Change Field Property in All Fields of a Stack

[Richard Gaskin]

René Micout wrote:

 > YES, thank you Richard !
 > I don't understand all that but (after experimentation > I keep your
 > post preciously) I think I can bring improvement in my sripts...
 > René

Thank you for the kind words, René.  That I can help someone as 
accomplished as yourself makes my day.

Rev's visual property inheritance is, AFAIK, unique among xTalks. 
Because it's unique it's not obvious to folks coming from other 
dialects, but IMO it's one of the finest examples of where the 
unlearning Rev requires pays off big and demonstrates that Rev is truly 
the rightful heir of the xTalk crown.

You said the most important word about learning any programming 
language, a word so important it seems worth drawing attention to:

    experimentation

I believe that's the key to learning most anything, and with programming 
languages it's even better:  failure happens only between you and a 
machine where there is no embarrassment, and everything happens in 
real-time so you can see outcomes immediately.  You try, you see what 
worked and what didn't, you revise, and try again.  Each time you learn 
something new, and when it's done you get that wonderful "a ha!" moment 
when it all falls into place.

In that process many things happen:  You learn new tokens, you learn the 
old tokens more clearly, and you become an ever better typist (which may 
seem an archaic skill but it remains so useful for writers of all types, 
whether it's code for machines or words for people).

Phil Davis once shared with me an old quote which has become a favorite:

   Good judgment comes from experience.
   Experience comes from bad judgment.

:)

Experiment away!  If you keep backups you can do no harm, and that 
hands-on learning is among the most powerful things humans do.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  Rev training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com
  revJournal blog: http://revjournal.com/blog.irv

>>> Steven Axtell wrote:
>>>  > Is there a command that will allow a field property (textfont,
>>>  > for example) to be changed in all of the fields of a stack at
>>>  > the same time?
>>>
>>> Most visual attributes (textFont, textStyle, textSize, backgroundColor,
>>> foregroundColor, and others) are inherited using roughly the same chain
>>> as the message path: control, background (if present), card, stack, home.
>>>
>>> If you set the desired properties to empty in the controls themselves,
>>> you can set them at the stack level and those controls will take on
>>> those appearances.
>>>
>>> Tip:  to find the property settings for a control you can of course just
>>> get it from the control, e.g.:
>>>
>>>    get the textFont of fld 1
>>>
>>> But if you've set the property to empty and want to know what value is
>>> being inherited by it, you can use the "effective" keyword:
>>>
>>>    get the effective textFont of fld 1
>>>
>>> That will return the value of the property nearest the control which has
>>> a non-empty value, or the engine's default if nothing in the message
>>> path has been set.
>>>
>> For example, if your field's textFont is set to empty and your card has
>> a textFont of "Lucida Grande", then using "the effective textFont" will
>> return "Lucida Grande".  If the card's textFont is empty but the stack's
>> textFont is "Ariel", it will return "Ariel".  If you later set the
>>> textFont of the control to "Trebuchet", it will return "Trebuchet"
>>>  regardless of the value of any subsequent objects in the chain.
>>>
>>> HTH -