unexpected messages

[Dave Cragg]

At 10:27 pm -0700 24/4/03, Bob Rasmussen wrote:

>Whoa!  Not so fast!  That was "_if_ an extra mousemove gets sent as
>well", which sounds like pure
>speculation to me.  "MouseMove", which was the source of my problem,
>isn't mentioned anywhere in any of
>the release notes (which I DO read), and that includes the MetaCard
>release notes.

A mouseMove event is always sent in combination with (and before) a 
mouseDown event. I think this may be what you are referring to. It's 
been part of the engine behavior as far back as I can remember.

You can check with the following script in a button. Keep the mouse 
still, and then click it. (In fact, there now seem to be two 
mouseMove messages sent prior to a mouseDown.)

local lvEvents

on mouseUp
    put "mouseUp" & cr after lvEvents
    put lvEvents
    put empty into lvEvents
end mouseUp

on mouseMove
    if the mouse is down then put "mouseMove" & cr after lvEvents
end mouseMove

on mousedown
    put "mouseDown" & cr after lvEvents
end mouseDown

I'm not defending the rationality of this, but one good outcome is 
that it discourages use of "the mouse" function to determine whether 
the mouse is down when you want to track mouse movement.

For those new to the list (this issue crops up regularly), the 
"proper" way is to set a flag (as a script local or custom property) 
on mouseDown and reset it on mouseUp. Then in the mouseMove handler, 
check the state of the flag, and *not* the mouse function.

Cheers
Dave