Understanding 'the defaultStack'

[Bob Sneidar]

Seems to me one unexpected outcome would be if you had the command "hide me" early in the script of a stack where another stack was visible, and then made references dependent on the defaultStack being the one hidden.

Bob S


On Oct 8, 2016, at 14:12 , Richard Gaskin <ambassador at fourthworld.com<mailto:ambassador at fourthworld.com>> wrote:

J. Landman Gay wrote:

On 10/8/16 3:22 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
The rule Dr. Raney gave me is that the defaultStack is the topmost
visible stack of the lowest mode.

I thought visibility might impact it (I believe that's the case with
Graham's stack) so I did some quick tests and even though there was a
visible mode-1 topstack, going to the invisible one did change the
defaultstack. Thus, my curiosity.

I.e.:

Stack One
visible
topstack
mode 1


command: go stack stackTwo

stackTwo
visibility false
mode 1

command: put the defaultstack
-> stackTwo


So...?

Personally I'd consider that a bug.  Even if visibility was never part of a formal definition, so much of the learnability of xTalk rests on being able to predict outcomes based on what we see.  The layering of a window visibly changes if a window above it becomes hidden, all the way down to how the OS renders the drag region.

To me it seems logical that an invisible window should be expected to require special handling if another window of the same mode is visible.

I can't think of a case where the behavior you've documented would be either anticipatable or desirable.

--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World Systems
Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web