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From: sirkm@ssyx.ucsc.edu (Greg Anderson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: the Ask command
Keywords: Ask
Message-ID: <4120@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
Date: 6 Jun 90 03:11:26 GMT
References: <12142@june.cs.washington.edu>
Sender: usenet@darkstar.ucsc.edu
Reply-To: sirkm@ssyx.ucsc.edu (Greg Anderson)
Organization: UC Santa Cruz; Division of Social Sciences
Lines: 29

In article <12142@june.cs.washington.edu> moore@cs.washington.edu (Charles Moore) writes:
>It appears to me that with the Ask command there is no way to
>distinguish between the user clicking "Cancel" and clicking "OK" with
>an empty edit window.  Thus, if empty is a legitimate answer to the
>question, one can't use Ask.  Is this really the case, or am I missing
>something (like a more recent version of Hypercard)?

That's pretty much the state of things.  I've written an ask XFCN that
behaves identically to "ask" (right down to the undesirable behavior
you describe)--plus, it allows the user to enter "secret" things (which
show up as bullets instead of clear text).

It would not be difficult to modify my XFCN so that pressing "Cancel"
returns the string litteral "Cancel" instead of empty.  Of course, you
then would be unable to distinguish between the user typing "Cancel"
and hitting "OK" with a normal click on the "Cancel" button, but this
isn't a terrible handicap.

If someone does the modification, it should really be made an option
of the ask XFCN.  The XFCN is already set up to accept "secret" and
"password" options; just add a "cancel" option.

Source is available for anonymous ftp from ssyx.ucsc.edu -- I think.
I can put it up if it's not there.

  ___\    /___               Greg Anderson              ___\    /___ 
  \   \  /   /         Social Sciences Computing        \   \  /   /
   \  /\/\  /    University of California, Santa Cruz    \  /\/\  /
    \/    \/              sirkm@ssyx.ucsc.edu             \/    \/