Many of the ideas revolved around a "navigator" idea concept where "go
next card" and the like would be used to create the slide show.
Unfortunately, I wanted to show more complicated behavior (such as
typing into a field, or pushing a button).
My solution was to write a "Tour Guide" stack. It sends "synthetic
events" to the stacks involved in my presentation.
Basically, the Tour Guide contains a field which consist of blocks of
MetaCard code seperated by a blank like. When the NEXT button is
clicked the next block of code is executing using the DO command.
Most of the code in the script contains stuff like:
send "mouseUp" to button "foo" of card 1 of stack "bar"
but there are some other interesting things sprinkled in. For
instance, I've put some MC code in the blocks to write a running
commentary to a field of the Tour Guide stack. This gives a written
description of what is happening in the tour. Even more slick, I've
added a verbal (sound) narration using the "play" command.
This seems to be a good method for most of what I want to do. I may
add some DRAG commands to drag and oversized cursor around as part of
the presentation. I have to problems left; 1. MC synthetic events
don't really act like the real thing (eg. A synthetic
mouseDown/mouseUp to a button doesn't cause the button to be "armed"),
2. I can't send synthetic events to my non-MC applications (which MC
invokes).
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Steve Pothier
pothiers@aries.saic.com
Member of the League for Programming Freedom
-- write to lpf@uunet.uu.net
Science Applications International Corporation
5151 E. Broadway, Suite #900
Tucson, AZ 85711-3796
Phone: 602-748-7400
FAX: 602-790-9765
My opinions are my own (not SAICs) but you're welcome to them!
"The time a man spends sailing is not deducted from his lifespan."
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