Portable Buttons

[Bob Sneidar]

Hi Jim. 

The issue was that I was trying to build an Object Library stack where I could select an object of any type, and click a button in my Library Pallette that would copy the object to the Library Pallette stack, recording the new ID, name and label in an array property, then add the label of the object to a list of objects grouped by Object Type. 

The grab part worked great, and the expanding list I figured out. But then I opened the pallette stack without the original stack and discovered that the button I had grabbed, which in the original stack had a graphic icon linked to it, now displayed no icon. Of course it wouldn't, because the graphic it was linked to was on another card in another stack that was not open! 

So then I realized I would not only have to grab the button but any linked graphics, then I would have to relink them to the new button in the palette. That was just for grabbing. Then if I wanted to PLACE that button in another stack, I would have to reverse the process. Not only that, but there are something like 6 possible icons that can be linked, so now I am going to be spraying icons all over the pallette card, I'm clearly going to have to hide them. 

Then I realized that pasted graphics paste with locLoc OFF, so any graphics that have been SCALED are going to paste IN THE ORIGINAL SIZE, so I ALSO have to RESCALE each graphic then lock it. In both directions. Then I realized I have GROUPS of buttons that behave as a unit, so I will have to go through each group and find any buttons and deal with them as well, and if there are groups of groups... at which point I threw up my hands. 

The issue is that button graphics are not directly assigned to a button as a file reference, as they really REALLY REEEEAAAALLLLY OUGHT to be, but rather to an imported graphic, and by the absolutely WORST possible token, the ID of the graphic, not the name. The ID will change anytime the graphic is cut/copied and then pasted. So that breaks the link. 

This is a long standing issue that makes buttons almost impossibly static. At this stage, you would almost beed an entirely new object to resolve this. Redesigning the button object is almost unthinkable. So I am giving up on this. I am sure there are ways around it, but they are long and complex and I'd be working on it for another month or so, time I need to spend doing something else. 

Bob S


> On Jun 26, 2017, at 17:23 , Jim Lambert via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
> 
> Bob,
> 
> I may completely misunderstand the issue.  But can’t you have an unseen card with all the icons as image objects referencing image files ON DISK.