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From: clarson@ux.acs.umn.edu (Chaz Larson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: Idling in pre-2.0 HC
Message-ID: <3024@ux.acs.umn.edu>
Date: 10 Jan 91 15:36:30 GMT
References: <1991Jan10.142922.11037@usenet.ins.cwru.edu>
Reply-To: clarson@ux.acs.umn.edu (Chaz Larson)
Organization: Iron City, USA
Lines: 62

In article <1991Jan10.142922.11037@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> mike@pyrite.SOM.CWRU.Edu (Michael Kerner) writes:
|the idea is
|if HC is idle for so long I want to do something.
|
|Well, the most straightforward (at least to me) idea was

There's a basic problem here in the way you're using "idle".  It's a message,
not a property or variable.

|on idle
|  put 1 into i	
|  repeat while idle	<-- this line is trouble	
|        add 1 to i
|        if i > someValue then
|           blah blah
|        end if
|  end repeat
|end idle
|
|however, no go.  Any other ideas/ suggestions?

This script will always choke on the problem line above with an "Expected true
or false here" error.

What you want is something like this:

on idle
  global delay_time
  add 1 to delay_time
  if delay_time > 10 then
   --do whatever you want 
  end if
end idle

Line by line here's what it does:

on idle
	The "idle" message invokes the handler
  global delay_time
	This sets up a global variable "delay_time", which will hang around
	between invocations of the "idle" handler.  If "delay_time" already
	exists, as it will on the second, third, etc pass through the handler,
	this tells the script to use the existing "delay_time" instead of
	setting up a new one.
  add 1 to delay_time
	Adds one to the "delay_time" variable, to count how many times we
	have been through this handler.
  if delay_time > 100 then
   --do whatever you want
  end if
	You'd replace 100 with an appropriate number and fill in your code.
end idle

Hope this helps ---  Hmmm, I seem to be afflicted with that dread disease,
Male OverExplaining Syndrome...

chaz

 
-- 
Someone please release me from this trance.
clarson@ux.acs.umn.edu                                       AOL:Crowbone