Crashes and the blessing mystery of "groups"

Bill bill at bluewatermaritime.com
Mon Jun 14 21:57:53 EDT 2004


This isn't something that can be bugzilla-ed as it can't be repeated
exactly. It is a crash when inserting a new card that has something to do
with the "group" property -- and coming from hypercard the "group" property
and how you edit it, put objects in it and "use it" is one strange beast.

(use it -  the behave as background check box which when used on a button
object makes clicking anywhere on the card click that button. But I just
can't see how that can be useful as I would rather just put a script that
catches mouseUps in the card and avoid the strange background "group"
feature that button objects have.)

I will be better able to document this crash (which caused me to lose 6
hours of programming which by the way, coming from HyperCard, is something
that would never happen in HyperCard) when, if, I ever understand the
"group" property.

I suspect that I will understand the "group" property about when I
understand how to bless a constructor (which is why I'm building my program
in runrev (and using its excellent mysql access and fast manipulations of
text in variables) and not perl or php.

Please steer me to a simple explanation of groups!

1. How to add a button or a field to an existing group so that it behaves
like a hypercard background. If you edit a script in the button that same
edit will be in all the buttons on all the same cards in that stack. A field
will share throughout all cards in the stack.

2. I see the three little icons -- group, edit group, select group -- and I
have played with them to try to understand their functions (and I vote that
there is only one button "group"). And then there is the usually grey "Place
Group" which will let you place a group that you create (always with some
kind of number instead of a name. If you try to change the number to a name
it will appear to accept the change but still be a difficult to remember
number and the named group becomes something else (maybe an OOP that I
forgot to bless?)

3. Luckily it is late at night  here in the rainforest so I will send this
email rather than erase it as maybe someone else who lost six hours of work
because of a crash and who also has no idea how to use "groups" will at
least feel he has company.

4. I think the work-around is to always create stacks that only have one
card.

Bill





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