke