BGs

[Klaus Major]

Hi Jeanne,

> At 1:21 PM -0700 4/3/05, Dan Shafer wrote:
>> Copying a background from one card to another *duplcates* the 
>> background so that changes made to one of them will not be reflected 
>> in the copy. Placing a background seems to me to at least imply that 
>> the author intends for the background to be shared so that changes to 
>> the background made from any card will be reflected in all other 
>> cards on which the background appears. To make that happen, the group 
>> must be set to behave as a background.
>
> Actually, this isn't so - a group can be shared without having its 
> backgroundBehavior property set to true. Shared groups worked fine 
> even before the backgroundBehavior property was added to the language. 
> What backgroundBehavior does is cause shared groups to be 
> automatically placed on new cards, as well as tweaking the message 
> path for the group so it matches HyperCard's behavior more closely.

EXACTLY! That's what i meant...

:-)

> (My only excuse for not documenting that "place" turns on 
> backgroundBehavior

AHA!!!! OK, once i know, it is not harmful anymore :-)

> is that no one told me about the change, and I didn't stumble across 
> it on my own when the property was added. If I had been told about it, 
> I would have argued that it was a bug, not a feature. Commands 
> shouldn't spew side effects like that, even if they're documented. As 
> it is, apparently if you want a shared group whose backgroundBehavior 
> property is false, you need to remember to reset the property after 
> every time you place the group on a card.)

But "set the backgroundbehaviour of grp xyz to false" does NOT work 
after placing that group onto a card,
and that might be a bug?

In my case i want to loop though a textfile, create cards and place 
DIFFERENT bgs (with NO bgbeh.)
onto the cards according to the current "record"...

> The whole situation with backgroundBehavior is confusing.

Yo, took me quite a long time to understand, but now is it pretty 
logical to me ;-)

> It was added in order to better emulate HyperCard backgrounds, which 
> it does, but there were collateral changes (for example, changes to 
> what "the backgroundNames" means) that resulted in, IMHO, a mess.
> -- 
> jeanne a. e. devoto ~ revolution at jaedworks.com
> http://www.jaedworks.com

Regards

Klaus Major
klaus at major-k.de
http://www.major-k.de