New to Revolution

[Alex Rice]

On Saturday, August 30, 2003, at 10:50  PM, Troy wrote:
> I’m new to Revolution, but I am a professional Windows developer with 
> about 10 years of experience mostly in VC++ and VB.  I have a couple 
> of questions I was hoping someone could answer:

Welcome!

> 1)      Is it possible to access the Windows API (and the equivalent 
> on other O/S’s) from within Revolution?

Not directly. A couple of ways to go.

1) write your own "external" to connect with the C/C++/whatever APIs of 
your choice. An "external" in our lingo is a compiled module that 
defines transcript commands and handlers - the bodies of which are 
implemented in languages other than transcript. It's not a lot of work 
do write an external, but the documentation for the SDK is practically 
nonexistent so far.

2) shell() out and use rundll32.exe
See win002 - Using Rundll32 For Administrative Functions
http://www.sonsothunder.com/devres/revolution/revolution.htm

3) something else I'm forgetting

> 2)      As part of an application we’re trying to develop, we would 
> need a text field with word processor-like features. By this I mean:
>
> a.      Changing font size/type/color/bold/italic/underline of a word 
> or words (without changing the entire field)
> b.      Being able to insert an image right into the text field
> c.      Adding a table
> d.      Having a bulleted list of items (numbered and un-numbered)
> e.      Setting the alignment (left/center/right/justify) for a 
> paragraph independent of the other paragraphs
> f.        Highlighting text

> I’m just trying to find out if this is possible, first of all, and if 
> someone could possibly point me in the direction of what to look for 
> in the Revolution documentation.

Word processor-like! "-like" being the operative concept there :-) The 
Rev IDE for example is written in Rev, and the script editor is sort of 
word processor-like. Take a look at these entries in the transcript 
dictionary as a start

textFont
textSize
textStyle
htmltext
rtftext
imagesource
vgrid, hgrid, showlines
chunk expressions

You will find that the typesetting capabilities of Rev are not meant to 
be really word processor-like. For example you can't anchor an image or 
flow text around an image in a field. Alignment is per field, not per 
chunk or per paragraph. You probably would have to use multiple fields, 
buttons and images, arranged on your card, to accomplish the layout you 
want.

Alex Rice <alex at mindlube.com> | Mindlube Software | http://mindlube.com

what a waste of thumbs that are opposable
to make machines that are disposable  -Ani DiFranco