Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!wuarchive!rex!mandel@vax.anes.tulane.edu
From: mandel@vax.anes.tulane.edu (Jeff E Mandel MD MS)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: XCMD Update screen HELP REQUIRED PLEASE
Message-ID: <5999@rex.cs.tulane.edu>
Date: 5 Feb 91 14:09:47 GMT
References: <1991Feb3.111602.15893@cc.ic.ac.uk>
Sender: news@rex.cs.tulane.edu
Organization: Tulane University School of Medicine
Lines: 28

In article <1991Feb3.111602.15893@cc.ic.ac.uk> barnett@cc.ic.ac.uk (G.J.
Barnett) writes:
>
>        I hope somebody can help with a problem I have come across. I
>have an XCMD which calls a modal dialog, gets info from it, removes the
>dialog, processes data for a bit, and then returns to hypercard. The
>problem is that after my dialog has been removed, and the grafport set
>back to hypercard the space where the dialog was stays blank. As the 
>dialog is 2/3 of the screen size it is a real nuisance.
>        Does anyone know if hypercard 1.2.5 (and hypercard 2.0)
>ignores update screen events when it has handed control to an XCMD, and
>if so how can you round it ? 
>

  I have noticed that HC 2.0 seems to deal with update events somewhat more
frequently than the idle loop; I have a stack that fills in forms, some fields
of which utilize modal dialogs. In 1.2.5, I had to trap tabKey and pass control
to the nexr field from an idle handler to get the screen to update, but this
does not seem necessary in 2.0. I have tried "send idle to HyperCard" from my
XCMD, but have gotten in to trouble. This may simply be due to the fact that my
XCMD was not completely debugged at the time. Perhaps someone at Apple could
enlighten us, but I have come to believe that HyperCard can get quite unhappy
if it calls FrontWindow() and things are not as they should be.

Jeff E Mandel MD MS
Asst Professor of Anesthesiology
Tulane University School of Medicine
New Orleans, LA