make standalone (was 2 quick questions)

[Mark Wieder]

Mark-

Saturday, June 19, 2010, 8:03:17 PM, you wrote:


> Q1 What is the difference between the startup and preopenstack messages?

Startup is only sent to standalones. It's ignored in the IDE.

> Q2 I realize I probably need a list of revtalk messages (with
> descriptions) but couldn't find one. Any suggestions???

Um... I don't think there's a list as such. You can open the
Dictionary, open the Language section, and click on messages. That'll
give you an alphabetized list, which isn't necessarily what you want,
but it's a start. The startup message is in there, but you have to
know you want to look for it in order to know that...

> Q3 "utargetstack" is a variable? Where is it defined... (the
> target stack in my case will be called "Notepad3")

"the uTargetStack of this stack" is a custom property of the stack.
Not to worry - think of it as a property like any other property:
width, backgroundColor, fontSize, etc. It's just one that we're
defining for our own purposes. We could just as easily have called it
"the DrBenway of this stack" or "the DuckDuckGoose of this stack".

Custom properties come into existence by the act of storing a value
into them. So the line

set the uTargetStack of this stack to "Notepad"

creates the custom property "uTargetStack" in the stack object. After
that you can examine the stack with the Property Inspector, look at
the Custom Properties, and there it will be.

> Thanks again... oh, 1 other tangential question for either of
> you. Mark, in your Standalone stack I noticed the forward/back
> buttons were skinned. Is there a
> tutorial around on how to do that?

...had to go look at those... it's been five years now...

If you examine the buttons with the property inspector, you'll see
that they have icons assigned. For example, the "Next" button has icon
id 1097 assigned to it. And that corresponds to the id of image
"right.png" in the "navGrp" background group. The "right.png" image
itself has its visible bit set to false, but it still works as a
button icon.

So that's one way to have an image appear in a button. I usually go
for a simpler approach: import a graphic to use as a button and write
a mouseUp handler for it. That in effect turns it into a button.

-- 
-Mark Wieder
 mwieder at ahsoftware.net