Send and Dispatch without parameters

[Bob Sneidar]

Hi all. 

I just noticed that if you send or dispatch to an object and you have specified parameters in the objects handler, but you don't provide the parameters when you send or dispatch, the call will silently fail. This seems only to occur for built in handlers, like mouseUp for example. 

If I have a button called "myButton" with a mouseUp handler:

on mouseUp pButtonNum
    put "This is a test"
end mouseUp

if I:
send "mouseUp" to button "myButton"

or:
dispatch "mouseUp" to button "myButton" 

The button will never get the message, and no error is generated. This caught me quiet off guard, as you can for a custom handler just call it, and even if you don't provide all the parameters, the handler gets called anyway. 

However, if I have a custom handler:

on testMe theMessage
    put "This is a successful test."
end testMe

And then I send or dispatch without the parameter, the handler gets called fine! Is this normal or expected behavior? I cannot think that this kind of ambiguity is what the devs intended. If someone can give me a reason for why it has to be this way, I can just watch for it in the future. If not I suppose I should submit a bug report. 

In the meantime, I suppose the best practice is to never put the business end of your code in the built in handlers, but rather call a command or function that does all the work. That way you can send or dispatch to that handler and not to the built in one. 

Bob