Palette redraw problem

[Robert Brenstein]

>On 5/21/04 11:25 AM, Scott Rossi wrote:
>
>>You've thrown down the gauntlet -- this sounds like a good challenge.
>>
>>Can you explain why the palette needs to disappear when not top most?
>
>Sure. The palette is a tool palette. Another substack is an object 
>editing area where the user can design stuff; mostly custom field 
>objects, line graphics, and text entry -- sort of a page layout 
>thing. The palette is only appropriate to that particular one-card 
>editing substack, and in fact, I don't want the tools available 
>elsewhere lest they start creating or removing objects in the cards 
>of the mainstack (and I don't want to write all the scripts that 
>would prevent that.) The editing stack and the palette are both 
>substacks of the main stack.
>
>So we have:
>
>        myMainStack
>         |      |
>    myTools   myEditingStack
>
>When the editing substack opens, it needs to always have its tool 
>palette available. When it closes, the tool palette is closed. This 
>works, implemented with opencard and closecard handlers. If, 
>however, the user clicks back over to the mainstack, the tools 
>should also go away. This doesn't work consistently. If it did, 
>everything is solved.
>
>Second solution might be: Don't allow the user to suspend the 
>editing stack at all. If they can't suspend the editing stack, then 
>the suspend/resume problems don't exist. However, I can't make the 
>editing stack modal (or palette) because it won't allow object 
>editing if it is. I could leave it as modeless or toplevel, and try 
>to script blockages so that the user can't click on the main stack 
>(which I'm not sure is completely possible either,) except that 
>Windows users could still bring the mainstack forward via the 
>taskbar.
>
>Third possible solution: Make the editing stack into another card of 
>the mainstack. This would probably work, except that I don't think 
>it looks professional to have the main stack "disappear" during 
>editing, which is how it would look visually. I'd rather have a 
>separate editing window.
>
>I seem to have hit an impasse. If you want to undertake this 
>challenge, then I will enthusiastically root for you to win. :)
>
>--
>Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
>HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com


Yet another possible solution: build the tool palette directly into 
the editor window.

The problem with the original solution can't be remedied easily as 
far I can see -- somehow an resumeStack message is not sent or sent 
to wrong stack.

Robert Brenstein