lazy newbie

[J. Landman Gay]

On 3/30/05 6:28 PM, Timothy Miller wrote:

> When I'm done with all this stuff, do I need to convert my backgrounds 
> to sub-stacks?

No, substacks are a different thing. Backgrounds are backgrounds, just 
like in HC, only they have additional behaviors in Rev, so they are also 
called "groups". The distinction is subtle, and use of the terms "group" 
and "background" need to vary depending on the placement of the groups. 
But for your imported stacks, continue to refer to them as backgrounds, 
and use them as you always have. Your stacks should act just as they do 
in HC and your scripts should work the same. You don't need to do 
anything different for now (but later, when you discover the power of 
groups, you will use them more fully and change your terminology.)

> 
> If I open my stacks in Rev (they will open -- I've tried it -- I've paid 
> for Dreamcard on three platforms), does Rev automatically re-define my 
> backgrounds as substacks? If so, does Rev do that correctly?

It correctly keeps them as background groups, just as they were in HC. 
As long as you have only one group (i.e., background) per card -- which 
will always be the case in a converted HC stack -- you can ignore the 
"group" terminology for now and just use the syntax you are used to.

Later, if you want to add more than one group to a card, you'll have to 
learn new tricks. :)

As for substacks, they are just regular stacks that are stored together 
in the same file on disk. In HC we could use multiple stacks but they 
were all sitting loose on the hard drive. In Rev, you can combine 
multiple stacks into the same file on disk. They are still separate 
stacks but you only have one physical file. However, because they all 
share certain attributes, the message hierarchy changes somewhat and 
some other behavioral differences can pop up. But they are still just 
stacks.

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