Code Mojo

Reposition Windows for Multiple Monitors with AppleScript

mcone — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 14:50:57 +0000

Editor's Note: The Code Mojo column features user-submitted code snippets that you can edit and use on your own Mac. To share your creation on Macinstruct, please submit an AppleScript, Automator action, or bash script to support@macinstruct.com.

If you frequently switch between different displays, you know organizing your windows when switching displays can be a real pain. I use my MacBook Pro frequently by itself, and I also have a 20" external display on my desk at home. Additionally, I have a weird affliction of window placement OCD. Admiring Stay, but not prepared to spend $15, I wrote the following AppleScript that will resize and organize my windows when I switch my display configuration. Set to run with a global hotkey via Automator, the script will figure out how many displays I have connected (if my current screen width is not the size of a 15" MacBook Pro display, then there are two), and configure my windows accordingly.

I'm not an AppleScript expert, so I'm sure there is some inefficient and hacked code here. I tried to comment it well so you can make it your own without too much work. With that in mind, please leave comments with your suggestions and ideas.


# arrange.scpt
#
# set dimensions and position of commonly used applications
# depending on whether one or two monitors are attached
#
# to add an application, find its bounds with both one and two
# displays connected:
#
# tell application "System Events"
#   tell application "ApplicationName"
#     get bounds of window 1
#   end tell
# end tell

# get frontmost application so we can bring it back to frontmost 
# on completion of script
tell application "System Events"
  set focus to name of the first process whose frontmost is true
end tell

# get width of desktop
tell application "Finder"
  set bnds to bounds of window of desktop
  set wide to item 3 of bnds
end tell

# find out number of displays connected based on screen width
# 1440 is the width of a 15 inch MacBook Pro. change this 
# based on your screen size. 
if wide is equal to 1440 then
  set displaynum to "onedisp"
else
  set displaynum to "twodisp"
end if

# make the smaller, center-most terminal window frontmost
# i always have two terminal windows open - this assures
# the correct windows are resized and moved. 
tell application "System Events"
  set if_running to (exists process "Terminal")
  if if_running then
    tell application "Terminal"
      activate
      set bnds_one to get bounds of window 1
      set wide_one to item 3 of bnds_one
      set bnds_two to get bounds of window 2
      set wide_two to item 3 of bnds_two
      if wide_one is greater than wide_two then
        tell application "System Events"
          keystroke "`" using command down
        end tell
      end if
    end tell
  end if
end tell

tell application "System Events"
  set if_running to (exists process "Terminal")
  if if_running then
    if displaynum is equal to "onedisp" then
      tell application "Terminal"
        activate
        try
          set bounds of window 1 to {286, 176, 1052, 668}
          set bounds of window 2 to {323, 215, 1425, 889}
        end try
      end tell
    else
      tell application "Terminal"
        activate
        try
          set bounds of window 1 to {2249, -467, 2868, -101}
          set bounds of window 2 to {2249, -86, 3351, 588}
        end try
      end tell
    end if
  end if
end tell

# resize the rest of the applications that are usually open. 
# note the "try" commands - this is a failsafe in addition
# to 'exists process "foo"' so the script doesn't choke if the 
# application is not running. 

tell application "System Events"
  set if_running to (exists process "TextMate")
  if if_running then
    if displaynum is equal to "onedisp" then
      tell application "TextMate"
        activate
        try
          set bounds of window 1 to {18, 34, 567, 885}
        end try
      end tell
    else
      tell application "TextMate"
        activate
        try
          set bounds of window 1 to {1450, -466, 2239, 582}
        end try
      end tell
    end if
  end if
end tell

tell application "System Events"
  set if_running to (exists process "Google Chrome Canary")
  if if_running then
    if displaynum is equal to "onedisp" then
      tell application "Google Chrome Canary"
        activate
        try
          set bounds of window 1 to {196, 55, 1398, 811}
        end try
      end tell
    else
      tell application "Google Chrome Canary"
        activate
        try
          set bounds of window 1 to {0, 22, 1440, 899}
        end try
      end tell
    end if
  end if
end tell

tell application "System Events"
  set if_running to (exists process "iTunes")
  if if_running then
    if displaynum is equal to "onedisp" then
      tell application "iTunes"
        activate
        try
          set bounds of window 1 to {90, 103, 1239, 833}
        end try
      end tell
    else
      tell application "iTunes"
        activate
        try
          set bounds of window 1 to {85, 135, 1234, 865}
        end try
      end tell
    end if
  end if
end tell

tell application "System Events"
  set if_running to (exists process "Transmission")
  if if_running then
    if displaynum is equal to "onedisp" then
      tell application "Transmission"
        activate
        try
          set bounds of window 1 to {962, 36, 1424, 404}
        end try
      end tell
    else
      tell application "Transmission"
        activate
        try
          set bounds of window 1 to {2882, -470, 3344, -102}
        end try
      end tell
    end if
  end if
end tell

# tweetie is old and incompatible with the other functions.
tell application "System Events"
  tell process "Tweetie"
    activate
    try
      set size of window 1 to {355, 878}
    end try
    try
      set position of window 1 to {1, 23}
    end try
  end tell
end tell

# set frontmost application back
tell application focus
  activate
end tell

How to Connect Multiple Monitors to Your Mac

Meet Your Macinstructor

Richard Myers is a nerd with stupid nickname who lives in New Jersey. You can reach him by email at desk@movesmye.rs or at his website, http://movesmye.rs/

Create Sitemaps with SiteOrbiter

mcone — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 04:44:56 +0000

Websites are getting larger and larger, and keeping track of them as they evolve can be a hassle. If you're a web developer, you'll want to create what's called a site map, a special file that lists all of the pages of your website in an hierarchical order. This file can be submitted to search engines to help them index your website. But how the heck are you supposed to create one on your Mac?

Enter a native Mac application called SiteOrbiter. SiteOrbiter is freeware (registration required) and requires Mac OS 10.1 or later. This application will index your files, create an XML site map for Google and other search engines, and also create a visual sitemap that can be saved as a PDF.

Here's how to do it:

Download SiteOrbiter from http://www.siteorbiter.cc/index.html. To install the application, open the disk image and drag SiteOrbiter to your Applications folder.
When you open SiteOrbiter for the first time, you'll be greeted by the SiteOrbiter Assistant. Enter the URL of the website you'd like to index or, if it's located on your Mac's hard drive, click the Browse button and select the top level directory.
SiteOrbiter will start indexing your website. This could take a while, especially if you have a large website. You'll see files flashing by in the status display in the upper-left corner of the screen (below).
Once SiteOrbiter has finished indexing your website, you'll see a graphical representation of your website in the main window.
Save your sitemap for search engines by selecting Save from the File menu. You can also export the graphical representation of your website by selecting "Extract to PDF" from the File menu.
You can also export the data as a sitemap for Google by selecting "Generate Site Map" from the Reports and Maps menu.

Taking Another Look at the SiteOrbiter Assistant

Now that you've created your very own sitemap with SiteOrbiter, it's time to take a look under SiteOrbiter's hood. We'll start by reexamining the SiteOrbiter Assistant. What do all of those options actually do?

User Agent: This menu is especially interesting. You can appear to the server to be using any agent you like. If, for example, your site is designed to deliver different dynamic data to different browsers, you can generate a site map of what each of those browsers are being delivered and check for accuracy of your sniffer scripts.
Maximum Recursive Depth: This option allows you decide how deep to decend into the bowels of the website. If you're not sure, start with 8 or 10 and see if a lot of pages are missing. If so, you can adjust as necessary.
Copy Remote Site: You can also use SiteOrbiter to download a remote website to your Mac's hard drive. Use this cautiously. It can take a while to download, and if the site isn't yours please don't violate any copyrights!

Configuring SiteOrbiter's Preferences

The settings you configure in SiteOrbiter's preferences can have a huge effect on the size of your sitemap. Here are some of the options you need to know about:

Download Folder:Select the folder you want to use as an archive.
Note: If you download a site, and you move the files, SiteOrbiter will download the entire site again when you next request a download. If not, SiteOrbiter will only download files that have been modified.
Only Include:You can set this to include, for example, only HTML, PHP or maybe just SWF files.
Treat Links with Arguments: Each argument will be recorded as a seperate page. (I.e.: http://www.mysite.com/index.pl?today and http://www.mysite.com/index.pl?tomorrow would each be separate pages.)

Understanding SiteOrbiter's Toolbar

You know what we're talking about. What exactly is that unholy mass of buttons on SiteOrbiter's main window?

Index/Stop: Clicking this will re-index your website or, if SiteOrbiter is currently re-indexing, stop the re-indexing process.
Browser: Highlight a page and click Browser to display that page in a browser window.
Up, Left, Down, Right: Moves the map around in the window. You can also use the scrollbars.
Hide Map: For a large site, redrawing the map can be a processor hog, so you can turn it off to improve performance.
Download: Again, please be judicious. This can be a boon when you are taking over a website, and you'll have the site map as well. Once you've downloaded the site you can use this feature to keep your disk copy up to date. SiteOrbiter will only download differences after the initial download.
Transcript: This shows header information. Useful with dynamic pages and scripts.
Only HTML: Ignores non-HTML files in the map view.
Select Lock: You can lock a node to keep it open even as you click on other nodes. Think of it as a placeholder.
Names: Turned off by default, this will show the names associated with the nodes.
Selected: Shows just the info for the selected node.
Zoom: Zoom out for a macro view or in on a particular node.

Using the Map Window

SiteOrbiter's real power becomes apparent when you start manipulating your sitemap. There are several view options that will help you view your website.

You can view all of the objects in the map, or a subset. Subset is the default setting. To switch views, just click the display mode link in the lower right hand corner. You can select from Tree, Concentric Circles, Subset or lower left. You can also click and drag nodes on the map to better organize them.

Subset mode: Clicking on a link in the map window will select that link and you can then view any links related to that "node." This makes it simple to quickly see the relationships between objects in the site, and you'll see outbound and inbound links.
All Objects: This display mode can be quite daunting on a larger site, but it makes it easy to spot orphaned pages and get a very high level view of the site. The home page is always identified as the starting object, but you can use "show from" mode to select a particular node and show the site from that viewpoint.

Conclusion

That's pretty much it. All in all, SiteOrbiter is a useful tool for getting a grip on the loose ends that may be lolling around in your website, and it can also give you a lot of insight into who's linking to your site and what pages they are linking to. Combine that with your traffic stats and you'll have a much better picture of what your users are up to!

Meet Your Macinstructor

Janet Fouts is a web developer and designer who provides tech support for a bevy of clients and friends who need a little help with their Macs. In Code Mojo she will be sharing her web development tools and tips to make your life a bit easier.

Set Up a Wireless Captive Portal Server

mcone — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 07:42:21 +0000

What does a captive portal server, also called a NAC (Network Access Control) do? It can sandbox any wireless connection until some form of authentication is provided. These servers are used in many cafes and public places that offer wireless internet. For example, when you try to connect to the wireless network at Starbucks, it will force your web browser to the same page - no matter what URL you enter. Until you authenticate, you can't go anywhere on the Internet.

There are some great commercial solutions out there that work really well, but implementing 802.1X port security can cost lots of money and time. Companies like Infoblox provide an appliance, and when coupled with solutions like Bigfix can provide a very robust and transparent network security model. Pitney Bowes has implemented a system were an unknown user can attach their laptop and get one of two services: Either simple port 80 access for 8 hours, or the option to register and automatically have their computer scanned patched/updated to comply with the companies policies. This is all transparent.

So what do you do if you don't have the resources or the money to buy one of these solutions? You can still implement some control over DHCP assignment. The goal is to eliminate the unknown on your network. In our case, we will use the Ethernet MAC address of the client's NIC as a way of authentication. Each network interface card has its own unique address, and it looks something like this: 00:30:65:88:01:93. When an unknown computer is placed on the network that asks for an IP through DHCP it will receive one that is restricted. No matter what web page the user tries, we will always show them a pre-defined page. When a computer that has its MAC address defined on the server asks for an IP, it will be given the correct TCP/IP settings to use the network.

Note: This is not secure, and will not prevent someone from stealing a working IP on your network. If the user is savvy enough they can find the TCP/IP info on another computer and use it. If you are looking for that kind of security, then this article is not enough for you. Check out Infoblox or another commercial solution.

Here's how to do it:

Make sure the Mac you are using has all os updates and security patches applied.
From the Apple menu, select System Preferences. Select Network. Turn off all unused configurations. The interface we will be using is the Built-in Ethernet.
Select Built-in Ethernet and click Duplicate. Click Rename and add your dummy subnet.
Edit the interfaces to have the correct subnets.
Make sure you are logged in as an admin to use the sudo command. You will need to use a text editor like VI, Pico, Emacs, or TextWrangler to create and edit the config files needed.
Download the latest version of DHCP from http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/sw/dhcp/. The latest version at the time of this article is 3.0.6. You will need to have the GCC compiler installed. Install the Xcode developer software that came with your Mac or latest Mac OS X install disks.
Once you have downloaded the DHCP source, double-click on the .gz file to unzip and untar the directory. Launch the Terminal application (located in /Applications/Utilities). Use the "cd" command to change to the dhcp directory you just expanded. The easiest way is to type "cd" and drag and drop the dhcp directory into the Terminal window. Here's an example:
cd /Users/dmc/Desktop/Downloads/dhcp-3.0.6/
Now type the following and hit return.
./configure
Type the following and hit return.
make
Type the following and hit return.
sudo make install

Setting Up DHCP

You now should have a working DHCPd package installed on the Mac. The next step is to set up the dhcpd.conf file that lives in /etc. The below example will do just that.

Here's how the thing works:

Hand out static IPs in the 10.0.1.0 range to hosts that we have the Ethernet hardware address of (MAC address).
Hand out dummy IPs in the 192.168.50.0 range that will force all host names to resolve back to our captive portal server. This will force any http requests to show the page we want people to see.

You should read the man page for dhcpd.conf to gain an understanding of the options and commands used here.

======================begin dhcpd.conf=========================== # dhcpd.conf # this file should be located in /etc default-lease-time 900; ddns-update-style none; deny client-updates;

shared-network "mynet" {
# This is the dummy network
subnet 192.168.50.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
range 192.168.50.2 192.168.50.253;
max-lease-time 7200;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
option broadcast-address 192.168.50.255;
option domain-name-servers 192.168.50.1;
option routers 192.168.50.1;
}

# This is the real network
subnet 10.0.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
max-lease-time 21600;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
option broadcast-address 10.0.1.255;
option routers 10.0.1.1;
option domain-name-servers 10.0.1.251;
option domain-name "example.com";
}
# This is a sample reserved host entry
host example1 {
hardware ethernet 00:30:65:88:01:93;
fixed-address 10.0.1.5;
}

host example2 {
hardware ethernet 00:16:cb:91:16:93;
fixed-address 10.0.1.6;
}
}
======================end dhcpd.conf===========================

Create the dhcpd.leases file using the following command:
sudo touch /var/db/dhcpd.leases
To test the the DHCP server, run the following command in a Terminal window:
sudo /usr/sbin/dhcpd -f -d en0

The above command runs DHCPd in the foreground using the -f option and in debug mode using the -d option. This allows you to see all actions the DHCP server is performing. Populate the dhcpd.conf with the MAC addresses of the hosts you want.
Alternatively, you can also assign random IPs from the real network if you don't care who gets what IP. To do this, leave out the the "fixed-address" line of the reserved host. in the real network section add a line to deny unknown clients and add a range of addresses to hand out like so:
} # This is the real network subnet 10.0.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 { max-lease-time 21600; range 10.0.1.2 10.0.1.250 deny unknown-clients; option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0; option broadcast-address 10.0.1.255; option routers 10.0.1.1; option domain-name-servers 10.0.1.251; option domain-name "example.com"; }
Here is a launchdaemon plist file you can use to launch dhcpd at boot. Place it in /Library/LaunchDaemons.
To load the file into launchd, type the following command into Terminal:

/bin/launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.isc.dhcpd.plist

To unload and keep dhcpd from launching at boot, type the following command into Terminal:

/bin/launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.isc.dhcpd.plist

Set Up the Dummy DNS Server

First create a file in /etc called rndc.key. This file will keep BIND from complaining that it is missing. Since you will not be updating, the DNS we can use a generic file and not include anything in the named.conf.
======================begin rndc.key=========================== key "rndc-key" { algorithm hmac-md5; secret "8E48raKxqEVCtKYFxA+loQ=="; };

======================end rndc.key===========================
You will need to create the following named.conf file in /etc:
======================begin named.conf===========================

acl dummynets { 192.168.50.0/24; 192.168.51.0/24; };

options {
directory "/var/named";
auth-nxdomain no; # conform to RFC1035
notify no;
allow-query { dummynets; };
allow-recursion { none; };
allow-transfer { none; };
max-ncache-ttl 60;
};

logging {
category default {
_default_log;
};

channel _default_log {
file "/Library/Logs/named.log";
severity info;
print-time yes;
};
};

zone "." IN {
type master;
file "db.fakeroot";
allow-query { dummynets; };

};

======================end named.conf===========================

The above says to use db.fakeroot as the root dns zone file. The "acl dummynets { 192.168.50.0/24; 192.168.51.0/24; };" tells that only our dummy subnet can request queries.
Now we need to create the db.fakeroot zone file in /var/named.
======================begin db.fakeroot===========================

$TTL 7200

@ IN SOA hostname.exapmle.com user.example.com (
1 ; Serial
3600 ; Refresh every 1 hours
1800 ; Retry every 30 minutes
604800 ; Expire after 7 days
1 ) ; TTL 1 second

IN NS 192.168.50.1

IN A 192.168.50.1
* IN A 192.168.50.1

======================end db.fakeroot===========================

The above zone file resolves all hostnames back to 192.168.50.1
Apple has included a launch daemon plist that can be used to start and stop the named service. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work, because it launches named before all the network stuff is loaded at boot. Until we get a fix, we will use the old style startup item. Download this file, unzip it and place the BIND folder in /Library/Startupitems/. This will make sure named is launched at startup.
Test the DNS service by typing the following command on a host computer that has been given one of the dummy IPs:
host www.cnn.com

It should resolve to 192.168.50.1

Set Up Apache to Redirect Missing Paths

The line you want to edit in your httpd.conf file looks like the following:

#ErrorDocument 404 /missing.html

Change it to:

ErrorDocument 404 /

Create a simple index.html page that tells the user to contact you for proper access and save it to /Library/webserver/Documents. Turn on personal websharing in the sharing system prefs pane to start Apache.

You can get pretty creative using CGI and have users fill out a form that gives you their information.

Meet Your Macinstructor

David Miller has been supporting Macs since the mid '90s. He has worked for large ISPs and DOE sites, and he's currently working as a Unix systems administrator. He has graciously allowed Macinstruct to reprint this tutorial, which was originally written for his personal website: http://www.sdmachelp.com/

Create a Web Development Environment With MAMP

mcone — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 08:30:16 +0000

Those of us who have websites know that we need a development environment to work on new features, make changes, and just experiment. If you're creating static HTML pages, you don't need much - you can create the pages on your Mac and preview them locally in your web browser or a with WYSIWYG application like iWeb. However, things are a bit more complicated if you're working with web applications that use PHP and MySQL.

In that case, you're going to want to use MAMP, a free web development environment for your Mac. MAMP comes with everything you need, including Apache, PHP, MySQL, and even the buzzword-compliant acronym. (MAMP, by the way, stands for Mac, Apache, MySQL, and PHP.) It's not suitable for a production web server, but it's perfect for your home Mac.

We'll show you how to install and configure MAMP on your Mac. To spice things up a little, we'll also install Drupal, an open source content management system (CMS) that powers the likes of The Onion, TWiT.tv, Mac|Life, and yes, even Macinstruct.

Install and Configure MAMP

Installing MAMP is a pretty straightforward process. The installer is graphical, and MAMP keeps itself contained to a single folder in your Applications folder, which is really nice. Here's how to install:

Download MAMP from living-e. It could take a bit longer to download than other applications - our MAMP download weighed in at a hefty 109 MB.
Double-click on the MAMP disk image to mount it on your Mac. Drag the MAMP folder to your Applications folder. Leave MAMP in your Applications folder and don't nest it in other folders. (The server applications require this.)
Launch MAMP by double-clicking the MAMP icon in the MAMP folder. Once the MAMP window appears, click Start Servers to get everything going. When you see green lights, you know you're good to go.
MAMP will open a web page in your default web browser. This web page contains important information! Do not close this web page until you have jotted down all of the information you need. The page also contains links to phpMyAdmin and SQLiteManager.
That's it! Now you can start installing your web site. (Applications > MAMP > htpdocs) Your website can be found at: http://localhost:8888.

Install and Configure Drupal

Now that we have MAMP working, we need to put it to use. You can host anything you want - content management systems such as WordPress will work perfectly. We're going to use Drupal as an example. Here's how you can install it, too:

Download Drupal from the official website.
Uncompress the zip file in: Applications > MAMP > htdocs. Cutting and pasting all of the Drupal files into the home directory is a good idea. To do this, take all of the files in the Drupal folder (ours is called "drupal-5.1") and drag them to the htdocs folder.
With your web browser, visit http://localhost:8888. If everything worked, you should see a web page like the one below.
Set the database type to mysql. In the Database name box, type test. We could create a new database, but it's easier just to use test - a database MAMP creates by default. The database username and password is root. If everything works, you'll see a Drupal installation complete message on the next page.
We'd like to say that you're finished, but you're actually just getting started. Customizing Drupal can be a long, painstaking task. Click here for a wonderful tutorial on using Drupal.

XAMPP: The MAMP Alternative

If you don't like MAMP, be sure to try XAMPP, another free Mac web development environment. We don't think XAMPP is quite as polished as MAMP, but it does have a number of features that MAMP doesn't, so if you're a hardcore tinkerer, you better check out XAMPP!

Meet Your Macinstructor

Matthew Cone is a technical writer living and working in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In his free time, he does the desert rat thing and hikes and road bikes around the Southwest. The rest of the time, he studies straw-bale houses, reads Anarchist philosophy, and pretends to not be working. You can email him at: matt@macinstruct.com

Software Piracy: Black Beard & Captain Kidd!

mcone — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 08:49:49 +0000

In keeping with a recent article about piracy in the Runtime Revolution Newsletter, I've chosen to reprint an article I wrote in 2000 for the original Macinstruct website. It is still quite relevant and on target. Last week's Code Mojo article presented me with significant issues - more than I had originally thought - but I will be back next week reviewing some of the scripting that was done in the Coloring Book application.
-Joe

Real or fictional? Sinister or comical? Pirates are no joke! They do serious harm! An act of piracy is committed when someone takes anything that isn't theirs and uses it for their own purposes. It seems different than outright stealing; but, for the life of me, I don't see how or why! Once upon a time, such acts were performed only on the high seas; while today's pirates perform theirs over the Internet, not the ocean waves.

The modern pirate is fettered with neither eye patches nor peg-legs, though the eyes do blur at times and the legs go to sleep from lack of use. Using computer software without a proper, valid authorization, a license, is an act of piracy. Software pirates are every bit as bad as those who hold up banks or liquor stores at gun point. In some respects they are even worse, since they rarely get caught, are rarely prosecuted, yet do severe, real damage to the lives of other people.

Why Am I Talking About Piracy on Macinstruct?

Because new Mac users frequent this site to learn about their Macs, and the use of Mac software, and that is what I am going to discuss. Piracy is but one of several important considerations to which many users are never adequately exposed. At this time I will cover copyrights and piracy. New, as you may be to the world of Mac software, you have most likely been exposed to situations in which you should have read a license agreement before clicking on a product installer's "I Agree" button. If you are like most of us, you maybe read the first one you encountered, but have assumed that all of the others are "exactly" the same. That may not necessarily be the case.

Freeware

Though there is no need to Register this type of software, it is a good idea to do so, since you may get a break on new versions if the owner chooses to change to shareware or commercial releases. You may, at least, be notified when new, free versions are issued. This software's license probably comes with some limitations, so read the terms of the agreement. The usual limitations are that you may not sell it to anyone and, when you give it to someone, you must include all of the items that come with it - such as "Read Me" files. So, it is still possible to be guilty of pirating free software. You must obey the terms of your free license. In some cases you will not be allowed to include the product on software collection CDs that are sold for profit, but an email to the owner will usually get you permission to do so, as long as the proper recognition is provided and you send them a free copy of your CD. After all, "exposure and distribution" is the name of the game, and we all need as much of it as we can get.

Shareware

When you pay the shareware fee, usually less than $25US, you will be registered and licensed by the owner of the product's copyright, and often entitled to subsequent upgrades for free, or to minor upgrades for free, and major upgrades for a reduced fee. Again, read the terms of the agreement. Once more, even though you will actually be encouraged to pass the product along to your friends and associates, there are usually some limitations as to the manner in which you may do this. The same limitations I mentioned for freeware distribution normally apply to shareware as well. If you do not pay the shareware fee, and you use the product contrary to the licensing agreement, you have pirated the software. Most shareware permits you to use the product for some specified period of time to determine whether you wish to have a permanent license, or not. If you plan to leave it on your hard drive, you should pay the shareware fee - even if you only use it once in a blue moon, or on every February 29th.

Commercial Software

In most instances, you will pay for the product before you receive it and you may choose not to register with the owner if that is your pleasure, but I would again recommend that you do so.

It is pretty difficult to "accidentally" pirate this kind of software. If a friend "loans" you a copy of one of their software products; or, heaven forbid, "sells" you a copy without providing everything that they acquired when purchasing it, and you do anything more than try it out - which I think is reasonable, though it may be against the letter of the licensee's agreement, then you are using a pirated copy.

Almost any reasonable software publisher will want you to demo their products with a friend, even to the extent of "loaning" them a copy, so long as they are told in no uncertain terms that they must purchase their own license if they decide to keep the product on their hard drive. I have mixed feelings about someone keeping a copy around on some removable media - just in case they eventually decide to license it. From a strictly legal point of view, I believe that would be piracy as well, but I think you may have to search your own conscience on this one. My feeling - just feeling mind you - is that if you produce something a second time using a product, then you must license it regardless of how you have it "hanging around."

Copy Protection

First, the disclaimer. I am not an expert on copyright law, and have no training in that area. I do not pretend to offer legal advice on that or related subjects, though the reader may feel that I have and do. There are many views on these subjects. You might want to do a search for "copyrights" to check out the many diverse opinions regarding both copyrights and piracy. You will also find an interesting topic called "copylefts."

Regardless of how a product is distributed, all software was created by someone and is the intellectual property of the entity proclaiming the copyright on and/or in their software, or other work. It is not required that the item, claimed as the copyrighted property of that entity, be registered; but, in the case of disputes, registration makes the copyright entitlement much easier to prove, and subsequently enforced if need be. Registering a copyright does not need to be an expensive process handled by an attorney. You can do it yourself by completing the appropriate forms and paying the required, nominal fee.

In Conclusion

We like to think of the Macintosh community as somehow "better" than those who only use PCs. In many respects this has been demonstrated by the paucity of viruses to be found infecting our Macintoshes. For the most part, I think you will also find that Mac users are more inclined to pay their rightful shareware fees. I would like to think this to be true about the larger act of piracy as well - that we do it much less. It would be terrific if we didn't do it at all!

It is unfortunate when some software developers have to resort to exotic registration schemes and/or hardware "dongles" to protect their intellectual property - and it is still theirs. We are only allowed to borrow it for a specified period of time, and under very specific conditions. Taking these extra measures makes their software more difficult to use, and more expensive to produce for all of us.

Reward those who produce exceptional software at reasonable prices. Pay the shareware fees, register your acquisitions, adhere to the conditions of the licensing agreements, and provide the owner with intelligent feedback so that they may improve their products and make them even more useful for us. Promote the best software among your friends and associates; let them know when you've received excellent support. Be just as vocal when you find someone using unauthorized software. It can be done in such a manner as to point out the problem, without embarrassing them. Sometimes, a mere reference to the fact that you received a discount on your last upgrade, because you had registered yours, will stimulate them into doing the same. Always assume that it was an oversight on their part, but never ignore it completely. We all have a major investment in time and money in the best personal computer "system" to be found. Let's make sure that it stays healthy from top to bottom by doing our part. We may not like the law, but it is the law - for now.

Meet Your Macinstructor

Joe Wilkins is a licensed architect who produces all of his work on Macs (yes, even when all he had to work with was a Mac Plus, floppy disks and a wide carriage dot-matrix printer). He has produced his own "Picture" fonts, programmed 5 commercial applications, and chalked up more than twenty-two years of Mac experience - starting with the Lisa. He also authored the "University of HyperCard" on the original Macinstruct website.

Rolling a Revolution Application

mcone — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 02:36:11 +0000

We left off last week with having pretty much completed a completely new Revolution stack, named the "San Diego Activities and Coloring Book." There were still a number of issues and more than a few scripting challenges to be resolved. I had assumed, somewhat naively, that the balance of the scripts would not be a great deal different than their HyperCard counterparts. As I dug in to completing them, I found that was not exactly to be the case.

Admittedly, Revolution's scripting language, Transcript, is very much like HyperTalk, HyperCard's scripting language. But, in order to create a stack that may be converted to standalone applications for a number of different platforms, it appears that it is necessary to use handlers that may then call different APIs for the various platforms that display that platform's unique objects; whether they be dialogs or other elements that appear on the screen that have their own unique appearances and methods of doing things. This means selecting handler names that belong to Revolution, but may then, based on the particular platform, call APIs from those platforms. This may not be exactly the way it is done, but the most likely. So, we find many of the keywords are prefaced by the letters "rev," the balance of the name being pretty much the same as it would be in HyperTalk, but not always or consistently. Hence, finding the right call is not always that easy. So here is the script that is being used for the button "File" of group "Coloring Book Menu Bar":

on menuPick pWhich

  switch pWhich

case "New Coloring Book..."

ask file "Enter Name for new Coloring Book and show where to place it."

if it is empty then exit menuPick

put itemDelimiter into savedDL

set itemDelimiter to "/"

put last item of it into stkName

set itemDelimiter to savedDL

revCopyFile stkName,it

go stack it in a new window

set the name of this stack to quote&stkName&quote

set the title of this stack to quote&stkName&quote

    break

  case "Open..."

answer file "Select a Coloring Book to Open" --with type ".rev"

if it is "Cancel" then exit menuPick

go it in a new window

    break

  case "Close"

hide this stack --it's still open, but not visible

    break

case "Save..."

get the long name of this stack --Puts stack name and path into it

revCopyFile (the effective fileName of this stack), it

    break

case "Save a Copy..."

    answer folder "Select destination folder for backup: "

if the result is "Cancel" then exit menupick

revCopyFile (the effective fileName of this stack), it

    break

case "Page Setup..."

answer printer

    break

case "Print Current"

set the backcolor of this stack to "white" --So we don't get a grayed backgound printout.

hide group "Coloring Book Menu bar" --We don't want to have the Menu printed.

    -- Not all cards have the scrolling color field with it but for erasing color by whiting it

if there is a fld "colorlist" and the visible of fld "colorlist" then

hide fld "colorList"

hide btn "button"

    end if

open printing

if thePaperSize is empty then doPrintThisCard (1224,792),72

else print this cd

-- After printing we restore the things we just hid

show group "Coloring Book Menu bar"

if there is a fld "colorlist" and not the visible of fld "colorlist" then

show fld "colorList"

show btn "button"

end if

close printing

    break

case "Quit"

put the name of this stack into stkName

delete first word of stkName

answer "Are you sure you wish to Quit "&stkName&"?" with "Cancel" or "OK"

if it is "Cancel" then exit menuPick

quit

    break

  end switch

end menuPick

on doPrintThisCard thePaperSize,theMargin

  -- set up defaults if no size and margin provided:

if thePaperSize is empty then put the printPaperSize into thePaperSize

if theMargin is empty then put 72 into theMargin --72 Pixels per inch

  -- get the page area:

set the printMargins to \

      theMargin,theMargin,theMargin,theMargin

put theMargin,theMargin, \

item 1 of thePaperSize - theMargin, \

item 2 of thePaperSize - theMargin \

into destinationRect

--print into that rectangle:

print this card into destinationRect

end doPrintThisCard

There are still some aspects of the above script that do not work exactly as I would like; particularly the "New Coloring Book" portion. Note that the backslash character is used to continue the previous statement on the next line; and, in some cases, lines. The scripts are automatically indented and colorized, using the Courier Font. I'm still using the defaults for all of these items, but they CAN be changed to suit the users preferences. Where else to set them than the Preferences menu in the Revolution (Application) menu?

But for the ones I mentioned, you'll need to click on the "Script Editor" in the left column above.

As you can see, there are a whole host of Preferences that you may make your own.

I hadn't really intended to show much, if any, of the scripting for this stack, but I've decided that it is important that you see how similar it is to HyperTalk; so the following is the script that may be found in the Stack's script:

on mousemove

-- To easily reset the cursor by moving the mouse to the top

if the mouseV < 11 then choose Browse tool

end mousemove

on openstack

if the short name of this stack is "About Coloring Book®" \

then exit openstack

global gColor,gCyan,gEveningBlue,gGold,gMagenta,gDarkGreen,\

         gYellow, gOrange,gSalmon,gOrchid,gViolet,gBlack,\

         gRed,gSpringFrost,gBlue,gWhite

put TheColor() into gColor

repeat with i = 1 to 15

set the checkMark of menuItem i of button "Color" of the \

long name of this stack to (false)

end repeat

set the checkMark of menuitem gBlack of button "Color" of the\

long name of this stack to true

revSpeak "Welcome to " & the short name of this stack

choose browse tool

end openstack

on openCard

if the short name of this stack is not "About Coloring Book®" then

    if the number of this cd is 3 or 37 then enable button "Edit"

else disable button "Edit" of the effective name of this stack

    if the number of this cd is 11 then 

repeat with c = 1 to 15

put "Field "&c into afld

set the foreGroundColor of Field afld to "Red"

end repeat

end if

  end if

end openCard

on closeCard

global gCurrentPicture

get the number of this cd

if there is a fld "Music Instructions" and the visible of fld\

"Music Instructions" of cd it then hide fld "Music Instructions" of cd it

if it is 3 then

    revStopSpeech 

    revUnloadSpeech

else if it is 13 or it is 32 or it is 33 or it is 34 then

if gCurrentPicture is not empty then

doHidePict gCurrentPicture

    end if

end if

end closeCard

on arrowkey theKey

if target is empty then pass arrowkey

switch theKey

case "up"

go cd 1

break

case "down"

go cd 57

break

case "right"

go next

    break

case "left"

go prev

break

case else

pass arrowkey

end switch

end arrowKey

on Enterkey

global gCurrentPicture

get the number of this cd

if it is 13 or it is 32 or it is 33 or it is 34 then

doHidePict gCurrentPicture

  end if

end Enterkey

on doShowPict thePict

global gCurrentPicture

if thePict is "Museum of Man" then

put "My Rectangle 2" into theGraphic

put "Picture Title 2" into theFld

else if thePict is "San Diego Museum of Art" then

put "My Rectangle 3" into theGraphic

put "Picture Title 3" into theFld

else if thePict is "Sea World" then

put "My Rectangle 4" into theGraphic

put "Picture Title 4" into theFld

else if thePict is "Mormon National Monument" then

put "My Rectangle 5" into theGraphic

put "Picture Title 5" into theFld

else if thePict is "Lindbergh Field" then

put "My Rectangle 6" into theGraphic

put "Picture Title 6" into theFld

  else 

put "My Rectangle" into theGraphic

put "Picture Title" into theFld

end if

put thePict into gCurrentPicture

put thePict into field theFld

put " - Click/ENTER Key to close" after field theFld

show graphic theGraphic

show field theFld

show image thePict

put "This izz thee"&thePict into where

if thePict is "La Jolla Cove" then put "This is the "\

      & "La Hoya Cove" into where 

if thePict is "Cabrillo National Monument" then put \

"This is the " & "Cabreyo National Monument" into where

  revspeak where

end doShowPict

on doHidePict thePict

global gCurrentPicture

hide image thePict

if thePict is "Museum of Man" then

put "My Rectangle 2" into theGraphic

put "Picture Title 2" into theFld

else if thePict is "San Diego Museum of Art" then

put "My Rectangle 3" into theGraphic

put "Picture Title 3" into theFld

else if thePict is "Sea World" then

put "My Rectangle 4" into theGraphic

put "Picture Title 4" into theFld

else if thePict is "Mormon National Monument" then

put "My Rectangle 5" into theGraphic

put "Picture Title 5" into theFld

else if thePict is "Lindbergh Field" then

put "My Rectangle 6" into theGraphic

put "Picture Title 6" into theFld

  else 

put "My Rectangle" into theGraphic

put "Picture Title" into theFld

end if

hide graphic theGraphic

hide field theFld

put empty into gCurrentPicture

end doHidePict

on mouseup

choose browse tool

end mouseup

function TheColor

global gCyan,gEveningBlue,gGold,gMagenta,gDarkGreen,gYellow,gOrange\

         ,gSalmon,gOrchid,gViolet,gBlack,gRed,gSpringFrost,gBlue,gWhite

  put 1 into gCyan

  put 2 into gEveningBlue

put 3 into gGold

  put 4 into gMagenta

  put 5 into gDarkGreen

  put 6 into gYellow

  put 7 into gOrange

  put 8 into gSalmon

  put 9 into gOrchid

  put 10 into gViolet

  put 11 into gBlack

  put 12 into gRed

  put 13 into gSpringFrost

  put 14 into gBlue

put 15 into gWhite

  return gBlack

end TheColor

The above script is by no means perfect, and there are a number of things that might be done to improve the handlers it contains, but this will have to do for now. Being at the highest level, some of these handlers are called from other places in the stack; such as the Color Menu - see below.

on menuPick pWhich

global gColor,gCyan,gEveningBlue,gGold,gMagenta,gDarkGreen,gYellow,gOrange,\

         gSalmon,gOrchid,gViolet,gBlack,gRed,gSpringFrost,gBlue,gWhite

set the checkmark of menuitem gColor of button "color" to (false)

put empty into gColor

switch pWhich

  case "Cyan"

set the checkMark of menuItem gCyan of button "Color" to (true)

    put gCyan into gColor

    break

  case "Evening Blue"

set the checkMark of menuItem gEveningBlue of button "Color" to (true)

    put gEveningBlue into gColor

    break

case "Gold"

set the checkMark of menuItem gGold of button "Color" to (true)

put gGold into gColor

    break

  case "Magenta"

set the checkMark of menuItem gMagenta of button "Color" to (true)

    put gMagenta into gColor

    break

  case "Dark Green"

set the checkMark of menuItem gDarkGreen of button "Color" to (true)

    put gDarkGreen into gColor

    break

  case "Yellow"

set the checkMark of menuItem gYellow of button "Color" to (true)

    put gYellow into gColor

    break

  case "Orange"

set the checkMark of menuItem gOrange of button "Color" to (true)

    put gOrange into gColor

    break

  case "Salmon"

set the checkMark of menuItem gSalmon of button "Color" to (true)

    put gSalmon into gColor

    break

  case "Orchid"

set the checkMark of menuItem gOrchid of button "Color" to (true)

    put gOrchid into gColor

    break

  case "Violet"

set the checkMark of menuItem gViolet of button "Color" to (true)

    put gViolet into gColor

    break

  case "Black"

set the checkMark of menuItem gBlack of button "Color" to (true)

    put gBlack into gColor

    break

  case "Red"

set the checkMark of menuItem gRed of button "Color" to (true)

    put gRed into gColor

    break

  case "Spring Frost"

set the checkMark of menuItem gSpringFrost of button "Color"\

        to (true)

    put gSpringFrost into gColor

    break

  case "Blue"

set the checkMark of menuItem gBlue of button "Color" to (true)

    put gBlue into gColor

    break

  case "White"

set the checkMark of menuItem gWhite of button "Color" to (true)

    put gWhite into gColor

break

case "Browse Tool"

choose the browse tool

set the checkmark of menuitem gColor of button "color" to (true)

exit menuPick

case "Paint Tool"

choose the bucket tool

set the checkmark of menuitem gColor of button "color" to (true)

exit menuPick

case "Show Kolor Field"

set the visible of fld "ColorList" to (true)

if the tool is not "browse" then choose browse tool

put "Hide Kolor Field/K" into last line of button "Color" of\

         stack "San Diego Activities and Coloring Book"

exit menuPick

case "Hide Kolor Field"

set the visible of fld "ColorList" to (false)

put "Show Kolor Field/K" into last line of button "Color" \

         of stack "San Diego Activities and Coloring Book"

exit menuPick

end switch

if gColor is not empty then

set the brushcolor to pwhich

set the checkmark of menuitem gColor of button "color" to (true)

end if

end menuPick

The color menu was done before I realized that an easier way to implement color selection and provide for a greater number of colors at the same time was to put a scrolling field onto each card that was intended for coloring and list all 552 available colors in it. By showing the names of the colors in THEIR colors, the user knows what they are getting - kind of. Some show up pretty faintly, even when the font is enlarged considerably.

After the field was created on the first card on which it would appear, the following script was placed in its script:

on mouseup

  --  get the colornames

  --  repeat with i = 1 to the number of lines in it

  --    put line i of it into line i of me

  --    set the forecolor of line i of me to line i of it

  --  end repeat

get the value of the clickline

set brushcolor to it

choose bucket tool

end mouseup

Note that the first 5 lines are now commented out, so they aren't used anymore. I left them in place in case I mess up and need to recreate the field's contents. If this were actually to be done again, a number of times, then it would have been better to replace the references to the field by "me" with a local variable of some kind; and, then, when the entire list was completed, put the variable into the field. This is a pretty universal approach when manipulating the contents of fields. Do the manipulating in memory (using variables) rather than in the fields.

Once I was satisfied with the appearance and functioning of this field, and had created a button to make selecting the color "white," for the purpose of "erasing" other colors, as easy as possible, I copied the field and the button at the same time and proceeded to cycle through the stack's cards, pasting the copied objects into many, but not all, of them. There was no need to show "where" they were to be placed, since Revolution is smart enough to place them all in the same spot on each of the cards, so long as I don't click anywhere on the cards, which would probably mess things up. I'm going to show just one more script; that of the Music Menu. There are nine preloaded Music clips in a folder named "Music Folder," and the clips have names "Music 1" through "Music 9." Note that you are always taken to the first card to play music. This is how the clips are played:

on menuPick pWhich

global gPlayer

if the number of this cd is not 1 then go cd 1

  switch pWhich

  case "About Music"

    set the visible of fld "Music Instructions" to not the visible of \

        fld "Music Instructions"

    put fld "Music Instructions" into temp

    revspeak temp -- The instructions are read to the user

exit menuPick

case "Music 1"

put "Player 1" into gPlayer

break

case "Music 2"

put "Player 2" into gPlayer

break

case "Music 3"

put "Player 3" into gPlayer

break

case "Music 4"

put "Player 4" into gPlayer

break

case "Music 5"

put "Player 5" into gPlayer

break

case "Music 6"

put "Player 6" into gPlayer

break

case "Music 7"

put "Player 7" into gPlayer

break

case "Music 8"

put "Player 8" into gPlayer

break

case "Music 9"

put "Player 9" into gPlayer

break

case "Stop Music"

stop playing gPlayer

exit menuPick

end switch

start playing gPlayer -- This is outside of the switch statement

end menuPick

In order for the users to have their own music played, all they have to do is replace the nine files in the Music Folder with audio clips of their own (that have the same names as the ones currently there). You might think this was pretty easy, but there were issues to overcome. Getting this external folder to be recognized required some exploration. I tore what little hair I have nearly out by the roots before I finally discovered the secret. Revolution has a lot of "secrets"! I don't even remember exactly how I managed to solve this problem. It all had to do with "paths." Initially, I tried rolling my own, but then I found that once I had created nine different player objects with the names "Player 1" thru "Player 9," and took a look at their Inspector, there was a little folder icon to the right of where the "path" was to be put that allowed me to browse my hard drive until I located the "Music Folder". See below:

This automatically put the correct "path" into the "source" field on the Inspector. I'm sure that I could get this to work on all of the cards, but this is another one of those group "things" that I really haven't mastered yet; plus it's not that important right now.

Well, that's all I'm going to explain before saving as a standalone application, something I went through successfully a couple of weeks back with my Picture Fonts Stack. I set the "Standalone Application Settings" as I did before, but this time I had some external files (the music clips) that needed to be attached. So when clicking the "Copy Files" icon, the following dialog appeared, though it was empty at the time.

Clicking on the Add File... button allowed me to navigate to the "MusicFolder" and then to select each one of the clips. My only complaint here was that I had to do it nine times since it would not allow me to choose more than one file at a time.

Then I selected "Save as Standalone Application...", but before I did, it was necessary to reopen the Menu Builder from the Tools Menu, so that I could check the "Set as Menu Bar on Mac OS" checkbox. Otherwise, even on the Mac version the Menus would appear at the top of the Card. Unfortunately, doing this lopped off about 40 pixels from the bottom of the cards. Fortunately, I had taken this into consideration at the outset, and that didn't adversely affect the appearance of any of the cards.

After doing this, I decided to build the standalones, since I've just about run out of time for this week's column. After a very short time, during which I noticed that the Externals were being added, the completed application dialog appeared, so all looked well. This was the final Mac opening screen shot:

I transferred the Windows version over to my other Mac, one that has Virtual PC 6 on it. When I transferred the file over to the other Mac, I put it in my "Shared Folder" file. Then, opening VPC, I located the Windows version and noticed that the Externals were all there in an Externals Folder and the About stack was there as well; however, double clicking on the Coloring Book icon immediately produced a dialog that said it had failed to initialize, so I had to quit, and then close VPC6. At this point I decided to present the problem to the RevList for some guidance. After trying a few suggestions, I have come to the conclusion that it is not a Revolution problem, but a Windows problem - probably an incompatibility between XP running under VPC 6 and my hard drives.

As those of you who have experimented with Windows over the years well know, things never work as easily on that platform as they do on the Mac OS. I have yet to check the Mac version to make sure that it works on the new Intel Macs, but I am fairly confident that it will. Be sure to check back next week to see the end - I hope - of this little mystery.

Meet Your Macinstructor

Creating a New Cross-Platform Application in Revolution

mcone — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 08:04:37 +0000

When I first started thinking about this Chapter, I lost focus and started thinking about knowing all there is to know about Revolution. That was naive, and pretty stupid of me. I had exposed myself to a little bit of the vastness of Revolution and started thinking in grander terms than my original conception, which was to provide the old HyperCard crowd a really good excuse to shift their long-standing HC devotion to Revolution by demonstrating that Revolution can be a fairly simple extension to their HyperCard addiction. That group, on a worldwide basis, was - and is - huge. This will allow them to continue solving most of the same kinds of problems they had handily tamed with HyperCard; but with added dynamism and much fewer restrictions. I am not abandoning this ambition to know all about Revolution; rather I am facing up to the fact that, as is often stated in text books on most all topics, "it is beyond the scope of this publication."

Retreating to the same mentality I had when I first attacked HyperCard, I'm going to concentrate on creating some limited capacity stacks and then extend their behavior as stand-alones. Meaning that, even though there are a whole host of really fantastic things that can be done with Revolution, we're just going to experience the tip of this gigantic iceberg.

So, we're going to create a somewhat, but not too, elementary Revolution stack from scratch and then turn it into a standalone application for both the Mac OS X and Windows XP operating systems. We won't complete those tasks completely in this Chapter. Just this past Monday, Revolution Version 2.8 was announced, which provides full Windows Vista compatibility; however, we still have a few unresolved issues from last week, things that I promised I'd find out about and announce this week.

What Can't Be Done With the Media Edition of Revolution?

You can't convert HyperCard stacks to Revolution stacks. That takes the Studio Edition.

You also cannot create standalone applications for any platform.

You can create fully functioning Revolution stacks, using all of Revolution's features; but if you plan to distribute them to others, they will also need to have the Revolution Player, something that is free and may be distributed with your stack creations. This is something that was also done with HyperCard when it finally introduced its ability to produce standalone applications.

I am told that the Revolution website is making all of this much clearer to those who come to take a peek. I also indicated that I would make some other issues a bit clearer.

HyperCard Backgrounds versus Revolution Groups

Most importantly, how do we create the equivalent of the HyperCard background? The HC background is a "layer" between the cards of a stack and the stack itself. It's like the scenery for the activities that take place in a stage play's "scenes." When a play's scene changes, a break occurs during which time the stage hands come out, usually while things are dark, and rearrange or change the props used and maybe even place a new backdrop for the next "set."

All of the activities that take place while that scenery is in place is very much akin to what happens on the cards of a HC Stack that have the same background. Buttons, fields and graphics occurring on a card with a specific background are shared by all of the cards with that same background. With HC, all cards created while "in" some background, have that background as "their" background. Even though a field is shared amongst a number of cards, the contents of that field do not necessarily have to be the same on every one of the cards, but if it is NOT shared then it will or may be different on all of them. There are other subtle nuances as well.

The following is a step-by-step process for creating/using "Groups" with Revolution. Once created, they function much like HC's backgrounds; though, as mentioned, there may be multiple "Groups" resident on any card. I still don't feel comfortable using them; and, recently, I messed up a stack I was developing to the point of having to revert to one I had saved nearly 10 days earlier. I won't wait that long between making backup copies again. My only consolation was that when I redid all that I had done in the interim I did it much better. I probably would not have started over without the loss I'd faced. Sometimes good things come of bad things! At least I'm able to see it that way.

Creating/Using Groups with Revolution

Create any object or objects. Select them by lassoing them, or shift/clicking them one-by-one.
With the object(s) selected, choose "Group" or "Group Selected" from the "Object" menu or the ToolBar at the top of the screen.
Open the Grouped Objects' Property Inspector.
Check the "Behave as Background" checkbox or set the backgroundBehavior to true using the Message Box.
If there are existing cards, you must go to each one and choose "Place Group" from the Object Menu; new cards created from a card that has the Group already in place will automatically have all of the objects in the Group.
Instead of going to each existing card, particularly with a large number of cards, write a script to accomplish the above actions; you may skip cards you don't wish to share the groups object(s).
Be careful if you want to add more objects to the Group. It is not as simple as just selecting an existing group along with some other object or objects and doing a Re-Group, as I feel it should be; unless I've missed something, you must ungroup the existing group, which may make it appear that you've lost everything, particularly if you already have more than one card. The newly "un-grouped" objects will appear on the card on which you performed the "un-grouping." The other cards will have no objects from the group. When you create a new group with the added objects, you will have to treat all of the cards as existing when that group is created; meaning you must go to each card and "place that group" on it. The upshot of all this is that you should plan carefully ahead to make sure that your design is complete before you start creating any more cards. Otherwise, it can be quite confusing and frustrating. I'm sure this topic will be addressed again; and, perhaps, again.

A New Revolution Stack

Even though I have discussed Groups at length, the new stack I will now create will have but a single Group, that one for the menu bar; mostly because I began this stack prior to having any real understanding of Groups and what they might be used to do.

As mentioned last week, this stack will be an Activities and Coloring Book pertaining to the places and things that actually happen in the City of San Diego, California. In concer

Converting HyperCard Stacks to Standalone Apps Using Revolution

mcone — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 08:09:46 +0000

First of all, I want to say that my recent voyages into the land of Revolution have started taking their toll on me. Something that I, simplistically, had thought I was "up to" as a challenge in teaching has started to become far more. I'm not giving up; I just need to set the record straight: I'm a beginner, just like many of you who are reading my offerings, and my tenet "the best way to learn is by teaching" still remains in place. I just want everyone to know that I'm no expert on Revolution. I'm stumbling through exactly as I initially said I would be. For one thing, I am mining the RevList for all sorts of assistance, and the individuals on that mailing list are performing like the true miracle workers most of them are. The new application upon which I intend starting work in future articles will encompass a number of my discoveries. For now, let's continue to finalize the Font Stack as a Stand-alone application as promised last week.

At the same time, one of my responders wanted some clarification about the various versions of Revolution that are being made available. It seems that the differences between Media, Studio and Enterprise editions are not as clearly explained as they, perhaps, should be. As I mentioned in my very first Revolution offering, we have been provided with three distinct paths of involvement:

The Free for 30 Days Revolution Demo (Trial Mode): available for both Media and Studio Editions
The Media and Studio Editions
The Enterprise Edition

Loath as I am to reinvent the wheel (or much of anything else for that matter), the following has been culled from the Run Revolution website, which we should all revisit from time to time, since its content does change and there are occasionally special offerings that may save you money and/or heartaches:

Revolution Media is a feature rich tool for creating interactive media and software utilities. Right out of the box it includes templates for creating kiosks, presentations, adventure games, portfolios and more. Get more information on this edition of Revolution.
Revolution Studio is the professional's choice for cross-platform development. Create on one operating system, deploy on all four major operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris! Build native applications, including database front ends and CGIs easily. Get more information about Revolution Studio.
Revolution Enterprise includes all the features in Revolution Studio and a seat of each operating system IDE of Revolution. If you're a pro developer then Revolution Enterprise is the solution for you.
Revolution Super Bundle has just about everything a power developer needs. Not only do you get Revolution Enterprise but you get Animation Engine, Valentina, Quartam Reports and much much more. Take a moment to look at the package for Professional Software Developers.

To some extent the differences are probably not noticeable to most, except that the Media Edition is a lot cheaper than either of the other two Editions. For most who plan to explore Revolution before plunking down the considerable kopeks required for either the Studio or Enterprise Editions, Media is the way to go. I understand the reader's inability to discern the difference between Media and Studio. Much appears to be implied. Obviously, Studio contains more of something, though from reading what is presented I'm not sure what that something is. It is stated that the Studio Edition can create applications that run natively on five different operating systems, but it doesn't appear to say anything about what can't be done with Media. I feel this needs to be clarified. I suspect the difference between the two is much less than it would appear. I know I'll get some feedback from those who know about this, and I'll pass it on next week. I'm sure the author of their content was just too close to the subject matter to see that everything is as clear as mud!

Hopefully, I didn't lose you with the previous side trip. Time to get down to business. Last week, I converted an HyperCard stack into a Revolution stack, and it was easy, but there were a few anomalies. Namely, I had some uncertainties as to exactly what the conversion had done with some of the components in the stack. So we're going to check out these items, and we're going to use a most powerful feature of both HC and Rev: the Message Box.

The Message Box (also msg box, or just plain msg) is a vital part of both environments. In Rev, you access it from the Rev Tool Bar or from the Tools Menu. I've not completely resolved a certain issue, whether to hold down the shift key along with the command key when trying to access its related menu item.

One of the things I discovered when I was creating HC stacks was that, unlike most other Mac applications, I was able to use both upper and lower case command key combinations in my menus. Other applications eventually started using the Option and Shift and Shift/Option alternatives as well, but with HC I could just build upper or lower case letters into the menus where the Command Key options were shown and that added functionality was automatically provided by HC. From time to time, it appears that is the case with Rev menu Command keys as well, but not consistently based on my brief experience. Either that, or there are some unimplemented items in Rev. I'll run across and discuss this consideration in the new Rev stack I'll start creating next week.

Getting back on topic. In both my HC stack and the converted to Rev stack, I showed the msg box with Command/m and typed into them "put the number of backgrounds" (I could also have used bgs). This was going to tell me if there really was a difference between the two. As I had suspected, there was. The Rev version had added a bg to the stack. Now 4 instead of 3. Then "put the number of cards" (or cds). Both the same at 97. Then "put the number of bg buttons". Both 5. Interesting, since they are not visible on the first card of the HC stack. When I used "put the short name of this bg"; I got bkgnd (also acceptable) id 3194 with HC; and Group id 3194 for the Rev stack. Incidentally, while messing around going back and forth between the Rev stack and AppleWorks, the application I'm using to compose this little tirade, buttons and text in the Rev stack suddenly disappeared; so, figuring they would all come back if I just closed Rev without saving and reopened, I did that and they did. Hmn! Maybe I'll figure out what's happening here someday.

Continuing with my exploration, I then entered "PUT THE SHORT NAME OF THE NEXT BG" into the msg. In both cases the results were the same as before; just a different id number than with the first one. The short name of the 3rd bg is "Indices" on both stacks; guess I took the time to give it a real name and it was carried over to the Rev stack. Now the mystery deepens. With the Rev stack the first and last bgs have the same short name; but if I enter "put the name of the fourth bg" I get "group HC Icons"; so the fourth and last are not the same with the Rev stack. How can that be, since there are four bgs and the fourth would be the last? Of course, with the HC stack there is no 4th bg and so the first and last have different short names. I've just discovered something interesting. It appears that Rev creates a totally "new" and, apparently, "hidden" bg into which the HC Icons for the stack are stored. I have a strange feeling that a lot of people know this and I've just found it out the hard way.

Aha! This is the case of multiple bgs that were mentioned by one of the readers last week. In order for all of the cards to share these icons, this bg "Group" must be shared by all of the cards. Not sure exactly how this is either accomplished or implemented, but we'll find out soon. I plan to spend some more time with the msg box in another article, but you can see that it is invaluable for diagnostic purposes, and we've only touched the surface of what can be done with it. As a teaser, here is a screen shot of msg box in multiline mode. Fantastic!

Below, in the multiline msg, I did all of the above at one time.

Isn't that neat? And, as you can see by the "grow" button in the lower right corner, it is growable; and the size of the panes can be adjusted by dragging the bar that runs through the middle of the box.

Now, down to cases. We're going to create a Standalone application from the "Font Stack". First, with my belt and suspenders' philosophy, save a copy of the stack you're going to use. I'd suggest you do it on a separate drive or disk to relieve you of the likelihood of future complications. I now have a bone to pick with the Rev programmers, who in their infinite wisdom decided to use Save As... instead of the HC way of doing things with a "Save a Copy...", which is much more useful in a case like this. Immediately, I encounter one more shortcoming: If you command/click on the Stack's Title bar, you do not see the path popup that appears in most other OSX applications. I use this a lot to find out where I've put things. They are not always where I thought I put them, or saved them. This is a serious omission by the Rev Team. Well, kind of!

OK, now I've saved a copy on another hard drive by finding the file with Spotlight, control/clicking on the found item to reveal it's location in the Finder, and then dragged it over to the other hard drive. Not nearly as easy as making a Save a Copy... menu selection.

Clicking File>Standalone Application Settings displays the following dialog which is in the General mode:

Then click on the OS X Icon in the tool bar of this dialog to get the following. (Were the stack more complex there would be some other items to address before doing this, but not in this case. The Font Stack is really simple. It doesn't even have its own menus.)

About the only thing we're going to do now, since I haven't had time to come up with a unique icon for this "application" and it will have no documents associated with it, is to select the Answer and Ask Dialog icons that we want used. Everything else is already completed for our inspection; just bookkeeping for the most part.

Again, with a more complex stack we'd need to check out the Stacks and Copy Files modes and make sure we've provided all the required information for them. We might also want to make provisions for Bug Reports. See the Dialog next for that.

There is no problem coming back to alter any of these Settings, since they are just that. So ease up! Now for the serious part of this whole thing: click File>Save As Standalone Application... Apparently it's going to close the Stack before it does anything since we're presented with this dialog:

If we have already saved the stack before doing this, as I would strongly suggest, then the next thing that happens is you're asked for a place to put the new application, though it doesn't say so; consequently you have to guess that is what is going on. It wants to put the new application in your Documents folder, which is OK with me, so I click Save and wait, a very, very short time in this case, while the wristwatch icon tells me that there is a short delay. Then we get this:

Outstanding! I haven't checked it out yet, and the original stack is reopened after we OK this dialog. So lets check out the new application. This is what I see in the Finder:

Looks encouraging. It appears that I have both a Mac OS X version and a Windows version. Since I didn't provide an icon, it used a generic one which is not all that bad, considering it was for free.

I'm impressed! My observations are that somehow I should have been able, and just didn't know how or think, to disable the Zoom feature on the window, since it is inappropriate to this stack. Also, I should have implemented something for the "About" feature, which now does nothing when you choose that from the Apple Menu. I also should have changed the name, eliminating the word Stack, since it no longer is one.

As you can see from the following series of screen shots - both Mac OS X and Windows XP, those infamous icons never made it over to the Standalones. Fortunately, I had implemented the arrow keys for navigation purposes and they work just fine on both platforms. I've included some screen shots that you've never seen before of some of the other fonts in Joe's Picture Fonts® from the Windows version. Incidentally, the Windows version was run on one of my older Macs using Virtual PC 6.

Of course, I want to reiterate: this was a VERY, VERY simple stack; but there are a lot of them out there just begging to be converted so the Windows world can see what we've been up to for the past decade and a half. Now, can the Media Edition create Standalones like this? I don't know, but I'm sure someone will be letting me know, and I'll let you know when I know.

Almost exactly the same as the Mac version - also without the ugly buttons; but notice that the Mac background is whiter than that for the Windows shots which are very lightly tinged in gray.

One of my more useful Fonts. Unfortunately, they are all done as bit-mapped fonts.

I made a number of variations on the "plain" font theme.

Well, that's all for this week. We're going to start with a brand new Rev stack next week. This is an application that I had completed using Future Basic for the Mac, and so it should move along rather quickly. Lots of color and graphics. It's a children's coloring book about the City of San Diego. Eventually we plan to do coloring books about all of the major tourist cities of the world. I needed to create a Windows version and didn't like the prospects of tuning up my Visual Basic software, so I had been procrastinating for quite some time. No longer!

If you have friends, partners or associates who've been chomping at the bit to do the same kind of thing, give them a holler. Tell them we're having a Revolution. Every Wednesday. If you miss out on Wednesday, you can always check the articles out later by clicking on the Column button at the top of every Macinstruct page.

Meet Your Macinstructor

Convert a HyperCard Stack to Revolution

mcone — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 05:13:47 +0000

I had every intention of responding to readers' comments about my last column on Revolution, and I'm going to do just that; but we're also going to start with some serious Revolution activity after I make a few corrections to my previous offerings. Thanks to several of the RevList members, it was brought to my attention that I made a couple of erroneous observations and remarks. Should you go back to reread my previous articles, you will notice that I will have changed them a little to reflect the things that I am about to reveal - though not immediately! I suppose the most egregious comment that I made had to do with Rev's omission of HC's Background Layer; and that Revolution had merely provided a somewhat awkward substitute in the form of Grouping. After being called on the carpet with this item, I studied the reader's comment and decided that I really can't word what was said any better, so I am quoting it in its entirety here:

HC-style backgrounds are fully implemented and are easy to set up. You do need to start with a "group", but after that you can use it exactly as HyperCard did. And if you ever import an old HC stack into Revolution, you will see the same behavior as this:

Make a single group containing the objects that are to be in your background. Set the group's backgroundBehavior property to true (or check the box in the group's inspector "behave like a background".) That's it. After that, you have a background exactly like HyperCard's. You can refer to "background buttons" as opposed to "card buttons" if you like. You can ask for "the number of bgs." All HC's background scripting techniques work. Messages are sent from the card to the background to the stack, just as in HC. New cards that are made from a card displaying this background will also have the same background, just as in HC. You can ask for "the number of cds in this bg", etc.

The difference -- and advantage -- is that you can have several background groups on the same card if you like (as well as card groups on the same card too.) Multiple backgrounds are handy in many cases. But if you want to stick with the more limited HC model, then just use a single background group and you will have behavior identical to HC. "This background" in a script will refer to the only background group in that case.

Jacqueline Landman Gay
HyperActive Software

It would appear from the reader's additional comments that this is a very common "first impression." However, on reflection, I still don't think I was that much off base, since the Background layer in Rev is neither genuinely easy nor automatic as it was with HC, and it gave me some trouble in the HC stack that I'm going to convert to Revolution in this article. In fact, it provided me with a number of Group related head scratchers to resolve. However, with HC I frequently found that I had to juggle handlers in my HC stacks to keep the various scripts from exceeding the 32k size limit; so being allowed to have multiple backgrounds may ease that pressure when the stacks have extensive scripting, doing a great many things. Of course, I've yet to uncover whether Rev has similar 32k limitations.

One of my other remarks pertaining to the inability in Revolution to shift/option/click on an object to open its script was in error. It should have been command/shift/click; in which case Revolution does just as HC does, but only when the browse tool is selected in both platforms.

Another Rev user took exception to my calling Revolution the "New HyperCard," believing that SuperCard is the one filling that niche. It was suggested that I also take a look at two other cross platform development tools: Rebol and PythonCard, which I may well do after completing my journey with Revolution. By and large, all of the articles I've written so far have been well received. It was also brought to my attention that I had indicated the SE30 did not have a hard drive. I believe I was thinking of the Mac 512 enhanced to Mac Plus status that I was then using very early on.

Now, to get to work. We're going to take a truly simple HC stack and convert it to Revolution. This is about as basic a stack as you will find anywhere. However, because of the use of "Joe's Picture Fonts," they appear more elaborate and complicated than they really are. This stack was created with a fairly early version of HC.

To convert the HC stack to Revolution, all I had to do was Open Revolution, then click File>Open and navigate to the HC stack and click the Open button. The transformation was almost immediate. Unfortunately, there were a couple of syntax glitches in the On OpenStack handler in the Stack script that required some attention. They mostly entailed conflicts with globals used and Revolution keywords; not serious, and doable.

The following is a screen shot of the first card in HC and System 9.2. Note that this card was created using my Picture Fonts for everything you see except the shadows and related line work which were done with HC's paint and fill tools. You'll see some examples of the individual fonts on the other cards that follow. Some of the "ordinary" text, usually in the New York or Geneva fonts, will appear in text fields, while the picture type are in paint mode. For that reason, the user doesn't need my fonts in order to see the pictures.

The next screenshot of the first card is in Revolution and Mac OS 10.4.8. The basic difference is the difference between OS 9 and OS X, though Revolution did insert the buttons that weren't there on the HC version for this card. The navigation provided by these buttons was in the stack script, but somehow Rev decided to Group all of these cards together; I think, because they had a common "blank" background in HC.

The next screenshot is of some of the basic Roof Fonts. I won't always show both the HC and the Rev versions of most cards since they are almost identical. All of the cards in the HC stack had these buttons, except for the first one. Notice, however, that the icons for the buttons are far better in HC than those inserted by Revolution to take their place. You will notice some other anomalies later on; mostly regarding the location of text, and caused, I suspect, by the grouping substitution for the HC Background that Rev does "for you."

Frankly, I think the "frame" that OS 9 provides around the windows is much better suited to both HC and Revolution than the "frameless" windows that OS X provides. During the time I've used OS X this "frameless" condition has come up to bite me a number of times in other applications; when, for some reason or another the Windows Title Bar got moved underneath the Menu Bar. With a frame, you can pull the window down, but without one, you're SOL. We should at least have the option of having one or the other. I've actually lost entire documents because of this situation. It is a rare occurrence, however!

Yet another screenshot follows showing some of the things that can be done with my fonts. Even the Stucco stippling is done with a font. Again, only the shadow and some of the line work was done with HC Paint and Fill tools. Yes, the plants are fonts too. The next thing I might consider is the colorization of these picts.

Windows and shutters, most with a single keystroke and using a single byte of RAM memory.

This card is pretty self explanatory.

In the Revolution version, there is some conflict with the text, and, so far, has proven difficult for me to change.

Still in Revolution; more plants on the next card. Still all fonts except for the Horizontal lines.

Here are some of the Fonts used to create trees in plan view. Each one only takes a byte of memory, except the very large ones which take two keystrokes and 2 bytes of memory.

One thing I discovered: be very careful when you're working with Groups that were created for you by Revolution when converting an HyperCard stack. Make sure you have a back up at all times. I just lost the text fields that were an integral part of this stack. The card above had descriptive and instructive text in the empty area at the bottom. No more! Maybe if I close the stack without saving, something you MUST do with Rev that was automatic with HC, the text may all be restored.

Viola! My hunch was right. All of the text is back; with HC it would have been gone for good. Trying to fix the overlapping text on the card above was where I messed up, but not automatically saving everything you do appears to be a beneficial, though unexpected (at least by me), feature in Revolution.

This is what the earlier card should have looked like; though, as you can see, there are some minor arrangement considerations with a converted stack. Not sure whether it is with the font used or what.

I'll be back next Wednesday with a diagnosis of the Grouping "problem" and fixing the text problem. We'll also save the Stack as a stand-alone application for both OS X and Windows. Since I've already taken a peek at what is involved, I know that I'll need to create some Icons to be used in the application bundles. I am truly grateful to the Readers who provided some valuable feedback and I want to encourage all of you to do the same, even if you have to be overly critical. My skin is VERY thick.

Meet Your Macinstructor

What Can Be Done Using Revolution?

mcone — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 05:08:14 +0000

Since this column is going to be an evaluation and, hopefully, a guide to using Revolution to assist you in solving your problems, the very first thing we need to do is cover some of the most important general programming tenets.

When an idea for resolving a problem or issue that we encounter in everyday life occurs to us, our first hurdle is to come up with a method of "doing it" with our computer. In my career as an architect, I found designing buildings or groups of buildings presented a similar set of circumstances, so it is not unusual that we have come to give the name of architect to some individuals who plan and/or design computer programs. In fact, until I learned how to assemble computer programs, I found this process to be quite painful in my architectural practice; something that caused me to procrastinate far too much. At least, that is what I thought I was doing.

Initially, I thought I was just putting off the inevitable, and felt rather guilty at that fact; but I now realize that I was merely wrestling with my problems in my mind, in the attempt to figure out an approach. Before the Mac's appearance, it didn't really seem as if I was getting much accomplished during these periods. I now understand that I was mentally processing my projects' data in an attempt to find the best way to assemble and present my solutions, something that may not even have been apparent at the time.

Before computers ("BC"), whether with a client or an instructor, architects wasted tons of tissue paper making sketches and overlays to sketches of their concepts. The difference being that they can now perform these trial efforts so much more easily that they don't have the same reluctance toward "Getting Started." At least I don't.

When I first started acquainting myself with programming techniques, the "big deal" at that time, particularly among those who really weren't programmers themselves, and probably didn't want to be, was the "flow chart." Frankly, I thought that was a real waste of my time. I suppose it was probably a necessary tool when the project was large, and the number of individuals involved in the process was substantial; but with a tool such as HyperCard or Revolution, where huge strides may be made at the drop of a hat, the best team is a small team; preferably consisting of a single person with the ability to entice a few friendly cohorts into performing the needed alpha and beta testing. Of course this assumes that the single person is a talented individual with an eye for good design. I believe that I had a chapter in my HyperCard series on that very consideration and I may resurrect it for this series, since it is still quite applicable. There may even be one of you reading this who would care to contribute their vision on this topic. If so, please do so, we are always looking for helpful, new, relevant content.

You should begin as soon as you feel you have a good idea. Break the problem down into a series of smaller problems, essentially creating an outline. Keep breaking these smaller problems into ever smaller ones. Whether you use a word processor or scripts within a new stack you create for that purpose - as I normally do - is unimportant. Start by making some statements in ordinary english that describe what you think you might want to get done.

These statements may eventually become Handlers within an object's script. Most of the time a script consists of a series of related handlers, each one addressing some smaller issue. With most objects the main handler is an "on mouseup" handler which is activated by clicking and releasing the mouse on the object. Within that handler, the others in that script are called, addressing them by name; however handlers in other scripts may also be called so long as they are in a higher position in the object hierarchy. Before long, you'll find that you know how to handle/resolve some of these smaller statements. Once you reach that point, you can start some actual scripting; and with Revolution doing so will be quite easy; certainly, much easier than with any other scripting or programming tool.

I hesitate to refer to Revolution as a programming language, although that is "kind of" what it is. Even Transcript is not a "language" in the conventional sense of the expression. With other "languages" the creator of a computer solution would probably find themselves using a number of different tools to resolve their challenges. Revolution is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment). You will find, in most instances, that you can do everything needed using Revolution itself; although from my current understanding there are also a number of third party tools that may be used in conjunction with Revolution. They may or may not make your life easier. For the time being we will stick with Revolution right out of the box.

Should you buy Revolution: Is it worth the asking price?

For now, I want to fulfill one of my promises, or at least start to do so. What do I think about Revolution? Is it worth the required investment of money and time? We have been provided with three approaches:

The Free Demo: Frankly, if you're serious about doing something with your Mac - or PC, if you must - there's really no sense in wasting your time on a Demo. If you must kick the tires before you buy, then go that route; otherwise go ahead and shell out the money for the basic model.
The Media or Studio Versions: Check out the pricing; realize that you are making a commitment for your computer's future. Even though both versions appear to be somewhat expensive, you'll end up saving so much time in the development process that you will find that either one will be an excellent investment. Realize, however, that there is an anually recurring expense for new versions - upgrades they're called.
The Enterprise Version: This probably won't appeal to many of you, but there will be a segment who see that having the features and services this version provides will also be profitable in the long run.

The most expensive part of using Revolution will be your time. That will also be the least expensive part. You will seemingly spend a good portion of your waking hours using it. It may well become an addiction. You'll get hooked, not unlike how you may have been hooked on HyperCard. Just don't think about it; do it!

Does Revolution work as I had anticipated it should and live up to my expectations?

Does anything? Married twice, divorced twice! I'm real picky and very demanding. Does Revolution still have a chance? At this point I've just scratched the surface, but it's looking better and better all the time.

I find, in my still limited exposure to Revolution with its scripting language, Transcript, that it is a skillfully designed implementation of a product tailored after HyperCard with some overtones of Visual Basic; though I probably would have done quite a number of things differently had it been my own creation. There are, understandably, quite a few major differences between HyperCard and Revolution. I find the most egregious of them to be the loss of HyperCard's Background Layer; something that existed between the Stack and the Card. Revolution manages to provide similar functionality with Grouping; but to me it appears to be an afterthought and is somewhat awkward to use, a patch to replace something that was initially overlooked. I can't imagine how that could have happened, but it did. I also don't see that it was something that was compromised for the sake of cross platform compatibility, but that may be the case. Regardless, I believe it was the wrong decision.

Another item that bothers me to some extent is the inability to clone fields and buttons by dragging them, using both the option and shift keys, to restrain their horizontal or vertical positions. And when you shift/option/click instead of just opening an object's Inspector, it should open an object's script, and do so whether you have the Browse or Pointer as the current Tool. Speaking of which, since the Tool menu command keys are 9 and 0 for those two tools, I'd like to see them have that same relationship in the Tools palette, since it is a bit tedious having to switch back and forth between the two and having to constantly remember which is which. I told you I was picky. I guess that comes from having been a beta tester for a few other applications over the years.

I feel confident that I will eventually find a fair number of other elements equally dissatisfying. On the other hand, I love Revolution's Message Box, with its multiline mode. Excellent! In fact, I may devote an entire chapter on how the Message Box can or should be used. Not just for working with Revolution either. Being familiar with Visual Basic, I can see Rev borrowed some features from it which should make PC users more comfortable.

Back to shortcomings: The User Guide is almost crippled with its missing references and they seem to be very slow to fix this deficiency. The Documentation's Dictionary is both well conceived and fairly well implemented. The entire Product is a growing mass of information and there is still a lot to be done, although what has been done is really huge. I haven't discussed this with anyone; but, in my opinion, future upgrades to the Documentation should be provided free to all licensees, regardless of the status of their license. If I haven't mentioned it yet, once you obtain a Revolution License, you are not obligated to purchase additional ones as new versions become available.

Keep your eyes and ears open. In future chapters, I will reveal other features that I either really like or find severely lacking. I welcome comments from readers in this area.

Getting down to work with Revolution

With respect to documentation, as you create your own applications it is absolutely mandatory that you document as you go. Otherwise it just doesn't get done. Plus it gives you time to think about your next step and where you're going. In my own HC stacks, whenever I created an object, along with its script, I always started the on mouseup handler with something like this:

on mouseup if the shiftkey is down then answer "a description of what this object did" with "Cancel" or "OK" -- Sometimes you'll want to actually create a new scrolling field to describe the current object, since -- an answer dialog is somewhat limiting in capacity and tricky to use. There follows a couple of -- snapshots of some I used in one of my HC modules. else if the optionkey is down then -- some variation of the main function else if the commandkey is down then -- another variation else -- the main function of the object end if end mouseup

This is the Dialog that appears when the Print Menu button is shift/clicked.

And this one appears when the Update Menu button is shift/clicked.

Doing this provides running documentation while assisting you with the layout of the stack's functionality. I haven't gone looking for it yet, but hopefully Revolution has provided a method of building default handlers for all objects. If not, you can provide a similar skeleton that you can paste into each script when you create objects. I just noticed the Card's Business title doesn't display properly now. Hmn!

The First Step in Constructing a Stack

I'm not going to run you through all of the details of creating a new Stack. It is very easy; just open Revolution and click "New Mainstack" from the file menu. You'll immediately have a brand new, Main Stack showing in front of everything else you may have open. The name in the Title Bar will be "Untitled 1" or perhaps 2 or 3. It will remain that way until you click "Stack Inspector" from the "Object Menu", at which time the following Dialog will appear. Enter a name for this stack and once you close the Inspector Dialog, the new name will appear in the Title Bar. Once you've done this, Saving will save the stack with that name.

While the Inspector Dialog is open you may wish to change; or, at least, investigate some of the other properties that you may set. The side popup menu is shown above for access to other features. Once you have done this, in my opinion, you should start building your menus. This is something much more easily accomplished with Revolution than with HC. First, select Menu Builder from the Tools Menu. This presents the following Dialog. Click "New" and you get yet another Dialog as shown immediately below. Note the checkbox "Move objects down to accommodate the menu-bar."

Once again, I'm not going to hold your hand here. You'll probably learn a lot more about how to set up your menus by doing as I did - stumbling around a bit, discovering the Menu Builder's idiosyncrasies. The following is what you could have if you've added some other menus to the Menu Bar. Don't worry. If you don't get it right the first time, you can always go back and change or modify them - at any time. You should probably work with the menus at the top of the Card rather than at the Top of the Screen as we do with Mac applications. That way, things will look great for Windows users. There is something to be done in this respect, but right this minute my mind has drawn a blank. We'll leave that as the proverbial lesson for the student to solve.

Once you've clicked OK in the left Dialog, you'll see the revised MB Dialog that now has all of your goodies in it. By clicking (selecting) the various Menus, you may then click on the Edit Script button in the lower left corner to reveal a blank script, ready for you to indicate what that item is to accomplish when selected. Clicking on the Auto Script button puts a Switch statement in the selected script, showing you what will be there when you choose to Edit that Script as I've shown below. This is VERY good!

Well, folks, I'm going to have to call it a day. I've got some other business that is calling. I genuinely believe that you will enjoy your Revolution experience, though it will present some daunting challenges, almost hourly, but remember there is a wonderful mailing list for you to engage whenever you just don't find an answer to your current dilemma; so use it. Remember to explore. You won't break anything and you can always take a new direction. Remember to make copies of what you are doing, particularly if you decide to go off on a tangent and think that you may want to trash your current approach and start all over again.

Please do not hesitate to stick your 2 cents worth into the mix and let me know what you think about what I'm doing. This is really much more difficult than I had thought. I don't mean using Revolution. I mean figuring out what to write so that it makes some sense and is somewhat useful to those who take the time to read my dribblings. Revolution is not as easy as HyperCard, but it does a lot more. Way more!

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