Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!cunyvm!byuvax!taylorj
From: taylorj@yvax.byu.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: Two (weird) HyperCard scripting problems; something to do
Message-ID: <1018taylorj@yvax.byu.edu>
Date: 14 Jan 90 20:48:01 GMT
Lines: 49

You were on the right track when you looked at the startUp handler in the Home
stack--it's part of the problem.  The main difference between starting a stack
from another stack or starting it (and HyperCard) from the Finder is that the
startUp message is added.  When you start up a stack from the Finder, the
system messages are as follows:

  openStack
  openBackground
  openCard
  startUp

The problem is that startUp is sent AFTER openStack.  Because there is a
handler for it in the Home stack, HyperCard temporarily leaves your stack to
run the startUp handler.  This causes the insertion point (I-bar) to go away,
and also causes userModify to be set back to false.

You'd think that the easiest way to get around the problem would be to simply
intercept the startUp message, but that doesn't work (I'm not sure why).  The
way I solved this very problem is with the following scripts in the first card
of the stack:

  on openCard
    click at the loc of card field "Name"
    set the userModify to true
    -- any other initial stuff
  end openCard

  on startUp
    global initialize
    put "do it" into initialize
    pass startUp  -- let the Home stack do its thing
  end startUp

  on idle    --it's not a good idea to put this in the stack script
    global initialize
    if initialize is "do it" then
      openCard
      put "did it" into initialize
    end if
    pass idle
  end idle

This is the best solution I've come up with so far.  If anyone else has a
better solution, or knows more about why we have to do these silly things to
make it work right, I'd appreciate hearing about it.


Jim Taylor
Microcomputer Support for Curriculum   |
Brigham Young University               |   Bitnet: taylorj@byuvax.bitnet
101 HRCB, Provo, UT  84602             |   Internet: taylorj@yvax.byu.edu