loganj@byuvax.UUCP (12/05/87)
At BYU we have come up with the following wish list for HyperCard... 1 Allow multiple scrolling fields to be tied to a single scroll bar, so that multi-column or multi-field data can be scrolled properly. 2 Allow a script to have access to the min, max, and actual thumb value of a scroll bar. Might be useful to be able to set the value of the thumb in a scroll bar too. 3 Need real windows, of course. 4 Need to have some way for HyperCard to BeginUpdate and EndUpdate it's window(s) if an XFCN or XCMD resizes or moves windows that are created by the XFCN or XCMD on top of HyperCard's window(s). Maybe this can be done now? 5 Can the "On" messages in HyperCard be handled like a real event queue instead of immediate nested subroutine calls. 6 "Find" should be restrictable to a specific background. As it is now if you try to find on a field that doesn't exist on a particular card it merrily goes searching all fields on all cards. 7 Why are the "MouseEnter" and "MouseLeave" messages not generated when a paint tool is selected. Would be nice if you could use the "MouseEnter" message to choose a paint tool over a painting field on the screen, and then use the "MouseLeave" message to choose the browse tool when the mouse leaves the painting field. The obvious quick answer is that this would add too much overhead to the paint tools. Solutions anyone? 8 Would be nice to implement the concept of "double click" in scripts for dealing with text in fields at the point where the user clicked. By the way, we like HyperCard. Hope this is useful to someone. Regards, Jim (loganj@byuvax.bitnet)
t-jacobs@utah-cs.UUCP (Tony Jacobs) (01/21/88)
In article <61loganj@byuvax.bitnet> loganj@byuvax.bitnet writes: >At BYU we have come up with the following wish list for HyperCard... > >1 Allow multiple scrolling fields to be tied to a single scroll bar, so > that multi-column or multi-field data can be scrolled properly. You can do this with the scroll property of a field. "set scroll of fieldFOO to 5. You simply put in an "idle" handler to get the field scroll value of a field and set the scroll of the other fields to that value or some scaled value. >2 Allow a script to have access to the min, max, and actual thumb > value of a scroll bar. Might be useful to be able to set the value > of the thumb in a scroll bar too. The same info in (1) applys. You can also get the "number of lines in fieldFoo" to use in scaling the scroll value. You may need to get the font size too, the scroll value is in pixels and you most likely wany to scroll in whole increments of the line size. >3 Need real windows, of course. Yes, and how about other kinds of objects like draw type objects which can have scripts in them to allow them to modify their own appearance. >7 Why are the "MouseEnter" and "MouseLeave" messages not generated when > a paint tool is selected. Would be nice if you could use the "MouseEnter" > message to choose a paint tool over a painting field on the screen, and > then use the "MouseLeave" message to choose the browse tool when the > mouse leaves the painting field. The obvious quick answer is that this > would add too much overhead to the paint tools. Solutions anyone? I tried to do the same thing. The "mouseEnter worked for selecting the paint tool and then ran into the same problem you did. One kludge is to have the script change back to the browse tool after some time has elapsed, you maybe even could have a look looking for mouse activity. I haven't tried it but it is fun to explore what you can do in HyperTalk. Related to this, I would like to be able to journal actions and movements using paint tools so as to be able to play them back or edit them to produce the desired animated graphics. Some kind of journaling mechanism might also be use- ful for other kinds of stack creation automation. A few applications have their automatic macro creation capabilities, HyperCard could benifit from some kind of automatic scripting abilities. >8 Would be nice to implement the concept of "double click" in scripts > for dealing with text in fields at the point where the user clicked. You may be able to do your own doubleclick detection handler, and you can get the location of where you clicked in the field and use it to determine what to do next. >By the way, we like HyperCard. Hope this is useful to someone. >Regards, >Jim (loganj@byuvax.bitnet) I suspect HyperCard will go through a lot of change, what I want to know is if Apple is really interested in a big wish list? If it is then I already have one started. If it isn't, and they just want to go and do their own thing then I hate to waste my time wishing on. This forum seems like a great place for people to wish and get some feedback on whether their ideas are any good or not. -- Tony Jacobs * Center for Engineering Design * U of U * t-jacobs@ced.utah.edu