"background" behavior a la HyperCard

[Ken Ray]

Barry,

Your thinking is correct, with one exception, and that is that if you create
your buttons and group them, and THEN check on the "Background Behavior"
property of the group on the Group tab of the Properties window, you can
then create new cards and they will automatically get the shared group (aka
"background"). That is, you don't need to do step #4 (Place Group).

The reason you apparently needed to in your sequence was that when a group
is initially created, its backgroundBehavior property is false. When you
place that group on another card via Place Group, Rev changes the
backgroundBehavior property of the group to true. As you can see, it is
easier to just turn the property on yourself and avoid the Place Group
command altogether.

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

----- Original Message -----
From: "Barry Levine" <themacguy at mac.com>
To: <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
Sent: Monday, May 13, 2002 9:51 PM
Subject: "background" behavior a la HyperCard


> I know this is covered in the electronic documentation but it is,
> *sigh*, somewhat vague. I'd appreciate if someone would comment on what
> appears below:
>
> I want a series of objects (buttons and fields) to appear on every card
> in a stack (like objects in the background in HyperCard). In order to
> accomplish this, I do the following:
>
> 1. Create those buttons and fields on the first card.
> 2. Do any scripting of those objects as necessary.
> 3. Group those objects and note the group ID of that group.
> 4. Create a new card and "Place Group > group ID ####" from the Object
> menu.
> This places that group into the current card.
> 5. Create new cards and the group automatically appears on the new cards.
>
> It looks like the group ID disappears from the "Place Group" submenu of
> the Objects menu once you've "Placed" the group on the current card. If
> I then create a new card, the "placed" group from the current card is
> automatically placed on the new card. Now I have the same behavior I
> would expect in HyperCard (where background objects get created along
> with a new card as long as I don't request a new background).
>
> Additionally, I may edit the script of any of the grouped objects and
> the changes will be propagated throughout each card where the group
> appears (much like it would in HyperCard when editing the script of a
> "background" object).
>
> Is my thinking straight about this?
>
>
> Thanks,
> Barry
>
> _______________________________________________
> use-revolution mailing list
> use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
>