graphic radio buttons

[Cubist at aol.com]

   I've been following the thread about how to handle graphical hiliting for 
an unGodly number of objects, and let me add my voice to the chorus of those 
who are wondering what the heck kind of purpose *requires* messing around 
with a *five-digit* number of whatever-they-ares.
   However, presuming that there really is a valid reason to play with *more 
than 30,000* of *anything*, I have a HyperCard stack that exploits a 
technique which should prove useful. Go to this URL --
   http://members.aol.com/cubist/Download.html
   -- and download the DieRoller stack. This stack uses a 
graphic-hilite-on-mouseEnter effect on a 7x10 array of buttons, and it works 
by exploiting the crap out of HC's message-passing hierarchy. I'll explain 
the trick here, but you should play with the stack to see it in action...

   Every one of the 70 buttons in that 7x10 array has a unique name. *None* 
of them contains *any* handlers -- whenever a message is sent to any of these 
buttons, that message just "falls thru" to the card, i.e. to the next plateau 
in the message-passing hierarchy. The card script contains all the code which 
makes the hiliting work.

on mouseEnter
  put the target into Fred
  -- "the target" is an HC function that tells you whichever object
  -- the message (mouseEnter, in this case) was originally sent to

  if word 1 of the short name of the target   "DieRoll" then exit mouseEnter
  -- "the target" would give you something like "card button 'Fred'";
  -- "the short name of the target" returns just the "Fred" part of it.
  -- each of the 70 array-buttons is named "DieRoll something", and
  -- no other buttons/fields/etc are. thus, this statement allows this handler
  -- to ignore everything that's not a "DieRoll whatever" button.

  global LastBtn
  -- global variables should be clear, yes?

  put the short name of Fred into ThisBtn
  set the icon of Fred to "marked"
  -- this line is what actually does the graphical hilite on whichever
  -- button the pointer just entered

  if there is a cd btn LastBtn and (ThisBtn   LastBtn) then set the icon of 
cd btn LastBtn to "clear"
  -- clearing the hilite of the last button.
  --this is where that LastBtn global variable comes into play...

  put ThisBtn into LastBtn
  -- ...and here's where it gets defined! this is why the line just previous 
has
  -- that "if there is a cd btn LastBtn" clause; when this stack first opens,
  -- LastBtn is undefined, and setting the icon of an undefined button is an 
HC no-no
end mouseEnter

on mouseLeave
  if word 1 of the short name of the target   "DieRoll" then exit mouseLeave
  -- see above for comment on "the short name of the target"

  global LastBtn
  set the icon of cd btn LastBtn to "clear"
end mouseLeave

   I think it should be relatively easy to implement the underlying concept 
in Rev/MetaCard, yes?

   Hope this helps...