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From: ralphm@portia.Stanford.EDU (Ralph Melton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: FAQ:  miniature card picture?
Message-ID: <1990Dec21.080810.27139@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 21 Dec 90 08:08:10 GMT
References: <1990Dec19.003310.12043@portia.Stanford.EDU> <47512@apple.Apple.COM>
Organization: AIR, Stanford University
Lines: 58
Summary:Can I do it without clobbering the clipboard?

In article <47512@apple.Apple.COM> jdevoto@Apple.COM (Jeanne A. E. DeVoto) writes:
>In article <1990Dec19.003310.12043@portia.Stanford.EDU>
>ralphm@portia.Stanford.EDU (Ralph Melton) writes:
>>Could someone please tell me how to generate the miniature card picture?
>
>To get a miniature card picture, first copy the card using the 
>Copy Card menu item (or "doMenu Copy Card"), then hold down the
>shift key while pasting (if you want to do this in a script, use
> 
>      type "v" with commandKey,shiftKey

This works.  I thank you and the other net.people who have provided me with
this answer.

I am indeed doing this in a script.  It seems to me very unfriendly to
heedlessly overwrite the clipboard.  Is there any way I can either a)
generate the miniature picture without clobbering the clipboard, or b)
save the contents of the clipboard, no matter what the nature of those
contents, and restore them after my finagling?

And in a barely related question, is it possible for me to tell from within
a script whether there is a button at a particular point?

Come to think of it, it's very possible that I'm trying to solve this
problem the wrong way.  Therefore, I'll throw it out to the general
HyperCard community for suggestions.

I am trying to create a background each of whose cards serves as a map
to a portion of my stack. This "map" represents a tree-like structure
of several cards; clicking on any representation of a card should take
the user to the corresponding card.  The linkages between the cards
represented in the map need to be dynamically determined, so I need to 
make and maintainthe map from within the script. I am currently approaching
this problem with an idea of creating the miniature card pictures and
overlaying them with transparent buttons whose names are the names of
the corresponding cards to go to, and then handling the mouse clicks from
a background MouseUp handler.

One of the rules that I wish to institute is that no cards may be linked
in such a way that they would overlap if they were paper cards laid out
according to the linkages on a flat surface.  My best idea had been to,
when adding a new link, go to the "map" card, and check whether there
is already a button in the place that the new button should go.  I am
unable, though, to figure out how to do this.

Do I have basically the right idea?  Is there a simpler way that I can
achieve my goals?

Again, many thanks for help already given and to be given.

Ralph Melton


-- 
Ralph Melton	The White Rabbit	ralphm@portia.stanford.edu

"When you hear of a storybook romance, you don't think of the storybook
as being _Alice in Wonderland_ . . ."