Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!hc!lll-winken!uunet!wucs1!wugate!wuee1!jtw
From: jtw@wuee1.wustl.edu (Trent Wohlschlaeger)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: openStack & closeStack side effects
Summary: Well, yes, but...
Keywords: side effects, timing, stack size
Message-ID: <170@wuee1.wustl.edu>
Date: 1 Apr 89 21:39:24 GMT
References: <1333@xn.LL.MIT.EDU> <4737@charon.unm.edu>
Reply-To: jtw@wuee1.UUCP (Trent Wohlschlaeger)
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Distribution: usa
Organization: Washington University, St. Louis, MO
Lines: 51

In article <4737@charon.unm.edu> stone@hydra.unm.edu.UUCP (Andrew Stone CS.DEPT) writes:
>In article <1333@xn.LL.MIT.EDU> delaney@XN.LL.MIT.EDU (John R. Delaney) writes:
>>I would like to verify some Hypertalk semantics that I find odd (and
>>inconvenient).
>>
>[Storing and restoring radio buttons with local values]
>
>I usually use the set lockmessages to true and set lockmessages to false
>pair to wrap code that is just supposed to do what I tell it.

I find this to be helpful in many instances, too.

>As far as the radio button is concerned, instead of forever manipulating
>the states to agree with another field, perhaps hidden, on that card, you
>could try this tact:
>Create a new Card level radio button when making a new card, this will then
>always have the correct state connected with it:
>
>[ a script to copy a button on a "New Card" message ]
>
>Hope this helps.             andrew
>

The problem I have with this is that the overhead in size
for several card buttons per card (including scripts) is
much greater than the disk space for a single background field
and the corresponding script in the opencard handler.

For example, I wrote a stack for a friend of mine (which may
or may not become commercial, so no disclosure yet) that has
~25 buttons whose highlite property is card dependent.  Sure, it
takes a (barely) noticable amount of time to set these highlites
every time a card is opened, but when I converted to background
buttons and a hidden field, I achieved about 70% stack size
reduction.  Now that the stack has grown to ~500 cards, this is
significant.

Setting lockscreen to true before you do the button highliting
seems to speed the process up, somewhat.  Although sometimes
I like to watch the highlite states ripple through.

I'm not really disagreeing with Andrew.  If you have a small stack
with a few cards and a few buttons per card, then this might be fine.
If not, you might wake up one morning to find that your stack has
swallowed up your hard drive.  The changes are a lot easier and
a lot faster to make when your stack is small.

Sorry to have rambled, but I wanted to make sure I had enough "new"
lines for this to get past the news poster.

Trent