Application Data

[Peter Bogdanoff]

Hi,

I’m designing a new application whereby a user creates animation: images, buttons, fields, graphics, new cards, etc., are created in my LC runtime using the standard LiveCode controls. I will have a palette of tools available to the user to do their creative work. The user then saves the file which can be reopened by anyone who has my application.

I like the design of Apple’s Pages page layout application where the single window is a working area (canvas) for the page you’re working on, an inspector area on the right, and a sort of menubar area on the top of the whole thing that also has additional tools. As you resize the window a grey backdrop shows behind.

I can recreate this in LiveCode pretty easily. However, the stuff in the canvas, the working area needs to be saved as a project file outside my application to be reloaded again later. It would be great if this was simply a stack that is opened and shows in my application window. But I don't see how I can “connect” that stack into my application window, so you can drag the window around, resize it, work on it, and it is one single window.

The alternative I see is to save data describing each object into an external file and recreate the controls and text content when the project file is reloaded.

I strongly suspect that someone has done this sort of thing before… Is there a way to physically “connect” two stacks together? Or, any suggestions on saving and reloading descriptive data about the contents of a stack?

Thanks!

Peter Bogdanoff
UCLA