KPURCELL@LIVERPOOL.AC.UK (09/14/90)
I was browsing IM 1 yesterday and came across ShieldCursor() for the first time (I had not noticed it before). Like all new calls I try to think what it would be useful for, where I my use it in an application. After some thought I couldn't come up with any idea of what it would be used for. So I asked a fellow Mac programmer at the university today, and after reading the discription through a couple of times he couldn't think of a use either. ShieldCursor is defined in the following manner (no IM to hand so this is a paraphrase): ShieldCursor(r: Rect; p: Point); IM I 474 If p is in r then the cursor is hidden else if the cursor is stationary the cursor is hidden when the mouse if moved. Could somebody give me a suggestion? Anybody know if it is used in an application I might easily see? Email or post here. Kevin Purcell | kpurcell@liverpool.ac.uk Surface Science, | Liverpool University | Programming the Macintosh is easy if you understand Liverpool L69 3BX | how the Mac works and hard if you don't. -- Dan Allen
wolf@mel.cipl.uiowa.edu (09/16/90)
ShieldCursor would be used if you had a text section and wanted the cursor hidden while the user was entering text (no need to have it around at that time possibly). Or if you were about to do a screen dump and didn't want the cursor to obscure details of the image. Or maybe it is an action arcade stile game and you don't need a cursor getting in the way of the animation until needed (or even during a sequence of images for a movie perhaps) Just a few thoughts. M Wolf
lippin@ragu.berkeley.edu (The Apathist) (09/16/90)
I suspect that ShieldCursor is mainly intended for internal use by the toolbox: it can be called by QuickDraw to get the cursor out of the way before writing to the screen. (For unknown reasons, QD even does this when drawing to offscreen bitmaps. Go figure.) If you want to write on the screen without smashing the cursor, use it. Remember to account for the height and width of the cursor when you do. For household use, however, ShowCursor, HideCursor, and ObscureCursor are all you need. --Tom Lippincott lippin@math.berkeley.edu "It's a multi-purpose shape: a box." --David Byrne, "True Stories"
lsr@Apple.COM (Larry Rosenstein) (09/17/90)
In article <1990Sep15.171403.1@mel.cipl.uiowa.edu> wolf@mel.cipl.uiowa.edu writes: >ShieldCursor would be used if you had a text section and wanted the cursor >hidden while the user was entering text (no need to have it around at that time Nope, that's what ObscureCursor is for. ShieldCursor is used to hide the cursor in case it might interfere with somthing going on with the screen. For example, all QuickDraw operations involving the screen call ShieldCursor with the bounding box of the graphics operation. The only time you would call ShieldCursor yourself is if you were reading/writing the screen directly without using QuickDraw, which is usually not a good idea. -- Larry Rosenstein, Object Specialist Apple Computer, Inc. 20525 Mariani Ave, MS 46-B Cupertino, CA 95014 AppleLink:Rosenstein1 domain:lsr@Apple.COM UUCP:{sun,voder,nsc,decwrl}!apple!lsr