Challenge: how to set the text of a field

[David Bovill]

Tried everything I can think of call, send, value, even the
executioncontexts - there is simply no way you can code this in the script
of the background (or the groups behavior). makes no difference if it is
just a shared group or a background. It comes down to the target always
referencing the current card instead of the card you are actively targeting
in the script (as in grp 1 of card 3) - that is except of course there is
no shared group on the current card in which case is does what yo would
expect and the target actually targets the "grp 1 of card 3"

Since everything uses this there is no way for a handler to know it was
called using the form "put the card_Number of grp 1 of card 3" rather than
"put the card_Number of grp 1 of card 2" - and so no way for it to return
the text of the group on that card or the hilite of a button on that card -
none, zero.

This makes it impossible to code widgets for shared backgrounds. If I want
to return some simple text - I can do something like "put the text of the
title_Field of grp 1 of card 2" - but if I want to do something complex
like return an array with all the data that the group is displaying - no
go, no way, not possible.

It's enough to abandon the idea of creating such groups and stick instead
to a single card paradigm, bringing the data in by creating new groups on
the fly.


On 29 March 2013 21:07, David Bovill <david at vaudevillecourt.tv> wrote:

> OK - lets rename the challenge :) Same problem - but defining it as
> follows:
>
>    - Is it possible to create a handler in the behavior of a shared group
>    that returns the number of the card the shared group is on?
>
> This is the same problem - it is a problem of finding a reference to the
> card a control is on so that you are able to return values of properties of
> the group such as a hilite or text that can differ from card to card. As
> far as I know there is actually no way at all to do this.
>
> Although I thought parsing the long id works - it does not. So the
> following handler does not work.
>
> getprop card_Number
>    put the long id of the target into targetObject
>    repeat
>       if word 1 of targetObject is "card" then
>          put the number of targetObject into cardNum
>          return cardNum
>       end if
>       delete word 1 to 4 of of targetObject
>       if targetObject is empty then return empty -- just in case
>    end repeat
> end card_Number
> In fact the behavior of references to shared "background" groups is quite
> bizarre! Take the following experiment - create a shared background and
> place it on 3 cards - add the handler above to the script of the shared
> group. It can be the behavior of the group or its script.
>
> Now given you are on the first card - issue the following from the message
> box:
>
> put the card_Number of group 1 of card 3  --> answer is 1
> put the card_Number of group 1 of card 2  --> answer is 1
> put the card_Number of group 1 of card 1  --> answer is 1
>
> Now try removing the group from the first card, and do the same again:
>
> put the card_Number of group 1 of card 3  --> answer is 3 - ie correct!
> put the card_Number of group 1 of card 2  --> answer is 2 - ie correct!
> put the card_Number of group 1 of card 1  --> well there isn't one so you
> get an error
>
> Summary - this is a bug. It also makes it impossible to define some basic
> and useful behaviors for shared "bakground" groups.
>