background groups issues

[MisterX]

BG = group with GroupBehavior ON
Grp = group w/o GrpBehavior ON
 
in Theory and as RevDocs say:
If a create a stack with a background group and a background menu bar group,
any card i create thereafter gets both background groups.
 
But if i created cards in these background stacks - which is the determinant
of
the group though? Neither and both as far as i know...
 
Change happens all the time so I decided to add a third group to the
background. But it only shows up in the first card where i pasted it.
 
Changing it's background behavior doesn't help. Except if i create a new
card and
then we have group-wide disconcordance since only new cards in the group
will
have the new group while the old cards dont have the new BG. In essence
you have now 2 different backgrounds - card 1 with 3 groups, other cards
with 2 groups. 
 
This was never a problem in HC. Any change to the background, was reflected
to all cards in that background. It was easy since only 1 background could
coexist at any time per card. Although it's one card per background, it's
put that way just for the relation to the new MC model where 2 bgs can
coexist into a card. the background to Card relationship is not the same.
The new model has new "powers" and less limitations but also less
"user-friendly consistency" in a certain way.
 
- i dont want to paste the new group into the main background. I already
have a menugroup that's independent from my "main" background.
 
-- I did try the "place" handler. But another big problem surfaces! The
layer of the newly placed group is not the same as it was in the previous cd
(the two cards are the same except for field data)! The layers property are
not kept the same seems a bugzilla issue or?. Anyway, new cards you create
will have either 2 or 3 groups. If you pasted your third group in any card,
this becomes really horrible for the user when the bg changes in some cards
but not others (and if you sorted the cards and any card has 2 or 3
different looks - it's not nice).
 
Of course, the possibility to place a 3rd bg into different cards can have
an advantage and be seen as a powerful feature. But it kind of "defaces" the
meaning and "simplicity-given" value of the "background attribute" for a
group. Dare i say "perverted logic"? ;))
 
Why can't i place my group (which is already layer 1) into all cards at
once? The efficient way? I dont want to make groups into groups, it makes
things a lot messier (and poor you if you used the RevGM), it's also a
"infrastructure"-forced change - which is not good some large-project
cases... 
 
So back to the place command + lots of scripts to relayer (if nothing else
req that i haven't seen ;))
 
Seems like there should be a simple answer to this problem, but i have a
huge number (read hundreds) of affected stacks now... Also it blocks
completely the possibility of adding "simply" a theme to an existing stack
that has backgrounds. It's not unscriptable - not worth the bugzilla time
(and i dont think i'll get a satisfactory answer or attention-to-the-problem
- this being a minority problem. 
 
Any comments, ideas are more than welcome... FYI, I know groups/backgrounds
behavior inside-out, i tried most possibilities but this kind of baffles me
why it dont work naturally as one would expect from a background behavior.
This behavior is "available" since MetaCard. Many among us no longuer use
card based databases however i still think it's one of the best methods
which is why i rely on it as some rely on xml or sql or FileMakerPro. With
stacks of cards, in rev, across any OS, you have the advantage of all the
above and no parsing, no formatting, no connections required, pure speed.
 
The one and only simple solution to this is putting bg 3 into the main bg.
But then you might as well put all your bgs into one bg (then you might
choose menus to be either replicated per bg or not put into the main bg).
 
The easy way to fix this is "layers" imoho - if you ever used FreeHand-like
layers! The only missing feature in FH is cards and xtalk ;) Or RunRev could
use a stack-background-layer AND a card-background-layer property each with
their global or local (respectively) display of "backgrounds".
 
How many of you would vote for this bugzilla enhancement? 
 
Note: In the objects menu of the revtoolbar or rev menu, there is a "place
group" item, but when i choose the group i want to place somewhere, it's
always disabled (bgbehavior on or off). Oh well...
 
Note 2: The first stack i opened in this session was my bot game with a grid
group (not bg). Now, i edit the stack "taoo documentation" "objects" group
(bg), i try to group the index elements into a sub group and they get
grouped as "grid" with the grid dimensions. Any idea what is happening now?
Is this a new 2.6 behavior? ;)
 
cheers
Xavier
http://monsieurx.com/taoo