Re: Clocks & Backgrounds

Boyd Sweeney (starnet!apple!puzzler.nichols.com!sweeneyb)
Wed, 9 Mar 1994 15:43:57 -0500

>I have been tasked to mock-up a desktop interface using MetaCard. The
>cognitive people's design calls for a clock to be displayed. Does any one
>know how I can have a running clock update itself in a background field?
>Since it is just a demo, I can always just put a random time value into a
>field as text, but a running clock would really knock their socks off.
>
Create a field called "Time_Field", and put the following handler in your
card or stack script. If this eats a lot of cpu cycles (don't know if it
would or not), you might want to look at changing the idleRate.

on idle
put the long time into field "Time_Field"
end idle

>From the "Boy am I in my own little world and never noticed that feature
>before" department, did 1.3 introduce editing and access of the background
>fields or did that exist in 1.2? I have always used the Menu Bar to get
>into and out of background groups. Any opinions on whether that is the
>preferred/least-preferred method? Is there a way to return to editing the
>card from a background without using the Menu Bar?
>
I seem to recall that 1.2 used a "Ctrl-G" to bring up an "Edit Backgrounds"
dialog, which is done with a "Ctrl-T" or menu selection now. I prefer to
double click a on group to bring up its Properties dialog, and then choose
to edit the group's objects from there. Pressing "Ctrl-T" while in "group
editing mode" will get you back to editing at the card level.

It would be nice if there were some way to go directly to editing a group's
objects. Maybe a control sequence when a group is selected, or a double
click on a group while a modifier key is depressed?

***************************************************************
* Boyd Sweeney Scientist, Nichols Research Corporation *
* sweeneyb@puzzler.nichols.com (205) 883-1170x1775 *
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