[comp.sys.mac.hypercard] Odd behavior

marvel@giza.cis.ohio-state.edu (Howard P Marvel) (12/13/89)

I am having a bit of trouble with some odd behavior that occurs when I
use the number function.  Consider a container called gmainline.  The
container gets loaded with return card locations when the user goes on
a digression.  Since a user may digress from a digression, there is
the possibility that several cards, each recorded on a line, are
present.  This means that in order to strip or add lines, I need first
to count the number of lines in gmainline.  Hence

	put the number of lines of gmainline into ...

or

	put the number of lines in gmainline into ...

The second variant works, the first works sometimes.  The problem is
that on the first use of variant one, one gets SF with "Where is lines
of gmainline into foo"  This doesn't happen later. Why?  And will the
second variant work reliably in the future?

A second question involves odd behavior when the user clicks on a
notes facility.  The user is allowed to take notes on a separate card
and the card to which the note refers is recorded.  The user is
permitted to review notes and can return to review a card to which the
note refers by clicking on the line that records the reference.

The problem comes when the user clicks elsewhere.  Here, one gets a
simple dialog that says Can't open stack "Note contents" with OK,
where "Note contents" is simply the content of the line in question.
Needless to say, this needs to be trapped for.  The question is,
however, what happens when HyperCard processes the OK?  It appears
that the closecard and opencard handlers are partially processed, but
that the processing is incomplete.  There are also reports of strange
behavior of text fields subsequent to the event.  That is, the right
margin of the screen is messed up and the word wrap gets very odd,
wrapping after a letter or two.  What gives?

I can obviously fix both of these problems, but the strange behavior
makes me quite nervous.  Any explanations would be appreciated.