Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!unisoft!hoptoad!tim
From: tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: Saving and Printing Two Cards
Message-ID: <10607@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: 5 Mar 90 10:51:31 GMT
References: <10558@hoptoad.uucp> <39171@apple.Apple.COM> <10599@hoptoad.uucp>
Reply-To: tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney)
Organization: Eclectic Software, San Francisco
Lines: 39

In article <39171@apple.Apple.COM> jdevoto@Apple.COM (Jeanne A. E. DeVoto)
writes:
>>    open printing      -- start saving up for a print job
>>    print card "first card to print"
>>    print card "second card to print"
>>    close printing     -- print the job

In article <10599@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) writes:
>If someone
>prints my whole stack using half-size cards from the "Print stack"
>command, then won't your script print half-size cards -- or one per
>page if that was what was last selected, or whatever the current
>setting is?

An easy experiment has verified that this is the case.  Setting
"quarter size cards" in the Print Stack dialog causes the next
execution of Jeanne's script to use that setting, creating an incorrect
page.  The current Print Stack dialog settings are stored somewhere in
the HyperCard stack file, not in a resource, so an XCMD can't get at
them.  So, this is not a solution.

Longtime readers of this group know that my main complaint with
HyperTalk is that objects have too many inaccessible properties.  The
Print Stack dialog settings of a stack now join this list of annoying
hidden properties.  Just think -- with these properties, my problem
would be trivial ("set the pageCards of this stack to fullSize");
without them, the problem is nearly insoluble in a user-friendly and
software-compatible way.

My proposed rule of thumb for Apple's HyperTalk development when I
raised this point was that "If you need to keep track of something in
an internal data structure describing an object, you need to put it
into HyperTalk as a property."  This latest experience seems to confirm
that idea.
-- 
Tim Maroney, Mac Software Consultant, sun!hoptoad!tim, tim@toad.com

"May the Lord open your eyes and heart so that you may understand him more
 clearer."  -- Patrick Harubin, pgh@cs.duke.edu, soc.religion.islam