how to place a dialog window

[Wilhelm Sanke]

On Fri Nov 10, Chipp Walters chipp at chipp.com wrote:
 

> OK Wilhelm.
>
> How about this then,
>
>on mouseUp
> put the short name of the topStack into tStack
> go inv stack "answer Dialog"
> set the loc of stack "answer Dialog" to 200,200
> show stack "Answer Dialog"
> answer "Choose a color" with "red" or "green" or "blue"
> set the defaultStack to tStack
> set the backcolor of fld  1 to it
>end mouseUp
>
>
> That should solve your problem. Still quick and dirty. Oh, what if your
> topStack is a palette, or even modal/non-modal??? Then don't use it, 
> or hack
> it further to accomodate.
>
> I agree, the preferred way is to use one's own answer/ask dialogs, but
> sometimes (as in when you are creating plugins for others to use inside
> THEIR versions of Rev), you can't always count on your hacked versions 
> being
> 'in play.'



Hi Chipp,

This works fine, of course. Playing around with a number of different 
solutions I had added "of stack "answertest"" to the line where the 
backcolor is set.

The situation will be slightly more complicated (but not much) when you 
have to use "globalloc" to place the "answer dialog" relative to a 
control of your stack, which is what I use the NewLoc property for most 
of the time.
Using "set the loc of stack "answer dialog" to globalloc(tloc) would 
place the "answer dialog" relative to itself, not to the "calling" 
stack. You have here to compute globalloc *before* you set the loc of 
the dialog.

Let's compare two kinds of scripts, the first based on your solution above

"on mouseUp
 put the short name of the topStack into tStack
 put the loc of fld 1 into tloc
 add 100 to item 2 of tloc # to place the dialog near to the field
 put globalloc(tloc) into tloc
 go inv stack "answer Dialog"
 set the loc of stack "answer Dialog" to tloc
 show stack "Answer Dialog"
 answer "Choose a color" with "red" or "green" or "blue"
 set the defaultStack to tStack
 set the backcolor of fld  1 to it
end mouseUp"

Solution 2 using "NewLoc":

"on mouseUp
 put the loc of fld 1 into tloc
 add 100 to item 2 of tloc # to place the dialog near to the field
 set the NewLoc of stack "answer Dialog" to globalloc(tloc)
 answer "Choose a color" with "red" or "green" or "blue"
 set the backcolor of fld  1 to it
end mouseUp"

That makes 10 script lines vs. 5, and you have to pay attention to more 
implications in the first script, which could therefore rather named a 
"slow" solution.

Of course, with the "NewLoc" variant, you need to add the two extra 
script lines before "end preopenstack" of the answer dialog script.
But you do this only once for your Rev version, and once these two 
scriptlines are in place, you have the best of two worlds, being able to 
set the loc of the dialog with "NewLoc" any time you wish the short way, 
and at the same time - if you do not specify a NewLoc - having the 
answer dialog behave like it normally does.

Adding the two scriptlines is not too difficult, maybe my description of 
the process is rather detailed and needs some attention to be 
understood, but actually adding those lines should not take longer than 
40 seconds - making it easy to quickly patch each new version of 
Revolution (in case the Rev team does not come up with a solution of 
their own).

Best regards,

Wilhelm

<http://www.sanke.org/MetaMedia>