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From: t-jacobs@wasatch.UUCP (Tony Jacobs)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: How about static fields???
Keywords: Suggestions, Improvements
Message-ID: <979@wasatch.UUCP>
Date: 27 Jan 89 01:21:04 GMT
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept
Lines: 24

Suggestion:

I am always running into the need for static text fields on backgrounds.  By
static I mean they are the same for every card and they need to be changed
once in a while.  I have maneuvered around this limitation in a couple of ways.
One, I use a button and set the name of it to the text I want. This is fine
for small fields. For large fields I save the text in a global field and then
put the text into the field upon entering the card and put empty into it upon
leaving.  For stacks with large numbers of cards this can save A LOT of space
but it does slow things down a little.

How hard would it be to add a checkbox to the field attributes dialog which
makes the field the same for every card.



One more suggestion:

Backgrounds are wonderful things, how about a FOREGROUND? By this I mean a
layer where objects can be put where they appear on top of cards and the
scripts are handled before card scripts. Foregrounds could be very much like
backgrounds or they could be quite different, I don't know which would be
better. All I know is that card objects are always drawn on top of background
objects and many times I wish it were the other way around.-- 
Tony Jacobs * Center for Engineering Design * U of U * t-jacobs@ced.utah.edu