Challenge: how to set the text of a field

Sat Mar 30 22:48:23 EDT 2013

if you put a routine in the closefield handler of the field that set a custom property of the group in array form, eg, field_Text[cdNbr], then you can retrieve this at any time from within the group, no matter where it is placed, no? It won't be a setprop/getprop method, but should be pretty straightforward. Maybe I'm not understanding your constraints.

-- Peter

Peter M. Brigham
pmbrig at gmail.com
http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig

On Mar 30, 2013, at 9:19 AM, David Bovill wrote:

> Thanks Peter - but no it does not help. Lets take your example, but what we
> want to do is give the group a (virtual) custom property that a developer
> can call from anywhere in the environment to retrieve the text in the
> field. You can't hard code anything like you have " fld "f" of card 2" - as
> you have no idea which stack or card a developer will put the group on.
> 
> You want to be able to issue somethign like the following from the message
> box, or a button, or handler from any stack in the environment:
> 
> put the field_Text of group "g" of card 2 of stack "Test"
> 
> There is no way to script a handler of any sort in the group that can do
> this. You can't even do it with sending, or calling a command. AFAIK it's
> that simple - basic, important and can't be done. Or can it :)
> 
> On 30 March 2013 12:45, Peter M. Brigham <pmbrig at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Try this:
>> 
>> - create a new stack with a button "test" and a field "f"
>> - group them in group "g"
>> - set the backgroundbehavior of group "g" to true
>> - create 2 new cards -- the group will be placed on all 3 cards
>> - put "one" into fld "f" of card 1, "two" into fld "f" of card 2, "three"
>> into fld "f" of card 3
>> - create a button "behav" on card 1
>> - set the behavior of group "g" to the long id of btn "behav" of cd 1
>> - set the script of btn "test" to the following:
>> 
>> on mouseUp
>>   put fld "f" of card 2
>> end mouseUp
>> 
>> Click btn "test" and you get "two" in the messagebox
>> 
>> Does this do what you want?
>> 
>> -- Peter
>> 
>> Peter M. Brigham
>> pmbrig at gmail.com
>> http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig
>> 
>> 
>> On Mar 30, 2013, at 6:54 AM, David Bovill wrote:
>> 
>>> 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.
>>>> 
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