The properties property

[Richard Gaskin]

Peter Haworth wrote:

 > Missing out the ones that can be derived from others seems reasonable
 > and I've found a property named colors that fits that bill in terms
 > of fore/background colors/patterns etc, and that the decorations
 > property will contain "system" if systemWindow is true (or vice versa
 > I guess).  Still mystified by textAlign though.

It can sometimes help maintain one's sanity to know the backstory for 
something as seemingly bizarre as the current state of the properties 
function:

It was originally added back in the MetaCard days at Kevin's request, so 
the first RunRev IDE could easily reproduce objects with syntax as 
simple as "set the properties of <obj> to the properties of <obj>".

After Raney added that for them, RunRev has since acquired the code base 
and, somewhat ironically, no longer depend on this property as they once 
did.

So the properties you'll see supported tend to be older ones, and 
redundant ones like backgroundColor, also covered by the colors, aren't 
bothered with because they aren't needed for the original purpose of the 
function.

All that said, as long as it's there is can be very helpful, but only if 
they make an effort to maintain it whenver they add new properties - 
there's a request in the bug DB to bring it current:

<http://quality.runrev.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2732>

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for Desktop, Mobile, and Web
  ____________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com        http://www.FourthWorld.com