Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!PUGH@NMFECC.ARPA
From: PUGH@NMFECC.ARPA
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: The Story of The
Message-ID: <53217@sun.uucp>
Date: 14 May 88 00:58:14 GMT
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Distribution: comp
Lines: 27
Approved: hyper-hackers%plaid@sun.com

Here's an interesting quirk of hypercard:

  put the loc of the tool window

is not the same as 

  put the loc of tool window

while this is the same as

  put loc of tool window

due to the fact that "the tool" is a function that gets evaluated first.
It's a case of a significant "the", which is quite flakey in HyperTalk.
I think the rule is that you need either a "the" or an "of" in a property
call.  That makes the first "the" in the above examples superfluous, while
the second "the" in the first example is decidedly significant.

Just another example of a nebulous syntax since I think the first example 
should be understood and not misinterpreted like Hypercard does.  Of course, 
you can't say

  put the loc of the card button "Junk"

due to this either.  Is English just too imprecise?

Jon