Accessing properties in sub stack fields

[John]

Hi,

   I was hoping that someone could explain what is going on.  I have a main stack with multiple sub stacks all of which use the main stack’s menu bar.  In the menubar group I have a mouseDown handler to update the menus before they are shown.  The sub stacks have fields which may, or may not, have a property “noType” with a value of “true”.

   In the mouseDown handler in the menuBar group, the following does not work:

put the noType of the focusedObject && the focusedObject into msg

I can see that the focusedObject is correct even though the value of the property is not shown.  If I place this into the mouseDown handler I get the expected result:

put line 1 of the openStacks into theTopStack
put the selectedField into theSelectedField
put word 2 of theSelectedField into theSelectedFieldNumber
put the noType of field theSelectedFieldNumber of stack theTopStack into msg


  Why does the first one line scrip not work and the longer four line script work?

Thanks in advance,
John