Stylistic question.

[Geoff Canyon]

Ah, okay, I think I understand. There's a bit to unpack here:

1. There is no direct communication between Navigator and the LC IDE
toolbar. That means that the inspector triggered by the IDE toolbar will
reflect whatever is selected.
2. Navigator *only* tries to change the current selection automatically
when it is displaying "This Card" of "The Topstack" -- that goes both ways;
it only tries to reflect the selection in the IDE when this card and the
topstack are displayed.
3. Navigator will try to select controls when Select Objects is selected in
the popup menu.
4. It is not always possible to select controls. As I recall, controls in
groups can be selected, controls in stacks displaying as palettes or in
other modes cannot. I'm not sure about controls on not-currently-displayed
cards.
5. Because of (4) and (1), It is not always the case that selecting
"Inspector" in the IDE toolbar will open an inspector for whatever is
selected in Navigator.

1. Inspector palettes can be locked or unlocked. This is indicated by the
small padlock that is, for me at least, the left-most of the right group of
icons at the top of the inspector. This is unrelated to Navigator; you can
click the lock or unlock the inspector.
2. I don't know the particulars of the lock in the IDE; as far as I know,
it always starts out unlocked.
3. If you select "Single Object Inspector" from either the popup menu or
the properties menu, Navigator will do its best to select the highlighted
objects, and then open the inspector unlocked. The inspector reflects the
current selection. So for example, selecting two cards and then "Single
Object Inspector" *has* to fail; LiveCode doesn't support selecting two
cards at once. Likewise, selecting ar card that is not the current card of
the particular stack and then "Single Object Inspector" will also fail, and
display the stack.

I can't fix this; what to display when the inspector is unlocked is up to
the inspector code.

The alternative -- Individual Object Inspectors -- *will* work. It opens
one copy of the inspector for each control in Navigator's selection, and
opens them with the lock closed.This allows the inspector to reflect
anything. But it does have the drawback of opening an individual palette
for each control. I think I put a warning in if the number of controls is
large, with an option to cancel.

Then there is the use case where you want to have just one inspector,
reflecting a number of controls that might not be "select"-able. As far as
I know the IDE palette doesn't support this.

Navigator's Property Editor does. It reflects any selected controls in
Navigator when it is opened, and can set properties for all of them at
once. It can also be opened as a separate palette. In that case it reflects
the most recent selection in whichever copy of Navigator you interact with,
meaning that if you make a new selection of controls in a different copy of
Navigator, that will be reflected in the palette. The Navigator Property
Editor is a simple list for speed. It displays only the properties the
controls have in common, snd bolds the ones where the obects' properties
differ. There's more to the palette, but I don't want to write (more of) a
novel.

Hopefully this helps. As far as I know Navigator is working properly
regarding this use case.

Thanks for the feedback!

Geoff

On Thu, Sep 8, 2022 at 8:38 AM Bob Sneidar via use-livecode <
use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:

> Yes that works. What doesn't work is selecting the card in the list, then
> clicking the Inspector button in the LC IDE toolbar. It's easier for me to
> do that because if I click another object in Navigator, the focus of the
> Inspector (Properties Editor) changes to the selected object. If I do the
> right-click single object method, sometimes the focus does NOT change, and
> I have to do the right-click thungummy again.
>
> Bob S
>
>
> On Sep 8, 2022, at 24:54 , Geoff Canyon via use-livecode <
> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com<mailto:use-livecode at lists.runrev.com>>
> wrote:
>
> Can you be more specific? I tried selecting the card both in the live
> display and the specific card display, and then on the Properties "P" menu
> I selected Property Editor, Single Object Inspector, and Individual Object
> Inspectors, and it always came up showing the card.
>
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