Identifying objects by their tooltips

[Richard Gaskin]

Marielle Lange wrote:
> Alex's suggestion of using custom properties is even better. I know  by 
> my own experience that it takes a bit of time to take the jump and  come 
> to trust custom properties (which don't exist in other  languages). When 
> you do, you never look back. They are really handy.

Very.  Once you get started with them, they'll change your programming 
habits forever.

For the record, although HyperCard never implemented them until the day 
it died, SuperCard introduced custom properties in the early '90s, and 
ToolBook, RADBuilder, Director, and (if memory serves) OMO had them too.

What Rev uniquely brings to the table that no other xTalk has is the 
ability to define multiple sets of custom properties, and the graceful 
ease of using array notation to address them.

While they might seem exotic to HypeTalkers, the idea of binding 
arbirtary data to an object is common, if not considered essential, in 
more formal languages.

Perhaps the closest corollary in OOPS might be instance variables.
In traditional non-OOP languages we might think of them as part of the 
record structure of an object.

In the old Mac Classic days, controls and windows had a RefCon field 
which was used to hook your own data structures to the OS-managed object.

The idea takes as many forms as there are languages, but I believe the 
binding of data to objects in Rev through custom properties and custom 
property sets is perhaps the simplest.  And with the ability to store 
both textual and binary data, they're as flexible as one's imagination 
allows.

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  Richard Gaskin
  Managing Editor, revJournal
  _______________________________________________________
  Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com