Mac Mania 2/MacMania 2.toast/Demo's/Tools&Utilities/HyperCard/ShowDialog 1.6 XCMD/About ShowDialog XCMD 1.6

Text File | 1993-05-04 | 8.9 KB | 207 lines | [TEXT/nX^n]

25 April 1993

This archive contains this text document and Jay
Hodgdon's HyperCard(tm) external package "ShowDialog" version 1.6.
ShowDialog allows the creation of a wide variety of dialogs within
HyperCard that are more "Mac-like" and much more flexible that the
built-in answer and ask (and their variations) commands.
ShowDialog supports scrolling lists, radio buttons, checkboxes,
icons (including COLOR), PICTs, and much more to be displayed in
dialogs.

I have been using this external package for several years.  I've
found it to be extremely well done, and it has held up well
through several versions of HyperCard.  I've used it with 1.1,
1.2x, 2.0x, and the current (as of April, '93) 2.1 without major
problems.  Some of the externals included are no longer needed in
the current version of HC, however.  Also, there are some *minor*
idiosyncrasies that I've learned to work around.  There is also at
least one commercial set of externals that go well beyond what is
possible with ShowDialog, but ShowDialog is only five bucks!!
Recently on the HYPERCRD list and comp.sys.mac.hypercard there has
been some discussion about creating dialogs in HC and several
requests for posting this stack.

To make use of ShowDialog XCMD you will need ResEdit or some other
resource editor.  The stack provides a great deal of help with
this, but it is somewhat dated (discusses ResEdit 1.2).

When I sent my shareware payment to Mr. Hodgdon back in '90, I
received a disk from him with version 1.6 of ShowDialog.  Included
with the disk was a three page printed document describing some of
the changes to the stack.  I include the text of that document
here.

Please note that Mr. Hodgdon passed away in January 1991.  This
stack is shareware (terms and pricing included in the stack's
documentation), and prior to his death Mr. Hodgdon requested that
payments be made as listed below.  This information is from Steve
Michel's StackWEEK column in the 26 March *1991* (yes, '91) issue
of MacWEEK:

"In January, Jay Hodgdon, noted XCMD developer and HyperCard
tester on Apple's HyperCard team, died of complications from
AIDS....

"Before his death, he requested that future shareware payments and
contributions be sent to two San Francisco charities:  Project
Open Hand and The Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt....

"The Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt is at 2362 Market St., San
Francisco, Calif. 94144.  Phone [phone], fax [phone].

"Project Open Hand is at 2720 17th St., San Francisco, Calif.
94110.  Phone [phone]."

Disclaimer:  I have no affiliation with the above organizations,
and I never met Mr. Hodgdon.  However, I think this stack and
associated externals are excellent work, and I'm a satisfied user.
Compiling this little document and posting this last version of
the stack is just my tribute...

And now, the promised document:


"Wednesday, May 24, 1989

Dear HyperCard Developer:

Thank you for supporting ShowDialog XCMD.  Enclosed is version 1.6
of ShowDialog, which is the most recent revision.. If you have
been using a preliminary version of 1.6, please discard the demo
stack and substitute this current version in its place.  You will
need to make no modifications to your scripts.

If you have been using versions of ShowDialog prior to 1.6, you
*cannot* substitute the current version in your previously written
stacks without modifying your scripts.  Significant changes have
been made in the function of ShowDialog to enhance its power and
flexibility.

The new features of ShowDialog XCMD 1.6 are:

1.  ShowDialog types 2, 3, and 4 now return their result in a
RETURN-delimited list, instead of a comma delimited list.  Many
people expressed dismay that errors would occur in processing the
result if the user entered commas into the Editable Text fields.
This problem has been corrected in this version.

2.  ShowDialog types 2, 3, and 4 can now have AS MANY fields of
Editable Text as you desire.  The limit of two fields has been
removed.  The user simply tabs through the fields of Editable Text
in the dialog.  The result contains the contents of the Editable
Text fields in a RETURN -delimited list.

3.  ShowDialog type 2 can now contain as many check boxes as you
desire.

4.  You can no longer specify the window title in the ShowDialog
type 2 parameter list.  If you're using a procID window of 0 (the
one with the titlebar), then the window title must be specified in
the DLOG template.  This parameter was removed because it seemed
silly to title the dialog on the fly.

5.  If your buttons of a ShowDialog type 5 dialog are of the "hot
spot" type, they will "invert" to hilite the area of the PICT that
lies over them.  (See the "All PICT" dialog on the Special Dialogs
card for more information on this.)

6.  The scrolling list of ShowDialog type 7 can now be configured
so that only one item can ever be selected, or that multiple items
can be selected (by shift-clicking to make discontinuous
selections or shift-click-dragging to make continuous selections).
This necessitated the addition of another parameter to the
parameter list.

7.  ShowDialog type 7 can now have as many regular buttons as you
wish.  Its result is now RETURN-delimited.  Line 1 of the result
contains the DITL item# of the button clicked.  Line 2 of the
result is a comma-delimited list of the lines from the scrolling
list that were hilited.  This allows you to act on the lines of
the list in a variety of ways (depending on which button was
clicked).

8.  After a dialog box is dismissed, ShowDialog now forces
HyperCard to refresh its window.  Therefore, you no longer have to
issue "go to this card" messages when displaying several dialogs
within a handler to fill in the white space left by a dialog.

9.  The ShowDialog demo stack now contains explicit step-by-step
instructions for creating dialogs with ResEdit (as a courtesy to
those unfamiliar with the operation of ResEdit).

10. Two new auxiliary XCMDs have been added to the ShowDialog
group:  TextDialog XCMD and SplashDialog XCMD.  CreditsDialog XCMD
was included with the previous versions of ShowDialog but was
undocumented.

TextDialog XCMD displays a dialog that can show up to 255
scrolling text screens, each containing up to 32K of text.  You
specify in the parameter list the font and point size of the text
in the scrolling field.  A TextDialog dialog is "semi-modal".  It
can have a titlebar that allows it to be dragged around the
screen, but it must be dismissed before other actions can be
taken.

Scrolling of the TextDialog field is under full keyboard control:

* Pressing the Home or End keys on the extended keyboard will
scroll the field either to the top or bottom.
* Pressing the arrow up or arrow down keys will scroll the field
one line at a time.  Pressing these keys with the command key down
will scroll the field an entire page.
* Pressing the page up or page down keys will scroll the screen
and entire page.
* Pressing the arrow left or arrow right keys will cycle text
screens in the same manner as pressing the Prev or Next buttons.
* Pressing enter or return or clicking the goAway box on the
titlebar cancels the dialog.

SplashDialog XCMD displays a dialog containing your graphic that
dismisses itself after a specified period of time.

CreditsDialog XCMD displays a dialog containing two graphic
elements.  One element is swapped for the other when the dialog is
first clicked.

11. The ClipToPICT X-command has been rewritten as a function
(XFCN) and now allows you to insert a PICT from the clipboard not
only into the current stack, but into any other stack as well.  Or
you can create a new file ("double-clickable" by ResEdit) to
contain the PICT resource.

12. PrintDoc XCMD has been revised to provide better error
handling in situations where the LaserWriter is turned off when
trying to print or when the "printing" files are missing from the
System Folder.  It also fixes a gross bug where the XCMD would
crash the machine if the printing DLOG/DITLs were missing from the
stack.

13. Ants XFCN now uses an offscreen bitmap and CopyBits to
eliminate screen flicker when drawing the rectangle.  Ants also
now flushes the event queue so that the mouseclick that draws out
the rectangle isn't passed along to HyperCard (this caused a
problem in scripts where a painting tool was active when Ants was
called.

Many of the modifications in version 1.6 of ShowDialog resulted
from feedback that I received from users of ShowDialog.  I
appreciate your comments, suggestions, and criticisms.

ShowDialog is a continuously evolving product.  You can expect
that as HyperCard evolves, so too will ShowDialog.  In future
versions...." (remainder deleted - JC)

"Sincerely yours,

Jay Hodgdon
Ignatz Software"
_____________________________________

Alas, there will be no future versions.  I hope you find this
software as useful as I have.

Jay Cross    Cross Resources    [phone]
              [e-mail]
HyperCard development,   Macintosh user training,   DTP