Button oddities -- LC 5.5 related? Possible serious problem?

Timothy Miller gandalf at DOCTORTIMOTHYMILLER.COM
Sat Mar 31 18:34:43 EDT 2012


We're in Mac OS 10.6.8, recently upgraded to LC v 5.5., using a stack that worked normally every day in LC 5.0.2. It's a single-core Intel MacBook.

"That's funny. I thought I had little "go prev" and "go next" buttons in the upper right and left corners of this stack. Just my imagination, I guess."

The stack: many cards, most entirely alike, except for text in fields. Objects are all in one group, including the go next and go prev buttons. Background behavior is set to true.

View: toolbar text
Click on "Select group" so it isn't boldface
Click on the group, so the whole group is selected
Click on "edit group"

Huh! The go next and go prev buttons have reappeared! I didn't mis-remember them after all.

If I close the stack and re-open it, without quitting LC, the buttons do not disappear. I have "purge stack" and "purge window" set to true.

If I quit LC and launch the stack again, the buttons disappear.

When I can't see the buttons, after quitting and restarting, the loc of button ID xxxx and the visible of button ID xxxx both appear correct.

No field or image covers up these buttons.

Oops. I just discovered that if I click with the browse tool on the place where the buttons should be, the button becomes visible and the button script executes. If I save and quit LC, the buttons disappear when I launch the stack again.

After writing the foregoing, it seemed there is no point in bothering the list about such a small matter. I just deleted the dysfunctional buttons, made new ones, from scratch, added them to the group and put them in the approximate location of the old ones.

To my surprise, the new buttons behave in the same strange way.

Style is "transparent button"
"Visible" is true
Opaque, show name, auto hilite and shared hilite are false
Setting "show name" to true causes the name to remain visible if I quit and restart, but not the icon.
Changing the style from opaque button to transparent button doesn't seem to make any difference.
Setting auto-hilite and shared hilite to true doesn't seem to make any difference.

This might be an icon issue. I tried choosing a few different icons. That didn't make a difference.

I tried tracing the script of these buttons. There's nothing in the script that would account for this behavior.

I could troubleshoot further, but the amount of time expended on the mystery is starting to be disproportionate the the seriousness of the problem.

Am I missing something obvious? Making a newbie error? Is this a possible bug in LC 5.5?

By the way, view:toolbar text doesn't work quite right. When I start LC and view:toolbar text, I get a partial view of toolbar icons. After a few clicks it corrects itself and then works normally until the next time I quit and launch LC.

I wonder if the two issues are related?

Finally it occurs to slow-witted self to check to see if this is a minor bug in LC 5.5. I close and quit, try the same stack with "open with" set to LC 5.0.2. LC 5.0.2 launches, but the stack will not launch. I can open some other old stacks with 5.0.2. If I set the get-info to open with 5.0.2 and double click on the stack while LC 5.0.2 is running I get a message saying the stack is corrupted.

I tried duplicating the stack in the finder, opening in LC 5.5, deleting the offending buttons, saving. The copy of the stack still won't open in LC 5.0.2.

Yes, I have backed up, though not daily, and I do add text to this stack daily. Older copies of this stack will launch with LC 5.0.2.

This seems a little more serious now.

I'd stop using LC 5.5 until further notice, except I use this stack often and it no longer works in 5.0.2.

Aside from the little quirk aforementioned, the stack in question seems to work normally, though it's possible that I have overlooked other problems.

I don't have a machine with OS 10.7 installed, so I can't check to see if that's relevant.

Cheers,


Tim








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