Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!violet.berkeley.edu!8hum190
From: 8hum190@violet.berkeley.edu (Elliot Wilen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Deleting Cards Unintentionally
Message-ID: <13631@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 26 Aug 88 06:57:35 GMT
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: 8hum190@violet.berkeley.edu (Elliot Wilen)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 49

Okay, I was asking for it. In a moment of boredom, I tried a bunch of
random command-key combinations just to see if I'd missed some shortcut.
It was my great misfortune to discover that command-backspace = "Delete Card".
I didn't realize this until I'd deleted several cards, including a unique
control card. (No, I didn't have a backup, and let that be a lesson for me.)
I think I can get everything back to normal without *too* much trouble,
but I was, needless to say, somewhat irked. A quick check in Danny Goodman's
book seemed to confirm my intuitive belief that there shouldn't be
a shortcut for "Delete" (see p. 62), but I guess he blew it: the feature
is documented in the Help Stack.

Two things: (1) Since HyperCard doesn't automatically ask for confirmation
when you delete a card (unless you've written a script to trap for the
menu command), I think it would be better for there *not* to be a keyboard
shortcut. I mean, even a knowledgeable person can easily be burned by
this feature.

(2) Is there any way to trap for the shortcut but not the menu command?
I'd rather not be asked for confirmation when I make the menu command, but
it would be nice if I could have a script which went something like:

on backspace
  if the commandKey is down
  then answer "Delete this card?" with "Okay" or "Cancel"
  if it is "Okay" then doMenu "Delete Card"
end backspace

In fact, if it were possible to detect backspace outside of a field,
then people could build a [command,option]-backspace shortcut for themselves,
and it wouldn't have to be built into HyperCard.

It occurs to me that I could do the following:

on doMenu command
 if command is "Delete Card" and the commandKey is down
 then
   answer "Delete this card?" with "Okay" or "Cancel"
   if it is "Okay" then send "doMenu "Delete Card"" to HyperCard
 else
   pass doMenu command
 end if
end doMenu
  
But it's rather unpleasant.

Oh, one last thing: could I just edit the menu using ResEdit?

--Elliot Wilen
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