Graphic tools - works in IDE, fails in Standalone: getting desperate

[Graham Samuel]

I'm still in bad trouble on this despite help from the mother ship, who pointed out that when I started this thread, I was mixing the creation of paint ('image') and vector ('graphic') objects. 

I corrected my mistakes, and built a mini-app that has drawing tools chosen in a palette. The actual drawings are done on a card in the mainstack. All works. Now I went back to my original app, made sure the tool palette there had been updated, and sure enough in the IDE it all works - I'm able to make vector graphics on a card in my mainstack and manipulate them (drag, resize, delete etc)  as expected.

So, armed with that knowledge, I rebuilt my standalone. To my surprise the behaviour was as before (works in IDE, doesn't work in standalone). 

A graphic tool (for example of style 'oval') in my app did not draw a graphic but instead a small circle on my card whose size I could not influence! I realise this is what you get when you select a drawing tool and just click without dragging - so there was no response to my dragging. Trying a bit harder, I modified and remade the app with another card from a different substack visible to the user: amazingly, the tools in my palette work perfectly on this card, but not on the original target card!! 

I inserted logging messages in my original target card and I found that new graphics are being created, but I can't resize or select them.

So, there is something strange about the card which I am trying to use for drawing. What could it be? I have checked all the things I can think of, including strange 'mouseDown' handlers in the message path (presumably such a handler could wreck the drawing process), a cantSelect set to true (this inhibits creation of graphics), but I haven't found anything yet.

The stack where the drawing is supposed to take place is definitely toplevel.

Can anyone say what can prevent dragging with a graphic drawing tool working on a particular card in a toplevel stack, and why there should be a difference between the IDE and a standalone?

TIA

Graham