Debugging Hint?

[Tereza Snyder]

On Jun 20, 2007, at 3:34 AM, Stephen Barncard wrote:

> watch out for the vague "me" reference and try something more  
> absolute, like the id or name of the object you are calling 'me'.  
> Sometimes getting the id of me or the owner of me works.

What's vague about "me"? As far as I'm concerned, "me" is the only  
certain way to refer to a specific object: namely the one harboring  
the script. Putting "the long ID of me" into a variable gives you  
something you can pass around, for sure, but unless you already know  
the total path to an object (e.g. button "OK" of grp "response" of  
card 1 of stack "mydialog") being uncertain of object references is  
the number one botheration in writing general purpose handlers.   
"...of this card", "...of this stack", "...of the default stack", or  
"...of the topstack" are all pigs in pokes.

What I often wish for is the extension of "me" into "my", as in for  
any control:

my stack
my mainstack
my owner
my card

Currently, only "my owner" can be obtained by using "of me"; all the  
others require parsing the long name or ID.

If you've tried scripting palettes (where "this stack" refers not to  
the the palette but to the default stack) you may have adopted the  
strategy of putting button scripts into the palette's card or stack  
and using "of me" to refer to controls on the palette itself. How  
much nicer it would be to put in a button script:

    on mouseup
         set the hilite of button "choice2" of grp "choices" of my  
card to true
    end mouseup

instead of something like

   on mouseup
     set the hilite of button "choice2" of grp "choices" of card  
"xxx" of stack "yyy" to true
   end mouseup

where you have to change xxx and yyy every time you reuse the button  
in another context, or you might make xxx and yyy globals (ugh!) that  
you have to set in opencard and openstack (and then forget about when  
you reuse the button), or go though a rigamarole involving delimiters  
and/or offsets to parse the long name of "me" to get the cardname and  
stackname either in the mouseup handler or in a utility function  
somewhere (that you now have to include in every project, like it or  
not).

Consider voting for 'bug' 3446 if you agree.


t
-- 
Tereza Snyder
Califex Software, Inc.