RevOnline & User Comments in the Dictionary

[Peter M. Brigham]

On Jul 14, 2014, at 12:15 PM, Charles E Buchwald wrote:

> I know this is just one more complaint about how broken RevOnline is... But it would be _really_ nice if it worked again.
> 
> I just spent 45 minutes figuring out that when you use the revZip external, you sometimes have to enclose your variable names in quotes. As usual I searched the list archives, the forum and Google. As soon as I posted a question in StackOverflow I found the answer in an old forum post.
> 
> BUT, I'd love to add a quick comment in the dictionary entry for revZipAddItemWithData, and of course I can't log in to RevOnline, and that prohibits me from adding such a note. A note like that would have saved me an hour of time at least, maybe more. The dictionary is my main reference, so comments and corrections there are a big deal for the way I work. I can't be the only one.
> 
> OK, done with my whining….

OK, here's a quick-and-dirty plugin called LCdictPlugin. Pop it into your plugins folder and restart LC. Then if you right-click (or Mac control-click) on the first line of a dictionary entry, the one that states the dictionary term you are looking at, you'll get the option to show the user note. A palette window will open so you can see/edit your note for that dictionary entry, or enter one if there isn't one already. Click the save button to save your entry or the close button to close without saving.

I just threw this together, so let me know if there are bugs…. The plugin uses a frontscript. User notes are saved in an array that is a customprop of the plugin stack. Written in LC 5.5, I haven't checked to see if later versions of LC have the same dictionary format, let me know about that. (Sorry, like Richmond, I am not using LC 6.x for most of what I do, since that would involve updating 32,000 lines of script.)

Available at:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3504108/LCdictPlugin.livecode

As a bonus, you get automatic use of the utility handler "popChoose," which allows you to call up a context-dependent popup list anywhere in LC. Call it like this:

on mouseup tBtn
   if tBtn = 3 then
      put popChoose("Vera","Chuck","Dave") into userChoice
      -- do whatever you want with the user choice here
   else
      -- other mouseup stuff here
   end if

-- Peter

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