Mac -> Win problems

[J. Landman Gay]

Charles Hartman wrote:

> PROBLEM 1: On WinXP, the cursor disappears whenever I mouse onto a  stack.

There's a Bugzilla report about this. It started a couple of versions 
ago but the team couldn't reproduce it. No one else complained, so the 
bug was closed. Recently another customer complained about it via tech 
support, so I re-opened the bug. I can't reproduce the behavior on my 
Windows machine either, so we don't know what causes it.

If you could add your comments to the bug report, the team might be able 
to track it down. I don't think it depends on the stack itself, since 
those people who report the problem say they have it no matter what 
stack is opened. But maybe you can work with the RR guys to determine if 
there is a system setting or something that is responsible.

The bugzilla report is here:

<http://support.runrev.com/bugdatabase/show_bug.cgi?id=2299>

> 
> PROBLEM 2: in "answer" commands, the choices I specify are there, but  
> they're in reversed order.

As others have mentioned, the HIG for each OS is different. So I don't 
think it is really a bug, since it is correct that the last button you 
list (the default button) should be on the left on a Windows box. If you 
do decide to write platform-specific code, be ready for one side or the 
other to notice. Windows users think the Mac order is backwards.

> 
> PROBLEM 3: One interactive tutorial works like this: In Courier (for  
> the sake of monospaced alignment between lines) there's a line of  text, 
> with a line of marks over it. The marks, in various  combinations at 
> various times, are covered up by opaque, borderless  fields, which are 
> hidden (revealing the mark below) in response to  mouse-clicks. But on 
> WinXP, though the font is the same (Courier  New), the size is 
> different! So the mark-hiding fields don't cover  their marks.

Right, you are up against one of the most common cross platform issues. 
Fonts of the same name and size are not identical on different operating 
systems. One way to manage this is to find (usually by trial and error) 
a size on one machine that matches a different size on another. (Dar has 
done some experiments with this.) Mac fonts are often wider, so for 
example, if your Mac is using Courier 12, you might find a match on 
Windows by using Courier 10 or 11. You might have to juggle textheights 
the same way. Once you get the right sizes, you can run a quick 
preopencard handler that sets each field's textsize and/or textheight to 
whatever it needs.

One other thing you could do, if there is enough room, is just make your 
cover fields large enough for the worst-case font size.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com