Scripters Scrapbook

[Alex Rice]

On Thursday, August 28, 2003, at 01:05  PM, FlexibleLearning at aol.com 
wrote:

> I collected the following tips and tricks over the years... Feel free 
> to disagree, add or ignore

OK! this is definitely going in my revolution tips and tricks folder.

> -  Balance length of handler with compiling time overhead and the 
> shareability of smaller, more quickly compiled, utility handlers and 
> functions.

Does 1 long handler take less time to compile than 10 small handlers? 
(accomplishing roughly the same task)

> -  Keep a list of all global variables, and put empty into them when 
> you close the project for clean housekeeping.

That is interesting. globals persist in the IDE (and I assume in a 
standalone while running) even after the stack is closed- even if 
"purged" from memory. I guess that makes sense. Globals are sure... 
global.

> -  Use a consistent naming convention: g_GlobalName, t_LocalName, 
> a_ArrayName. Some folks also name built-in handlers and function with 
> a lowercase initial letter and their own with an uppercase leet eg 'on 
> mouseUp' but 'on ShowItems' so things can be more easily identified.

Richard Gaskin's style guide recommends no underscores which I tend to 
agree with. Following  this guide has really helped me clean up my 
scripting:
http://www.fourthworld.com/embassy/articles/scriptstyle.html

> -  Setting lockMenus to true in SC speeds up menu operations by a 
> factor of 20.

Speaking of which, why do the Rev docs say "lockMenus" has no effect on 
Win and Unix?

> -  Functions with brackets take longer than functions without brackets 
> when you have the choice eg "topWindow()" is slower than "the 
> topWindow" in MC.

You mean brackets or parenthesis?

Is it correct to state that in Rev only builtin functions can be 
accessed with either form: topWindow() vs. the topWindow

How do they do that, make a handler and a function with the same name?

> -  Add a zero to variable names in calculations to force them into 
> binary format. Subsequent calculations are very much faster since they 
> don't have to be interpreted as text.

Does this work for Rev too? I don't remember seeing that notation 
before.

> -  The fewer the characters, the faster they compile; "num of flds" is 
> quicker than "the number of background fields".

Considering this issue, plus the fact that the Rev distribution builder 
does not remove comments when building a standalone, a very useful 
plugin for the distribution builder would be one that makes a copy of 
the stack, strips comments out of scripts, and replaces object names 
with compact hex codes, and object references with abbreviations (like 
bg instead of background) to produce smaller stack sizes and faster 
runtime compilation.

> -  Try using modal windows rather than popup fields.

Can you give an example when it would advantageous?

Thanks,

Alex Rice, Software Developer
Architectural Research Consultants, Inc.
http://ARCplanning.com