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1. Choice 1 Pulldown Menu Choicel B Choice 2 Choice 1 Choice 1 Choice 3 Choice 2 Choice 2 Ch 3 Choice 3 A B C Grabi Tab2 Tab3 PopUp M ii Choice 1 Choice 2 Choice 3 D E Fig 3 2 Menu Objects While you might think menus would be classified as fields because of their text they are in fact modified buttons and in scripts they are referred to as buttons With the Run Tool active try out the various menu objects to see what they do A Option Menu Once the button is set up the user of the program can select an option from your list When an option is chosen the name of the selected option remains visible when the user releases the mouse 22 B Pulldown Menu The user selects an option from a list that is centered right under the button Unlike the option menu the name of the selected option is not visible when the user releases the mouse This menu is particularly useful for creating your own menu clusters like File Edit View etc C Combo Box Behaves like the Option menu but the user can also type words into the menu title D Pop Up Menu Like the pulldown menu the pop up menu has a visible name that never changes regardless of which choice the user makes Unlike all the other menu types the pop up menu has a transparent background so if it is not given a name it could sit unnoticed on the card until clicked on or it could be given an icon rather than a name E Tab Panel This menu i
2. O stack Untitled 1 ID 1002 Size amp Position H L Wi Resizable Width 400 gt Height 400 5 A Location 1726 aa 681 Min Width 32 Min Height 32 4 Max Width 65535 Max Height 65535 Fig 22 7 Stack Size amp Position RESIZABLE resizable Checking this box enables the user to resize the stack 97 If it is unchecked the little resizable handle at the bottom right of the stack Fig 2 2 disappears and the stack cannot be resized by the user WIDTH width Sets the width of the stack HEIGHT height Sets the height of the stack LOCATION oc This tells you the location of the center of the stack with reference to the x and y coordinates of the monitor The coordinates of the upper left corner of the monitor are 0 0 the first number being the x coordinate and the second number being the y coordinate The two fields for the Location property of the stack are the x coordinate the top one and the y coordinate below it Together they make up the oc of the stack e g a loc of 1726 681 Try moving the stack around by its title bar and you will see how the stack s Joc numbers change continuously A useful scripting word to know here is screenLoc That is the location of the center of the monitor Thus to set a stack to the center of the monitor in a script write in the Message Box Set the loc of this stack to the screenLoc This script by the way can be useful in cases
3. The ask and answer dialog boxes can contain icons symbolizing Error Warning Information or Question Fig 9 3 as in the modified script lines answer question What color are your eyes with Brown or Blue or Green or Cancel ask question What color are your eyes 50 ERROR WARNING INFORMATION QUESTION mo A DQ lt 0 A O O A QO A MAC CLASSIC LINUX amp UNIX l Fig 9 3 Ask and Answer icons sort Sort can be used to sort cards or lines in a container such as a field For example imagine you have a stack of cards with a background field titled Name at the top of each card Each card corresponds to a different name You want to sort the cards in alphabetical order This is accomplished in the script sort cards ascending by field Name sorts in ascending alphabetical order or more simply sort cards by field name if you don t specify ascending or descending LiveCode assumes ascending If you wanted to sort the cards in reverse alphabetical order you can write sort cards descending by field Name or numerically sort cards numeric by field zip code sorts ascending numeric by default sort cards ascending numeric by field zip code sort cards descending numeric by field zip code sort field MyList sorts the lines in field MyList in ascending alphabetical or
4. _ gt Label Tool tip Style Square Button rH M visible Mi Opaque F Show name 0s oroe C Focus with keyboard Vv Mnemonic None E C Default button C Disabled Layer Mode Static B Behavior Basic Properties 4 KJ W Auto hilite Shared hilite button Left ID 1019 Icons amp Border 4 Fig 4 3 Icon 0 Hilitelcon 0 Disabled Icon Visited Icon 0 0 Armed icon 0 0 Hover Icon M Three D Mi Border Mi Hilite border Border width 2 C Shadow Shadow Offset 4 Fig 4 4 Icons and Border 5 Select ICONS amp BORDER from the button Inspector s pulldown menu Fig 4 4 6 Click on the ICON magic wand on the right to open the list of icons that can be used 7 Select a left pointing arrow symbol Fig 4 5 The Left arrow icon will then be visible on the Left button 27 Image library Standard Icons HH ka PN eS zje e 5 Weel Wee co e a ia El 4 m gt ak O al ae CAKACIKE 4 lt b Cancel Fig 4 5 Standard Icons 8 Open the left button s script editor by clicking on the little arrow at the top right of the button Inspector Fig 4 3 and selecting Edit Script from the pulldown menu that appears This will bring you into the button s script editor Fig 4 6 The script editor alrea
5. CARD SIZE amp POSITION Fig 23 2 104 O card id 1002 ID 1002 Size amp Position H Le gt Width Height Location f Left C Resize Top T vd Right Bottom Layer F E Number 1 Fig 23 2 Card Size and Position Note that you cannot set height width and location for individual cards The height width and location of a card are the same as that of the stack For cards Layer layer and Number number are the same thing Layer and Number however can be different for objects on a card If you have a number of buttons and fields on a card for instance the Layer refers to the position of the control in reference to all the controls on the card while the Number refers to the position of the control in reference to other controls of like kind For instance if you successively put 2 buttons on a card and then put 3 fields on a card the last field would have a Layer of 5 but a Number of 3 The arrows to the right of Layer and Number move the control closer or farther from the card When you refer to button 1 the reference is to the button s number rather than its layer A button that is called button 7 could be far from the card surface in layer 3 for instance if there are fields that are closer to the card than is the button Card Scripting on closeCard 105 on openCard on preopenCard mark card unmark card lockmessages on closeCard on openCard on preopencard On
6. CHAPTER 15 CONSTANTS Constants are labels that refer to specific and unchanging values They serve as a shortcut when writing scripts You can define your own constants or simply use those supplied by Livecode True False True and false evaluate whether a property is turned on or off or whether a statement is true or false Examples The locktext of field data evaluates to either true or false 5 4 7 evaluates to false The word true can often be eliminated in the following sort of statement if lt something gt is true then This is equivalent to if lt something gt then By not specifiying whether lt something gt is true or false LiveCode in such examples defaults to true up down left right The script words up and down commonly signify whether a keyboard key is up or down but can also refer to the state of the mouse button Examples wait until the mouse is down if the optionKey is down then lt do something gt Up down left and right also have a special use in relation to the arrowKey in cases where the keyboard has arrow keys as in the following card script on arrowKey MyKey if MyKey is right then go next if MyKey is left then go prev if MyKey is up then lt do this gt If MyKey is down then lt do something else gt 72 end arrowKey empty Empty refers to the state of a field or other container Examples put empty into field 1 deletes all of the field s contents
7. Edit script of btn 1 of next card Edit script can be very useful for instance if you accidentally created a button MyButton with just an on mouseEnter handler For instance on mouseEnter answer Why did you do that end mouseEnter You will then find it difficult to alter the script of button MyButton because every time you place the cursor over the button whether in Run or even in Edit mode you will frustratingly get that Why did you do that answer box A way to get into the button script is to type in the Message Box Edit script of btn My Button This will open the button s script editor where you can make changes with no difficulty move stop moving The move command moves a stack or control by scripting Examples move this stack from 0 0 to the screenloc this gradually moves the center of the stack from the upper left portion of the computer screen to the center of the screen move btn 1 from 0 0 to 100 125 in 5 seconds gradually moves button 1 from the 0 0 location on the card the card s upper left corner to 100 125 on the card over a 5 second period Setting the moveSpeed sets the speed of the move set the moveSpeed to 10 move btn 1 from 0 0 to 100 125 stop moving btn 1 stops the movement of the button before the above movement is completed You can move a control along a curved path as well For instance create a path using the Freehand Graphic tool
8. For instance on mouseDown means When the mouse is Down do the following beep issue a beep sound end mouseDown indicates that the mouseDown directions are over on mouseUp go to the next card end mouseUp The above mouseDown and mouseUp instructions can both reside in the button s script at the same time Together they are called the button s script Individually the mouseDown and mouseUp instructions are called handlers So in this example there is one script with two handlers If a script has more than one handler with the same name only the first handler is executed If the button or other control does not contain any handlers for the sent message the message e g mouseUp passes right through the control searching for other underlying objects that may have a mouseUp handler The message searches along a fixed route going first from the control to any non background group the button may be in if there is one then to the card and then to any groups that are acting as a background in order of number then to the stack substack if the control is on one then to the Mainstack finally to the LiveCode engine until the message comes to a handler in one of those places which traps and carries out the particular mouse message Fig 6 1 For instance if the card contains a mouseUp script with the command beep and the button on the card contains no mouseUp handler clicking on the button will send the mouseUp
9. numbers on the slider The default is true checked box VALUE FORMAT numberFormat Lets you set the decimal places to which the number is shown on the slider For instance 00 is the dollar format as if you were writing dollars and cents with two digits after the decimal A numberFormat of 0 0 shows only one digit after the decimal ON BAR CLICK pagelnc For scrollbars and sliders this sets how far the knob of the scrollbar or slider will go when clicking on the gray area of the bar As the Thumb of the Slide Bar is moved manually by the user particular events can occur in the course of the Thumb movement as directed by the Slide Bar script such as the sound volume or values in a field E g Sample script within a Slider MyProgress that has a Start value of 0 and an End value of 100 on mouseStiliDown put the thumbPosition of me into field data end mouseStillDown As the user slides the thumb the values shown under the slide bar will also appear in the field data Another way of scripting this is to use the word scrollbardrag on scrollbarDrag myPosition put myPosition into field data end scrollbarDrag 144 The Little Arrows control commonly is used to add or subtract numbers in a field Drag a new field onto the card and name it Counter and then drag a Little Arrows control and place it next to it Insert the following script on scrollbarLinelnc subtract 1 from fld data end
10. put field mouth puts the text of field mouse into the Message Box You could also have written put the text of field mouth The above scripts show how flexible LiveCode is in providing a user friendly English like scripting environment The containers that are the recipients of the put commands do not have to be fields or the Message Box A container can also be a variable e g put chocolate into gMyMouth a made up variable word put gMyMouth into msg We will discuss variables more fully in Chapter 11 The act of putting is not confined to text One can also use images put image 1 into image 2 This substitutes one image for another Bonus script pearl put the name of this card returns the card s name in the Message Box put the name of this stack returns the stack s name in the Message Box put the name of this button returns an error message the word this is used only in relation to a stack or a card not other objects For a button you might instead write put the name of me For instance if the button s name is Menu and the handler in the button reads on mouseUp put the name of me end mouseUp then on clicking on the button the Message Box will read button menu the long form of the button s name with quotes If instead the script line were put the short name of me the Message Box would just read menu without quotes set get 46 Script word
11. A graphic object can then move along the path 53 move image 1 to the points of graphic 1 in 1 second beep The beep sound can be useful as an alarm to alert the user to a significant event It can also be used during development by temporarily placing the beep command at certain points in a script to see if the script is functioning up to that point Another useful word to temporarily put into a script to see if it is functioning up to that point is put as in put hi If the script is working up to that point the Message Box should show the word hi CHAPTER 10 KEYBOARD WORDS Keyboard Words refers to specific keys on the keyboard Examples if the controlKey is down then lt perform some action gt if the commandKey is down then lt perform some action gt if the optionKey is down then lt perform some action gt if the shiftKey is down then lt perform some action gt on keyDown pKey is a handler for any particular key that might be pressed Try putting this into the script editor of a field and then typing within the field any letter or number on keyDown MyKey put MyKey end keyDown The Message Box will show each letter or number you type in the field In the above script on keyDown means When you press a key down The word MyKey is a container to hold the identity of the particular key you pressed and could be any made up word This particular handler puts the name of the letter or number you type i
12. BAR Inspector Opens the Property Inspector of any selected object Code Opens the script of any selected object Message Box Toggles the Message Box open or closed Group Toggles grouping or ungrouping of objects Edit Group Toggles a group into or out of editing mode Select Group Toggles the selection of the group as a whole vs the ability to select the individual controls within the group User Samples Connects to a list of example stacks created by LiveCode users Fig 34 10 162 ane revOnline Browser REVONLINE gine ed Go a Awesome Stack Simulation Iphone External Animation Code Macintosh na Rating Test as Cc Windows Development tool Media HTML Author Type Revision PrEFE ipad maasse e Rating is Ferrer FEFFE Music sma so tn 0 Text Mac OS X Tutorial Mobile Menu Android Player Science Mp3 Resize Graphics RevOnline 338 stacks online Displaying 6 of 6 results Fig 34 10 Development Revonline Browser REFERENCES GENERAL The LiveCode User Guide Accessible from the LiveCode Help Menu or printed version Schonewill M Programming LiveCode for the Real Beginner 2013 Economy x Talk AnimationEngine Derbrill animation techniques for LiveCode http www hyperactivesw com revscriptconf scriptingconferences html Hyperactive Software scripting conferences http livecode byu edu indexgeneric php Brigham Young University online course http fo
13. Florida birds appear But look at the browser s search path it reads something like http www google com search num 10 amp hl en amp site imghp amp tbm isch amp source h p amp biw 1163 amp bih 11508q Florida birds amp oq Floridatbirds amp gs_ img 3 012j0i24I 8 9421 11690 0 12577 13 12 0 1 1 0 84 939 12 12 0 0 0 1ac j WKishz9I3c That s a lot of gobbledy gook mixed with the actual search words Florida birds with a plus sign between Florida and birds LiveCode can be programmed to automatically do the entire search from a single click from within LiveCode the following launch URL command is all on one line on mouseUp launch URL http www google com search num 10 amp hl en amp site imghp amp tbm isch amp source h p amp biw 1163 amp bih 11508q Florida birds amp oq Floridatbirds amp gs_ img 3 012j0i24I 8 9421 11690 0 12577 13 12 0 1 1 0 84 939 12 12 0 0 0 1ac jWKishz9I3c end mouseUp By substituting other words for Floridat birds you can create a script within LiveCode that enables the user to select any word s in a list field and do an immediate Internet search for all the literature or all the images This has significant potential value to educators who wish to introduce Internet searches into their courses using LiveCode This same technique was used to prepare a standalone listing the known infectious diseases over 10 000 of them including images and literature See Atlas o
14. LiveCode to stop the looping at the quiet card and announce that it is through Exit repeat doesn t just direct the script to loop back to the next repeat It stops the entire repeat process Repeat statements can be nested just as can the if then else statements Example on mouseUp repeat with x 1 to the number of cards in this stack go to card x of this stack repeat with y 1 to the number of flds in card x of this stack put empty into fld y of card x of this stack end repeat end repeat end mouseUp 80 The above script could be abbreviated though on mouseUp repeat with x 1 to the number of cds go cd x repeat with y 1 to the number of flds put empty into fld y end repeat end repeat end mouseUp Eliminated in the script are the words in this stack of this stack in card x of this stack and of card x of this stack You don t need these words since LiveCode by default assumes the cards you are talking about are those belonging to this stack and the fields you are talking about refer to the card you are on card x Sometimes you can get into an endless loop by using repeat without specifying for how long Pressing command period control period in Windows will terminate any script provided the stack Property Inspector Basic Properties has User can t abort scripts unchecked cantAbort is set to false is is not contains is among Imagine a card with a single field containing the text do
15. Name the third card Yellow card and color it yellow Be sure you make these color changes in each individual card via their card Property Inspectors rather than to the stack Property Inspector which would set the color to the stack as a whole Sometimes the stack Property Inspector just pops up on its own which can be a nuisance so be sure you are working with the Card Property Inspector If you were to set the stack s color some color other than green red or yellow note that setting the color of each individual card overrides any color assigned to the stack Other card properties also override those of the stack 6 Save your work 7 Open the Application Browser Tools Application Browser 8 Click on the little arrow to the left of MySubstack Fig 2 5 You should see listed under MySubstack the names of the cards you have created Green card Red card and Yellow card Right click on any of these names to reveal a menu for each card Select go This opens the corresponding card 13 Name vO MyMainstack I card id 1002 AudioClips VideoClips MySubstack I Green card I Red card I Yellow card AudioClips VideoClips Fig 2 5 Application Browser 9 Quit Livecode Kinds Of Stacks There are 4 general types of stacks topLevel modal modeless and palette which correspond to the way a user can interact with them ege Untitled 2 AN Standalone Application Settings
16. Stacks in Use The defaultStack Hide Message Box Controls FOA b put This message is from the Message Box into field 1 Message Box Single Line Untitled 1 Fig 2 7 Message Box 1 Open LiveCode and create a new mainstack FILE NEW MAINSTACK Open the Message Box with Tools Message Box or use the keyboard shortcut Command M for Macintosh or Control M for Windows In general keyboard combinations that use the Command key in Macintosh use the Control key in Windows 2 Note that each of the objects on the Tools Palette has a tooltip name that can be seen simply by placing the mouse cursor directly over the icon The top of the Tools Palette Fig 2 2 contains an arrow on the left called the Run browse tool and a hatched arrow on the right the Edit tool pointer tool When you click on the Edit tool you are in Edit mode able to edit your stack When you click on the Run tool you are instantly taken to Run mode where you can test how the stack runs This easy ability to move between editing and running the program is one of the reasons that allow rapid development time in LiveCode 15 Double click on the Text Entry Field in the Tools Palette to place a Text Entry Field at the center of the card Fig 2 8 Select the field by clicking on it in Edit mode with the mouse and enlarge the field somewhat by pulling on its handles Goodbye cruel world
17. amp amp the extra amp means also add a space A function call doesn t have to have parameters listed between the parentheses but it still needs parentheses For example on mouseUp put myComboj into field 3 end mouseUp function myCombo put field 1 amp amp field 2 into tHolder return tHolder end myCombo Personally for what do which is not very complex find it less confusing and less subject to error using ordinary message handlers rather than functions but different strokes for different folks CHAPTER 14 MATH SCRIPT WORDS add subtract divide multiply Examples add 5 to field calculation If field calculation starts out empty LiveCode assumes it has 0 in it put 12 into tCounter subtract 4 from tCounter 67 divide tCounter by 2 multiply tCounter by 10 It is simpler to just use mathematical symbols and rather than words for many mathematical operations Thus put field calculation 5 into field calculation put tCounter 4 into tCounter put tCounter S into tCounter put tCounter 8 into tCounter As in algebra parentheses are frequently necessary to define the order of the calculation you are seeking to perform For instance 5 4 3 returns 17 LiveCode multiplies 4 3 before adding the 5 as in the standard rules of algebra Perhaps though you really meant to add the 5 and 4 first before multiplyin
18. and another etc and after the user visits all those cards you want to return to the original card Issue the command push card before leaving the original card This flags that card as the card of interest to return to On the last card visited you would write pop card in the script of a Return button This tells LiveCode to return to the original card that was pushed For example a button on a card titled Invoices might contain the script on mouseUp push card go to card Authors end mouseUp On card Authors you might have a button whose script is On mouseUp go to card Royalties end mouseUp on card Royalties you might have a button whose script is on mouseUp pop card end mouseUp The pop card is all you need to get back to the original card Invoices which issued the push card command CHAPTER 9 GENERAL ACTION COMMANDS put Put is the command to put something into a container For instance put chocolate into Message Box put chocolate into message put chocolate into msg put chocolate 45 All of the above do the same thing namely put the word chocolate into the Message Box Since the put command is so common LiveCode accepts the abbreviated forms as well including just put chocolate for putting words into the Message Box put chocolate into field mouth puts the word chocolate into a field titled mouth
19. believe that am a field Now consider these scripts delivered perhaps through the Message Box if word 2 of field 1 is do then beep You get a beep Other scripts if word 1 of field 1 is not do then beep get a beep if field 1 contains believe then beep get a beep if field 1 contains bel then beep get a beep if field 1 contains ieve then beep get a beep if field 1 contains believe that then beep get a beep if field 1 contains believe am then beep no beep The last line does not produce a beep even though the words believe and am are in the field because believe and am are not together as a single string if believe is among the words of field 1 then beep get a beep if believe that is among the chars of field 1 then beep get a beep if believe that is among the words of field 1 then beep no beep because LiveCode in this script line is looking here for a single word not a combination of words or characters 81 pass The word pass in a script enables the scripts message handler to pass through to the next level of the hierarchy For instance say button 1 has the script on mouseUp beep pass mouseUp end mouseUp and that the card on which button 1 resides has the script on mouseUp answer Quiet please end mouseUp Without the line pass mouseUp the button would trap the mouseUp and the mouseUp mess
20. busy The lock cursor command is important before setting the cursor otherwise the cursor will not keep its new shape but immediately revert back to its default arrow shape Once a cursor is locked though the cursor maintains its new appearance even after the script is finished You can have the cursor revert to its normal default through the command unlock cursor or set lockCursor to false The latest versions of LiveCode enable you to use any image as a cursor by referring to it by its ID number E g lock cursor set cursor to 493 Cursor images can also be imported into the Image Library via the LiveCode menu bar under Development Image Library where they will remain for future projects Sometimes for inexplicable reasons you find that the cursor has changed to something not the usual arrow shape To correct this just type set cursor to arrow in the Message Box hotSpot The hotSpot of a cursor is the exact point on the cursor that you want to act as the point that clicks on the target By default that point is 1 1 but you can set it to other points through a script Examples set the hotSpot of image ID 1008 to 5 5 set the hotSpot of image arrow to 6 10 CHAPTER 18 PRINTING 83 When working with a stack you can use the LiveCode menu under File Print Card or File Print Field to do a simple printing of a card or field You can specify in the printing dialog how many copies you wish to print If a c
21. button is visible Example script set the visible of btn 1 to false or hide btn 1 Remember if the visible of a button is false it will not respond to a mouseclick However the button will respond if a message such as dispatch mouseUp to button MyButton is sent from another control The button will also if the reason for the invisibility is that the button s blendlevel is 100 SHOW NAME showName Indicates whether or not you want the button to show or not show its name label AUTOHILITE autoHilite When checked the button will highlight when the mouse is clicked down to indicate that the button is being clicked on SHAREDHILITE sharedHilite If the button is in a group that behaves like a background on different cards and you want it to have the same hilite state on every card check the Shared Hilite box sets the sharedHilite property to true If you want the same button to be able to show different hilite states on different cards leave the Shared Hilite box unchecked Typically you want the sharedHilite of grouped checkboxes and radio buttons to be false so that the user can select different hilite states on different cards DISABLED disabled Grays out the button and renders it non functional The Basic Properties section of the Property Inspector for menu buttons option pulldown combo box and pop up menus looks somewhat different as follows Fig 24 1B MENU ITEMS The place where you list the me
22. card will result in going to the next card Or if the stack script rather than the card script has the mouseUp handler and there are no other mouseUp handlers along the route then clicking on the button will activate the stack s mouseUp handler If the button simply has the handler on mouseUp end mouseUp with no instructions as to what to do when the mouse is up this is still considered a trapping handler provided you do something minimal in the handler like typing a space or clicking Apply in the Script box There are several ways you can apply a script when leaving the Script Editor e Click on the Script Editor s close button to close the Script Editor You will be prompted to answer whether or not you want to save the script e Or select Apply from the Script Editor s File menu or click on the script editor s Apply button which saves the script and then close the Script Editor e Or just press the Enter key twice The first time you press Enter LiveCode applies saves the script but does not close the Script Editor window you might want to leave the Editor window open when confirming that the script works The second time you press Enter the Script Editor window closes Where should one put handlers in the script of the control in the script of the card or in the script of the stack To illustrate consider the following two handlers 37 on mouseUp calculateEverything a made up word end m
23. drawing and paint tools including those for creating vector drawings at the top and those for creating paint bitmap images at the bottom Vector drawings are geometric based on mathematical formulae They are employed by drawing programs like Adobe Illustrator and take up much less memory than paint images Vector drawings are relatively simple Paint bitmap images used by programs like Adobe Photoshop are generally used for relatively detailed images such as photographs with more colors than in a vector illustration 17 The best ways to move a control object from the Tools Palette to a card e Double click on the control s icon in Edit mode This places the control at the center of the card e or hold the mouse down over the icon and drag the icon to wherever you want on the card Every object in LiveCode including the stacks and cards has a Property Inspector and a Script Editor In the Property Inspector window you can configure the properties of the object such as its visibility color size and position text and many other features In the Script Editor you can write a script that performs an action when you interact with the object commonly by left mouse clicking on it Any object including stacks cards buttons fields scrollbars movies bitmap paint images and vector drawings can have its own script The script editor of any object can be opened in a number of ways Either e Right click Control cl
24. find string looks for a specific string that must be in the exact sequence as specified E g find string leadership ring will find leadership rings not boring leadership or even ring leadership find words looks for complete words only Thus find words leadership ring will find leadership ring or ring leadership in any order even separated on different fields of the card but not leaderships ring find whole This form is very specific The words must not only be the whole words but must be in the same sequence Thus find whole leadership ring finds leadership ring but not leadership of the ring 122 find Waldo in field countries tells you to search only in field countries Specifying the field name can save considerable time in the search process when there are fields in the stack with different names result If the search is unsuccessful LiveCode returns the message not found and places it in a container called the result The phrase for an unsuccessful search is result is not empty In other words if the search were successful there would be no complaints coming out of LiveCode the result would be empty However if the search is unsuccessful the result is not empty because LiveCode returns the complaint of not found An example of this in a script would be on mouseUp find leadership if
25. have a special scripting that deals with their lists of words menuPick Say an option menu pulldown menu combo box or pop up menu control on a card has options in its list for choice 1 choice 2 choice 3 The button script might read something like on menuPick pitemName switch pitemName case Choice 1 answer You picked a good one break case Choice 2 answer Not such a good choice break case Choice 3 answer That is even worse than choice 2 break end switch end menuPick on menuPick means When you pick an item from this menu The switch pltemName part is like saying Select from the following options based on the value of pltemName Case Choice 1 means In the case where the p temName you selected is Choice 1 Break signifies to Livecode that you no longer wish to carry out any further instructions for this case 114 end switch like end if ends the entire switch script An alternative menu scripting resembles the f then structures of other scripting situations is on menuPick pltemName if pltemName is choice 1 then answer You picked a good one end if if pltemName is choice 2 then answer Not such a good choice end if if pltemName is choice 3 then answer That is even worse than choice 2 end if end menuPick You could also accomplish the same functionality however with if then statements if you want When dealing with a sig
26. if you haven t already saved the updated changes FILE STANDALONE APPLICATION SETTINGS In building a standalone application LiveCode automatically places its engine directly within the standalone so you do not need a separate LiveCode player to run a standalone When a standalone application is created it is important to note that you cannot later save changes to the standalone s mainstack only to its substacks For that reason many developers only use the mainstack as just one card a simple splash screen that connects with the mainstack s substacks where all the action resides and the saving of data can take place FILE STANDALONE APPL SETTINGS GENERAL SETTINGS Fig 34 3 an Standalone Application Settings for MyMainstack General ZA 5 Ay amp rN B Ea wm A E ig 2 General Stacks Copy Files Mac Windows Linux Web iOS Android Bug Reports Standalone name MyMainstack Don t include exe or app Inclusions Q Search for required inclusions when saving the standalone application Advanced Options 3 Select inclusions for the standalone application Property Profiles Remove all profiles on objects B Set all objects to profile O Include profiles on objects and the profile library Other Master Default build folder Automatically build here Fig 34 3 Standalone Application Settings Standalone name The name you give to the standalone in the standalone settings name box will
27. invoice stack with a different customer address on each card and vaguely remember that one of the customers is from California You might type in the Message Box Find California to find the card that has California on it However what if your own company is in California and has California on every card as part of the company address field The search would be useless since you would find California on every card However if you checked Find Command Ignores in your company s address field LiveCode knows to search all the fields except the one with your company address FIELD CONTENTS Fig 26 2 The Contents box provides an alternate way to type in the contents that you want to show in the field apart from typing in the contents directly into the field This can be useful when the field is locked and you don t want to have to unlock it to alter its contents forgetting that you unlocked the field The Return icon button curved arrow in the Contents section of the field Property Inspector toggles the text in the Contents section to wrap or not wrap around when it reaches the right edge of the Contents box It has no effect on what the user actually sees in the field itself To effect what the user sees regarding wrapping in the field check or uncheck the Don t Wrap box in the Basic Properties section of the field Property Inspector Lists fields are always set to Don t Wrap even if you uncheck the Don t Wra
28. put empty into tHolder the tHolder variable then contains nothing amp amp amp amp and amp amp termed concatenations are used to connect different strings and variables For instance put Congratulations amp gName amp You have passed the exam into field Diploma In the above example gName might be a variable that contains the name of the individual taking the exam let s say Bob Smith Field Diploma will display the words Congratulations Bob Smith You have passed the exam The amp is the connector between the strings and the gName variable Note the space put in between the first comma and its following quotation mark indicating the natural space between the comma and the name You could also write the script without that space as put Congratulations amp amp tName amp You have passed the exam into field Diploma The extra amp just adds a space Sometimes when writing a very long line of script which would awkwardly extend far beyond the right side of the script editor you might want to break up the line in the script to wrap around to the next line But you don t want to confuse LiveCode into thinking that there are two separate lines of script For this you can use the backward slash E g put Congratulations amp amp tName amp You have passed the exam into field Diploma The P tells LiveCode t
29. repeat loop you want to leave out some of the repeats for some reason This is where you would use next repeat For example say you write a repeat structure directing the script to go to each card in the stack and issue a beep on each card except if the card is titled quiet You might invoke next repeat in the script as follows on mouseUp repeat with x 1 to the number of cards go to card x 79 if the short name of card x is quiet then next repeat beep wait 10 end repeat answer I m through beeping end mouseUp The above script will beep on every card it goes to except for the card named quiet since the script directs the repeat to bypass that card and go on to the next repeat in the loop Once the repeat process ends on the last card in the stack the script directs LiveCode to go on with the next step namely announce that it is through beeping exit repeat There can also be times when you want to leave the repeat loop early For this you would use exit repeat For example if you want to go to each card in succession but stop when you come to that card named quiet You might write on mouseUp repeat with x 1 to the number of cards go to card x if the short name of card x is quiet then exit repeat wait 10 beep end repeat answer I m through beeping end mouseUp In the latter script there will be no more beeps once the card quiet is reached The script directs
30. scrollbarLineInc on scrollbarLineDec add 1 to fld data end scrollbarLineDec Clicking the little scrollbar will then increase or decrease the number in field Counter CHAPTER 32 MULTIPLE OBJECTS SELECTED PROPERTY INSPECTOR Fig 32 1 O Multiple objects Align Objects HY b Equalize ISI 0 jot Align g2 EJ o o al i Distribute mo H ae Nudge d Relayer l2 Fig 32 1 Multiple Objects Property Inspector 145 When you select more than one control on a card not grouped and open the Property Inspector you will find that the Property Inspector is now named Multiple Multiple Objects Multiple Buttons Multiple Fields Multiple Images etc as the case may be With this Multiple Property Inspector you can change certain properties of all the controls at once just as you can for individual objects Most importantly there is a section of the Multiple Property Inspectors that is termed Align Objects Fig 32 1 which enables you to align the selected objects as you see fit For instance Place several buttons on a card and experiment with the Align features which are intuitive CHAPTER 33 GROUPS PROPERTY INSPECTOR GROUP BASIC PROPERTIES Fig 33 1 group id 1024 ID 1024 Basic Properties B gt Name group id 1024 Label Disabled Visible Display name M Three D O Opaque i Select grouped controls C Border Border width 2 Horizontal scrollbar Verti
31. select Icons Tool Bar with text names for the icons If you don t see the Icons Bar or its text select VIEW Toolbar Text and VIEW Toolbar Icons from the Menu Bar 2 Name this stack after selecting Object Stack Inspector and typing MyMainstack in the Stack Inspector s Name field Alternatively you can open the stack inspector by clicking on the Inspector icon in the Icon Toolbar And still another way is to right click on the stack and choose Stack Property Inspector 3 Close the Inspector window Note that the name of the stack now appears at the top of the stack in the stack s title bar 4 Save this stack FILE SAVE to your desktop LiveCode will by default use the mainstack s name and save the stack to your desktop as a stack file called MyMainstack livecode for future use in this book 5 Position the stack where you wish on the desktop by holding the mouse down over the stack s title bar and dragging Resize the stack as you want by holding the mouse down and dragging the resize handle at the lower right hand corner of the stack Fig 2 2 A mainstack can have associated substacks Fig 2 1 It is like dividing a book into chapters You can have a long book without chapters but it is often better to organize books with individual chapters Similarly while you could create just one stack with many cards pages in it it is often better organized to create a mainstack with connections to one or more substacks Let s
32. so easily accessible through the tooltip positioned over the various properties in the Property Inspectors You can avoid much scripting by just 39 setting the object properties manually through the Property Inspectors discussed in Section 3 Professional scriptors often try to write script in the briefest terms with a minimal number of lines of code Sometimes though it is better to write a longer script for clarity especially if other people are going to read your script The Comment Sign It is frequently desirable to make notations in the script to remind you and others about what your script is trying to accomplish at various points Scripts can get so complex as to give even their original creator a problem in remembering the reason for what he she did In order to make such comments within the script editor it is important that LiveCode does not attempt to interpret your notes as an actual script Thus wherever there is a double dashed notation LiveCode knows that anything that follows that notation on that line should be ignored and is not a script For example on mouseUp beep The beep is a simple message than can be used in testing scripts end mouseUp In the above script LiveCode ignores the comment The beep is a simple message than can be used in testing scripts since it follows the double dash A pound sign or is also acceptable to signify a forthcoming comment on that line If you want to ap
33. specified you will be asked if you wish to specify one now When you use an image editor such as Adobe Photoshop to alter a referenced image the actual image that is stored outside of LiveCode is changed as well However it you use the image editor to alter an image that is directly imported as a control the original image outside of LiveCode does not change When right clicking on a directly imported image control Control clicking with a one button mouse one of the options from the pulldown menu is Magnify This produces a small pulsating square in the center of the picture and a separate window with a magnification of the pulsating square area The new window can be modified with the paint tools The edges of the pulsating square can be grasped and moved to magnify different areas of the image This works only on directly imported images not referenced images ID id An image can be referred to by its ID number but it is easier to interpret a script when an image is referred to by the name you give it than by a non descriptive ID number To the right of the ID the word Size indicates the amount of memory in bytes that the image takes up when the stack is opened For referenced images the Size is 0 since the image does not reside in the stack ANGLE angle Rotates the image but not referenced ones Even an animated GIF can viewed at a rotated angle GIFs including animated ones can be brought in with their alpha chan
34. the myLastScore of this stack to 120 This declares a custom property termed myLastScore which can be confirmed in the stack s Property Inspector Custom Properties section Fig 11 1 You will here see the Custom Property myLastScore listed along with its content which is 120 You could have used almost any word besides myLastScore which is a made up word Just don t use the letters rev as part of a variable or a custom property name since it might be confused with other words used by the LiveCode engine A custom property should be a single word of which the first character should be either a letter or an underscore _ It must be preceded by the word the when referred to in a script stack MySubstack ID 1005 stack MySubstack ID 1005 SS ra P i E ustom Properties Custom Propertie gt gt Custom Properties 2 a Custom Properties Jae gameLevel gameLevel myLastScore myLastScore 5 alylia Set customkeys 9 2 8 Set customkeys__ p 2 Property Contents gt B Property Contents gt 120 3 Fig 11 1 Custom Properties Fig 11 2 Custom Properties 60 If there is an additional script set the gameLevel of this stack to 3 the Custom Properties of myLastScore and gameLevel are listed in the top field and their values click on each of the custom properties to see their values in the lower field Fig 11 2 This information is remembered even if you
35. the variable is supposed to contain a test score then rather than naming it gHol der it would be more meaningful to name it something like gTestScore A global variable name must start with either a letter or an underscore Do not give a global variable a name that duplicates that of a Custom Property see below since this may confuse LiveCode Variables should not have quotation marks Also do not use a variable name that begins with gRev since those global variable names are reserved for the LiveCode development environment The gRev variables are always there behind the scenes and do not require declaration for them to be used For a list of these global variable environment names click on the Global Variables icon in the Message Box and check the Show LiveCode UI Variables box at the bottom If you want to declare multiple globals in a script separate them with commas E g 59 On mouseUp global gfirstGlobal gsecondglobal gthirdglobal lt do something gt end mouseUp Custom Properties Although global variables have a pretty long term memory they are remembered only while the stack file is open Once the stack file is closed the memory of the global variable is lost How does one get the stack to permanently remember a variable This is very simple For this we use Custom Properties which have complete long term memory as follows Say there is a substack MySubstack which has somewhere in its scripting set
36. timed operation whose duration you know For instance the duration of a movie may be 18500 as indicated in the Quicktime Player s Property Inspector Say you want to display the progress of the movie with your own Progress Bar In the Progress Bar s Basic Properties you would indicate the START value startValue of the bar the start time you would like the progress to begin at which would be 0 in this case as well as the END VALUE endValue of the operation which would be 18500 The CURRENT VALUE thumbPosition is the position of the scrollbar at the present time You would give a command that will start the movie and at the same time start the scroll bar moving You need a script to do this The following is a simple script that you could place in a button on mouseUp play player 1 repeat until the currentTime of player 1 is 18500 set the thumbPosition of scrollbar 1 to the currentTime of player 1 end repeat end mouseUp 143 SLIDER SCROLLBAR PROPERTY INSPECTOR START VALUE startValue Sets the starting number that you want on the slider END VALUE endValue Sets the ending number that you want on the slider CURRENT VALUE thumbPosition sets the current position of the knob of the slider set the thumbPosition of scrollbar Quantity to 40 THUMB SIZE thumbSize set the length of the knob of the slider SHOW VALUE showValue Gives you the option of showing showValue is true or not showing showValue is false
37. to card 3 of this stack or 103 go to the third card of this stack However it is generally best to give the card a name rather than referring it by id number or by position in the stack since a name is more recognizable when you read a script and the card position in the stack can change A name though remains constant For example go to card menu of this stack Important Whenever assigning a name to any object in LiveCode be sure to enclose the name in quotes This is absolutely necessary if the name consists of more than one word However even if the name is a single word in which case the script may work without quotes it is still better to enclose the word in quotes to eliminate incorrect functioning of the script in case the name coincidentally is the same as another key word in the LiveCode vocabulary NUMBER number The sequential number of the card Note If you add delete or reposition cards within the stack this number may change MARKED mark Checking this marks the card flagging it for reference in a script For instance go to the next marked card The word mark can be used as a property or as a command E g set the mark of this card to true a property mark this card a command FIND COMMAND IGNORES dontSearch This refers to any fields on the card Checking the box indicates that when searching for a string of text in the stack the search bypasses the fields on that particular card
38. window Icons to display on ask and answer dialogs Application icon Use icns icon format for Mac ico format for Windows When you use ask or answer dialogs in a stack an icon appears at the left of the dialog window The default is a LiveCode icon In a standalone though the icon is missing unless you supply one here in which ask and answer dialogs will display your custom standalone icon in these dialogs if you wish These don t need to be regular icon files just an image of the correct size stored somewhere in the stack Regular size is 64x64 and small is 32x32 There is more info in the dictionary under gRevSmallApplicon and gRevApplcon FILE STANDALONE APPL SETTINGS WINDOWS SETTINGS Fig 34 6 an Standalone Application Settings for MyMainstack Windows 7A My Ee E A ky AOD zx General Stacks Copy Files Mac Windows Linux Web iOS Android Bug Reports Build for M Windows Icon Application Icon 32 Support Sample Icons genericapp ico Use None Choose y Document Icon 32 Support Sample Icons genericdoc ico Use None Choose Version Information File Description MyMainstack 1 0 0 0 for Windows File Version a 0 0 l 0 Copyright Notice 2012 All rights reserved worldw Product Version 1 0 0 0 Comments Original Filename Legal Trademarks Internal Name Product Name MyMainstack 1 Private Build Company Name Special Build UAC Execution
39. with ends with These phrases specify a position For example a script line that reads if Let s go home begins with Let s then beep there will be a beep sound since Let s go home does begin with Lets if Let s go home ends with home then beep This results in no beep since Let s go home does not end with home but with home includes a period clickLine compare with line value clickText link foundText foundLine foundField Imagine you have a card with a single field named Animal with a text that reads Dinosaurs can be big or small They evolved into birds When you search for Dino e the foundChunk char 1 to 9 of field 1 e the foundText Dinosaurs e the foundLine line 1 of field 1 e the value of the foundLine Dinosaurs can be big or small e the foundField field 1 e the value of the foundField lt all the text in the field gt e the name of the foundField field Animal e the short name of the foundField Animal on linkClicked myText 126 An on linkClicked myText handler means When the text on which you have clicked is a linked word or words MyText is a made up temporary container signifying whatever the linked group is that you clicked on Example on linkClicked MyText go to card MyText end linkClicked If the text you clicked on in a field is a link e g a pair of linked words in a list
40. 24 BUTTON PROPERTY INSPECTOR BUTTON BASIC PROPERTIES O button Option Menu ID 1025 O button Tab Menu ID 1015 1 Basic Properties a Basic Properties bey v Ga e o button Button ID 1004 Name Option Menu Name Tab Menu Basic Properties B fo Label Choice 1 Label gt Tool Tip Tool Tip Name Button Label Type Option i i Visible Disabled Tool tip Access with mouse button Dini n isplay name 1 i Soot Tabs One tab per line Style Push Button Z Visible M Opaque Tab 1 m m Disabled Tab 2 Visible Opaque paq v Display name Tab 3 Vv Show name M Auto hilite Shared hilite Menu Items Lj GX ie Choice 1 z Choice 2 z Chaira gt Focus with keyboard Display 5 z items Mnemonic None B J Use stack panel _ Default button gt _ Disabled Fig 24 1 Button Property Inspectors TOOL TIP too Tip Whatever you type here will show up as a small note when the user moves the end of the cursor over the button in Run Mode It is a very useful way to provide the user with additional information when the cursor hovers over the button It can be more than one line The tooltip can be used as an educational tool to quickly let the user see the script of the underlying control on hovering over the control as in the following script 107 on mouseEnter set the tooltip of the target to the script of the target end mouseEnter VISIBLE visible Indicates whether or not the
41. ATION SETTINGS STACKS section of the LiveCode Menu bar The Custom Properties feature is very useful if say you want to remember a game level a quiz score or any other data after a stack is closed In the above example there are two custom properties gameLevel and myLastScore Together they are part of a set which by default is called customKeys To remove all the custom properties from customKeys you can do it either by clicking on the Custom Keys garbage can or you can do it by script set the customKeys of this stack to empty 61 If you want to create another custom property set named something else besides CustomKeys e g MyNewSet you can do this by clicking on the New Custom Property set icon The name of a custom property set should be a single word of which the first character should be a letter or an underscore _ If you want to add by script a new custom property titled CorrectAnswers to MyNewSet do it in this format set the MyNewSet CorrectAnswers of this stack to 45 This has added a custom property titled CorrectAnswers to the MyNewSet custom property set and also indicates that the number of CorrectAnswers is 45 Although custom properties can be considered a kind of container they really differ somewhat from other containers such as fields and local and global variables In the case of fields and local and global variables one can use put scripts like
42. BROWSER Right click on the stack in the Application Browser and select Delete Substack from the menu that appears go to stack lt gt in stack lt gt Sometimes when you are in stack A and then open livcstack B you don t want to continue to see stack A Rather you d like stack A to close and stack B to take its exact place This can be done with the script go to stack B in stack A 102 If you want to reopen the original stack A without seeing stack B simply type go stack A in stack B Going to a stack opens that stack CHAPTER 23 THE CARD PROPERTY INSPECTOR You ll know it s a card Property Inspector because it says Card on the Property Inspector s title bar which also lists the card s ID number Do not confuse this with the Stack Property Inspector which sometimes pops up unexpectedly CARD BASIC PROPERTIES Fig 23 1 O card id 1002 ID 1002 Basic Properties H b b Name card id 1002 Number E Marked Find command ignores _ Can t delete _ Show border Eil Opaque e Fig 23 1 Card Basic Properties NAME name If you do not name the card its name by default is its id number You can refer to the id number in a script such as go to card id 1002 You could also refer to a card by its card number in the stack For instance if you wanted to go to the third card in the stack you could write go
43. Disabled M Focusable M visible M Focus border _ Share text Tab on Return Don t wrap M Three dimensional C Lock text M Show border Mi Opaque Border width 2 OH Ov Scrollbars Hilites W autoHilite C List behavior M Fixed line height api lae Textheight 14 Firstindent 0 C Find command ignores Layer Mode Static E Behavior p 26 1 Field Basic Properties Fig 26 2 Field Contents Create a new main stack place a text entry field on its card and open its Property Inspector You ll know it s a field Property Inspector because it says so on the field s Property Inspector title bar which also indicates the field s ID number NAME name You can refer to a field in a script by number or its ID but it is recommended that you refer to fields and all other LiveCode objects by name though since names are more descriptive and easier to recognize in a script than ID numbers Also the layered position of a field may change with development and its ID number will change with copying and pasting the field thereby invalidating the script reference to a particular field number or ID As with other objects in LiveCode when referring to a name in a script put it in quotation marks so the name is not confused with other LiveCode words or variables you have defined Also a name enclosed within quotes can be more than one word Without the quotes LiveCode does not recognize a name with
44. Dragging end mouseUp Many other ideas for unique and beautiful interfaces for LiveCode can be found on Scott Rossi s website at http www tactilemedia com CHAPTER 21 SCRIPT DEBUGGING LiveCode in many cases picks up scripting errors and points the programmer immediately to the line of code with the problem Sometime this an error in the scripting syntax At other times the syntax may be correct but the script is not carried out e g the script makes reference to a nonexisting field or card When a script does not work and LiveCode doesn t satisfactorily tell you why there are several ways of approaching the problem 1 Check the script for spelling errors commonly a misspelled variable 2 Check the script for syntax errors such as forgetting to put in an end if or end repeat or beginning or ending quote mark or parenthesis 3 Be sure you are not using a reserved word 3 A quick and dirty way to determine whether a script has performed adequately up to a certain point is to place a temporary test command at a point in the script such as beep put or answer to see if it the test command executes If it does then the script is working up to that point Be sure to include your own special comment sign after the command e g to remind you where the test command is so you can later remove it 4 Be sure you re testing in Run mode rather than Edit mode 5 It may help to retype the script line in question it may
45. ERTY INSPECTOR 141 graphic Rectangle ID 1052 graphic Round Rectangle ID 1053 graphic Oval ID 1054 O graphic Polygon ID 1058 v b E b e Basic Properties a Basic Properties bey Basic Properties ke Basic Properties zs gt gt x gt m gt Name Rectangle Name Round Rectangle Name Oval Name Polygon Tool tip Tool tip Tool tip Too tip T Rectangle sound Oval P Freehand 9 Rectangle Polygon Type Rectangle i Type Rounded Rectangle I Type Oval B Type Polygon ES C Opaque _ Opaque C Opaque C Opaque visible Visible W Visible Visible gt Disabled T Disabled T Disabled gt Disabled C Show name C Show name Z Show nam 2 Show Antialiased Antialiased M Antialiased Antialiased Border Border Border Border Size 1 Size Size 7 Une mfe C Dashed lines thickness J Dashed lines Dashed gt Dashed lines Arrows c l ee StartA End A o ALC eme Point 360 graphic Regular Polygon ID 1055 O graphic Line ID 1056 O graphic Curve ID 1057 Basic Properties z 6 Basic Properties E b Basic Properties B b Marvars gt Sa gt a gt z Draw shapi vertexes Line fs Filled thickness z Name Regular Polygon Name Line Name Curve Poin Too tip Tooltip Tooltip Regular Line Freehand Polygon Curve Type Regular Polygon FP Type Line E Type FreeHand Curve FS C Opaque C Opaque W Opaque Visible Mi Visible Visible Disabled C Disabled _ Disabled C Show name C Show
46. Fig 2 8 3 Type in the Message Box put Goodbye cruel world into field 1 Then press Return The words Goodbye cruel world will appear in the field Thus the Message Box is a quick way to deliver and test messages There are a number of icons along the top of the Message Box Fig 2 7 Two are particularly helpful The one at the very left is for single line commands It enables you test a single line of script After typing a message you press Return to effect the command The icon second from the left enables you to test multiple line commands In multiple line commands your commands go into effect when you press the Enter key not the Return key which is needed to do carriage returns for multiple lines Click on the Multiple line icon of the Message box and type the following put This message is from the multiple line Message Box into field 1 beep Then press the Enter key The words will appear in the field followed by a beep multiple commands You can also issue multiple commands in the single line Message Box by inserting a between the commands Thus put This message is from the single line Message Box into field 1 beep If you can t remember what previous commands you wrote in the single line Message Box LiveCode automatically remembers them Simply press the up key arrow which will scroll you through previous commands and enable you to use them again Be careful not to use obje
47. Group and Place Group provide a way of selectively removing or placing a group on one card without affecting the group on other cards It is helpful to name each group otherwise it may be difficulty to distinguish one group ID from another OBJECT FLIP Flips an image horizontally or vertically whether or not the image is imported as a control or referenced OBJECT ROTATE Rotates an image any degree you want It works only on images imported as a control not on referenced images OBJECT RESHAPE GRAPHIC Places handles on a drawn freehand or freehand polygon vector graphic enabling it to be reshaped OBJECT SEND TO BACK Moves a selected object back to the bottom of the stacking order right against the card itself OBJECT MOVE BACKWARD Moves the selected object back one layer 157 OBJECT MOVE FORWARD Moves the selected object forward one layer OBJECT BRING TO FRONT Moves the selected object to the front layer of all the objects on the card farthest from the card TEXT TEXT PLAIN BOLD ITALIC UNDERLINE STRIKEOUT BOX 3D BOX Changes the style of the selected button or field s text including individual words in the field TEXT LINK Groups words as a link which can be activated as a whole E g if the linked words are computer sales the clickText on clicking on either of these words would be computer sales rather than the individual word computer or sales TEXT SUBSCRIPT SUPERSCRIPT Changes s
48. Level Default B Runs with default UAC access No manifest is included Fig 34 6 Standalone Settings Windows 154 Build for Check if you want a build for Windows Application icon Use ico icon format for Windows icns format for Mac FILE SAVE AS STANDALONE APPLICATION Asks you where to save the standalone You must first indicate under Standalone Application Settings whether you wish to save for Mac OS OSX Windows Linux Web iOS and or Android EDIT EDIT SELECT GROUPED CONTROLS When this is checked clicking on one of the controls in a group does not select the group as a whole but the individual control enabling you to make alterations to the size and position of the particular control You can also remove various controls from the group but cannot add a new control When Select Grouped Controls is unchecked the whole group is selected allowing resizing and positioning of the group as a whole as well as access to the group s Property Inspector and script If you want more flexibility in editing including the ability to add controls to a Group select Edit Group from the Object menu or click on Edit Group in the Icon Tools bar The only disadvantage of Edit Group in editing is that all objects on the card other than the selected group are rendered invisible during the editing process EDIT FIND AND REPLACE Fig 34 7 Fig 34 7 Find and Replace 155 Find Prompts you to type in thi
49. LiveCode including groups cards controls and the stack itself has its own Property Inspector The Property Inspectors for the stack the cards and controls on the cards have many similarities but also a number of pertinent differences Since many of the properties of the different Property Inspectors are similar the question naturally arises as to which Property Inspector gains precedence when there is a conflict between them For instance the Text Formatting menu of the stack Property Inspector sets the text formatting e g text font and font size for the stack as a whole What if the card Text Formatting differs from that of the stack Which Property Inspector wins out Answer The card s text formatting wins out over that of the stack 91 Similarly a field s text formatting has precedence over that of the card Is there anything that has precedence over the field s text formatting Yes Say you have set a field s text formatting font font size and style through the field s Property Inspector but you want to change certain words within the field to a different font font size style or color than the other words within the field Then the LiveCode menubar under TEXT has precedence over the field s overall text formatting in its Property Inspector so you can format individual words differently within a field The upper right hand corner of each Property Inspector contains a lock icon See above Normally the Pr
50. LiveCode Lite Computer Programming made ridiculously on mouseUp repeat 3 haveApint end repeat smile end mouseUp Stephen Goldberg LiveCode Lite Computer Programming Made Ridiculously Simple Stephen Goldberg M D Professor Emeritus University of Miami School of Medicine KO MedMaster Inc Miami FL Copyright 2015 by MedMaster Inc All rights reserved This book is protected by copyright No part of it may be reproduced stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means eletronic mechanical photocopying recording or otherwise without written permission from the copyright owner ISBN 978 1 935660 21 7 Made in the United States of America Published by MedMaster Inc P O Box 640028 Miami FL 33164 CONTENTS SECTION 1 LIVECODE BASICS Preface Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 The Stack Metaphor Kinds of Stacks The Message Box Chapter 3 The Tools Palette Buttons Fields Menu Objects Scrollbars Image and Quicktime Controls Draw and Paint Tools Chapter 4 Groups Chapter 5 The Application Browser Chapter 6 The Message Flow Hierarchy SECTION 2 SCRIPTING Chapter 7 Mouse related Script Words Chapter 8 Navigation Commands Chapter 9 General Action Commands Chapter 10 Keyboard Script Words Chapter 11 Variables and Custom Properties Chapter 12 Me vs The Target Chapter 13 Functions Chapter 14 Math Chapter 15 Constants Chapter 16 If Then Else and Repeat Struct
51. Rate Sets the speed at which you want the movie to play For this to work the actual playing of the movie should be effected through a script rather than through the player controller i e if you only set the Speed through the player controller the movie will still play at its original default speed If you want to see the increased speed you need a script like set the playRate of player myMovie to 2 play player myMovie The default setting for Speed is 1 If Speed is set higher the movie plays faster If set to 0 the movie doesn t play If set to a negative number the movie plays backward 133 LOOP looping When this is checked looping is true the movie will replay continuously restarting at the beginning VOLUME playLoudness sets the volume of the Quicktime player This can be done through the sound icon on the left side of the player controller or set directly within the player Property Inspector through the volume slider Or the loudness can be set via a script set the playLoudness to 50 sets the general speaker volume for all sounds set the playLoudness of player MyMovie to 50 sets the volume of the specific player only as a percentage of the general playLoudness PLAYER TRACKS Fig 28 2 O player Player ID 1050 Tracks H v gt ID Type Start End 1 Video 0 6 Total Tracks 1 al Track is enabled Fig 28 2 Player Tracks TRACKS The TRACK
52. S section of the Quicktime player lists the various tracks on the player indicating their ID numbers and type of track audio or video You can select any of the tracks and turn them on or off using the Track is Enabled enabledTracks checkbox at the bottom of the Property Inspector Example script set the enabledTracks of player My movie to 1 enables only track 1 of the player 134 If you want to use a script to enable more than one track of a player these need to be referred to on different lines Thus set the enabledTracks of player My movie to 2 amp return amp 3 PLAYER CALLBACKS Fig 28 3 Player Callbacks enables you to effect an action at particular times while the movie is running In the Time Index column place the currentTime at which you want the action to occur In the Message column put the command that you would like to take effect at that time player Player ID 1050 O player Player ID 1050 Callbacks HJ v QuickTime VR 3 Pan Time Index Message Tilt Zoom Current node Time Index Message Hotspots ID Type Fig 28 3 Player Callbacks Fig 28 4 Player QuickTime VR PLAYER QUICKTIME VR Fig 28 4 Pan pan Tilt tilt and Zoom zoom By typing numbers into these 3 fields you are not permanently setting the pan horizontal sweep tilt vertical sweep and zoom of the Quicktime VR Rather you are just making a notation of what you would
53. a group as follows CREATING A RADIO BUTTON GROUP 1 Create a new mainstack 2 Place two radio buttons on the card one aside the other 3 In Edit Mode select both of them at once Objects can be selected as a group by clicking on them in sequence with the Shift key down or simply by drawing a marquee around them Each radio button should have its own individual handlebars Fig 4 1 Fig 4 1 Grouping 4 Click on Group in the Icon toolbar or choose OBJECT GROUP SELECTED The radio buttons are now grouped together as shown by a single box around the two buttons rather than separate boxes around each Fig 4 1 25 5 In Run Mode click each button Note that when grouped when one radio button is hilited the other becomes unhilited which is the expected behavior of radio buttons LiveCode does this automatically when you combine radio buttons into a group CREATING A NAVIGATION BUTTON GROUP 1 In Edit mode remove the radio buttons from the card 2 Place two rectangle buttons on the card Position them at the bottom of the card as in Fig 4 2 Button Button Fig 4 2 3 Open the Property Inspector of the Left button 4 Name the Left button Left in the button s Property Inspector s Name field Fig 4 3 Uncheck the showName box in the Basic Properties part of the Left button s Property Inspector Fig 4 3 so that no name appears on the Left button 26 button Left ID 1019
54. ack go to card menu a card can be identified not only by number but by its name go to card id 1006 A card can also be identified by its unique ID number go to stack MySubstack You can navigate between stacks go to card 3 of stack MySubstack You can navigate to a specific card in another stack In general when navigating to a card it is better to identify it by name rather than by card number or ID number because identifying the card by name helps you to clearly identify the card when you review a script Also if you refer to a card by its number and then add or subtract cards from a stack or change their order the number of that card may change and be inappropriately referred to in the script Go back takes you back to the card you were just on So if you had jumped from card 1 to card 5 and then issued the command go back this will take you back to card 1 rather than card 4 which would be the go prev command Navigation is such an important activity in editing that it is very helpful to remember its keyboard equivalents 44 e Command 1 Mac or Control 1 Win e Command 2 Mac or Control 2 Win e Command 3 Mac or Control 3 Win e Command 4 Mac or Control 4 Win goes to the first card goes to the previous card goes to the next card goes to the last card xe Sr a push card pop card Say you have a script that brings you to another card which in turn connects you to another
55. age would not get to the card All that would happen would be a beep However by including the pass mouseUp the message also passes through to the card which results in the Quiet please answer dialog in addition to the beep We also discussed the word pass in our example with trapping keystrokes where we had a field for text input with the following script on keyDown MyKey if MyKey is not a number then answer You must enter a number else pass keyDown end keyDown Without pass keyDown the actual keystroke would be trapped in this handler and the keystroke character would never make it through to the field CHAPTER 17 CURSOR SCRIPTING Cursor The default appearance of the cursor is the crossed arrow when in Edit Mode and the uncrossed arrow when in Run mode The cursor in Run mode by default changes to an I beam when over an unlocked field a field in which it is possible to type One can set the cursor appearance to a number of shapes that are embedded in LiveCode 82 arrow default none no visible cursor busy spinning beachball indicating a process under way watch also indicates a process under way cross used during painting drawing or selecting a small area hand a finger pointing up iBeam the default for selecting text in an unlocked field The cursor appearance is changed in a script by setting it Example lock cursor or set lockCursor to true set cursor to
56. agraphs THE BASIC TABLE FIELD PROPERTY INSPECTOR 121 Maximum editable columns in the Table section sets the number of columns that can be typed in Tab Stops in the Table section sets the horizontal distance between cells in pixels so a higher tab stop number makes a wider cell Cell height is modified by the Text height field in the Basic Properties section Field Scripting find The basic find command finds a string of text in a field that might be anywhere in a stack There are several forms of the command find or find normal find chars find string find word or find words find whole Examples find or find normal finds the word s within any card field in the stack even if parts of the word phrase are in different fields on a card and in any order If a card has a field with the word leader and another field on that card has the word ring then find ring leader will find both these instances It will also find the text if the words on the cards are ringbearer and leadership since it considers the first part of those words as part of the search However find ring will not find the word boring since the ring is not at the beginning of the word find chars does the same as find normal but the characters can be in any part of the word E g find chars ring leader will find a card containing boring in one field and leader in a different field
57. ally occupies the entire space behind the card Fig 7 1 Thus by clicking on an empty area of the card one may inadvertently trigger a background group script An alternative is to not use a background group but rather to just use OBJECT PLACE GROUP to place groups When you make a new card the group will not automatically be placed on the new card as a background group would but the placed group will still have the same functionality SECTION 2 SCRIPTING The original HyperCard language had only about 150 scripting words LiveCode has close to 2000 and continues to expand Rather than attempting to learn all of 38 these words at once many are rarely used the relatively few key scripting words presented here about 150 should suffice for the vast majority of your needs However you often may want to consult the excellent LiveCode dictionary not only for words not covered in this book but for more detailed information about the words described below and related words All Library E Browser Common amp Database Tr Font m Geometry Internet amp Printing Profile Speech sst FRE Video ea XML FA Xm rec I Zip Object Y Language C command K Constant Control structure G Function Keyword Message 2 Object Operator Gp Property Platforms Q card Operating Systems Salted k Type Syntax card object card keyword cardIDs property get the cardiDs o
58. ard has a scrolling field and you need to scroll to see all the text Print Card will only reveal the text that is visible at the time of printing Hence the value of revPrintText in a standalone it prints the entire contents of the field RevPrintText To use a script to print all the contents of a scrolling field titled MyData revPrintText field MyData Also revPrintText prints other things besides fields revPrintText Hello there revPrintText tmyVariable print If you use scripting to ask for a printing of a card or stack use these scripts in the following circumstances To print the entire stack print all cards or print this stack To print a single card print this card print card 3 print marked cards prints those card that have been marked i e the marked box in the card Property Inspector is checked answer page setup open printing with dialog Answer page setup brings up the FILE Page Setup box enabling you to set the orientation and scale of the printing Open printing with dialog on Macintosh on Windows use answer printer enables you to select how many copies of a stack or card to print and sets up how many cards to print per page on mouseUp 84 answer page setup open printing with dialog print this stack or print this card close printing end mouseUp The close printing part is necessary on Mac because it tells LiveCode to actually go ahead with the printing On Wi
59. are dehilited It s best to leave this checked for after all that is what radio buttons are for The default radioBehavior is true Note also that when a radio button is part of a group that is set as a background you want to make clear whether or not clicking on a radio button on one card will simultaneously hilite the same button on all the other cards containing the group Usually you want the radio buttons on each card to act independently of the other cards In that case keep the each radio button s Shared Hilite box unchecked the default state in the radio button s Basic Properties section FIND COMMAND IGNORES dontSearch When checked this instructs LiveCode to skip any fields in this group when find commands are issued BEHAVE LIKE A BACKGROUND backgroundBehavior A very important feature If this is checked then anytime you create a new card the group will automatically be placed on the new card SECTION 4 THE MENU BARS CHAPTER 34 THE LIVECODE MENU BAR This chapter covers only key selected features of the LiveCode Menu Bar Items that are obvious already covered well known of lesser interest or are beyond the scope of this book are not included LIVECODE 147 LIVECODE PREFERENCES GENERAL Property labels are Let s you choose whether you want the words for properties in the Property Inspectors to be descriptive the default or to be the actual script words used for the properties as seen with
60. are your eyes if it is empty then exit mouseUp Nothing happens if the dialog text box is empty i e the user did not type any text put it puts what the user typed into the Message Box Or you can do something else with it that is more interesting end mouseUp By default there are just an OK button and a Cancel button in ask dialog boxes When you click on these the words OK or Cancel are not placed into it as would be the case for the answer dialog Rather the contents of the ask dialog box text field are placed into it once OK is clicked If Cancel is clicked ask dialogs unlike answer dialogs interpret this as stopping and exiting the script right there The ask command dialog box field doesn t have to be empty You can indicate a default text for the field on mouseUp ask How many beers would you like to order with 1 if it is empty then exit mouseUp Nothing will happen if the dialog text box is empty put it puts 1 into the Message Box end mouseUp In the latter script the user can order just the 1 beer without having to type in anything or type in how many to order A modification of ask is ask password as in ask password What is your security code The above script brings up a dialog box in which the user s typing appears in asterisks for privacy and can be used as a password See the LiveCode dictionary for variations on this
61. articular time where the movie is at E g put the currentTime of player myMovie into msg Look at the Time currentTime field for your own information about where the movie is in time For instance if you want parts of a movie to start or stop playing at particular points in time you first want to know what those times should be to create the Start or End times In that case a Use the controller to find the points in the movie that you would like to make your Start startTime and End endTime times The Time currentTime field will show you those times b Put this information in the Start or End time fields Script example set the startTime of player My movie to 200 set the endTime of player MyMovie to 300 However in order for the End and Start features to work you must first check the Play Selection Only playSelection box Otherwise the entire movie will play If you want some event to occur at some particular time within the movie move the controller slider to that point and note the currentTime which can then be used in a script or in a Callback see below HILITE SELECTION showSelection The default is unchecked showSelection is false When checked and Play Selection Only is also checked users can set their own start and end times for the movie by Shift dragging the player s thumb to see the start and end times as indicated by a dark gray region within the controller SPEED play
62. at coordinate position 100 150 which is the mouseLoc namely mouseH mouseV the mouse Just saying the mouse tells LiveCode to let you know the state of the mouse whether up or down the mouseClick The mouseClick tells you whether or not the mouse has been clicked the mouseClick is true Examples on mouseUp wait until the mouseClick i e don t do anything until the mouse has been clicked beep end mouseUp In the above script you can wait as long as you want but the beep won t come until you click the mouse somewhere on the card CHAPTER 8 NAVIGATION COMMANDS go The go command tells LiveCode to go somewhere Go next means to go to the next card in the stack Examples of equivalent scripts 43 go to the next card of this stack go to the next card go to next card go next card go next cd go next LiveCode assumes all of the above scripts mean go to the next card of this stack Thus if you are on card 2 of a 5 card stack go next will take you to card 3 Note that the script word the is optional here and used just to make the script more English like You can also eliminate the word to for navigation Card can be abbreviated cd Other examples go previous or go prev takes you to the previous card in the stack If you are on card 2 this command will take you to card 1 go to card 5 of this stack You can identify a card by its number in this case card number 5 in the st
63. avigate from one card to another or communicate from a card to outside sources such as other stacks or the Internet Open LiveCode by clicking on the LiveCode application icon You don t immediately see any stacks just a Menu Bar Fig 2 2 an Icon Tool Bar and a Tools Palette with icons of the kinds of things you can put on a card such as buttons fields images and movies Fig 2 2 Actually you may first see a tutorial Get Started Center window which automatically opens unless you opt to turn this feature off by unchecking the Show this screen on Startup box at the lower left corner of the Start Center window To reshow this Help window select HELP START CENTER _ LiveCode File Edit Tools Object Text Development View Window Help MENU BAR SS all wa 2 BB A A icon TOOL BAR stack Mysu 10 1002 TOOLS PALETTE Property inspector fischer m 6 L Run Browse tool y m Edit Pointer tool eoe MyMainStack DON Sack se amp Buttons 5 i Feus 3C Ta f Menus mo 3 _ Scrollbars Quicktime Player STACK with 1 card visible Image area Draw tools A F df A Paint tools le sebe Resize handle Message Box Single Line a EC ICCI E r EE gt aE MESSAGE BOX Fig 2 2 1 From the Menu Bar select File New Mainstack This creates a stack called a main stack that contains a single card Fig 2 2 Under the Menu Bar there is also a quick
64. aving to rely on the put the result line It is as if the function in the first handler is saying Do this and get the result back to me immediately so that my script handler doesn t have to request the result separately This may be no big deal for simple scripts but can avoid confusion in larger more complex scripts Functions don t have to be calculations and their parameters don t have to be numbers they can be variables that contain letters or words For instance again a simplistic example for visualization Say there is a field Over the Cliff and another field Name that has two lines that read Dover Eileen First Hugo Consider the following button script on mouseUp put item 1 of line 2 of field overthecliff into tname1 put item 2 of line 2 of field overthecliff into thame2 put arrangeName tname1 tname2 into field Over the Cliff end mouseUp and its corresponding stack function script which can be called into play 66 regardless of what tnamel and tname2 are function arrangeName firstName secondName put secondName amp amp firstName into fullName return fullName end arrangeName Field Name will then read Hugo First not of earth shattering use but you can imagination the possibility using this scripting method for much more complex and helpful purposes The amp in the above script is called a concatenation and simply means plus the following In
65. b Return or Enter key is pressed provided the field is unlocked and its Focusable traversalOn quality is checked SCROLLBARS hScrol Bar vScrollBar Scrollbars H and V allow you to add a horizontal or vertical scrollbar to the field which help when the text extends beyond the boundary of the field AUTOHILITE autoHilite When checked the text that the user selects within a field is highlighted as it would be with a highlighter pen provided the field s traversalOn Focusable is also on LIST BEHAVIOR has the subcategories Multiline Non contiguous and Click to Toggle When List Behavior is checked but none of the latter three are checked the line the user clicks on in a locked field is hilited and selected as a whole as it does in any list field but the user cannot hilite more than one line at a time This feature is useful in that the script for the field may have directions to do something when the line as a whole is clicked When Multiline is selected the user can hilite more than one line by either dragging across the lines or selecting one line with the Shift Key and then selecting another with the Shift Key still down By also checking Non contiguous you can select non contiguous lines by Command clicking Mac or Control clicking Windows and Unix So you can independently select say the first and 4 lines without those in between When Click to toggle is checked clicking on a line alternately selects or deselec
66. be the name applied to the Mac and Windows standalone 151 applications as well as to the folder that contains the Mac and Windows standalone folders If you don t specify a standalone name the mainstack s name will be used by default Fig 34 3 FILE STANDALONE APPL SETTINGS STACKS SETTINGS Fig 34 4 An Standalone Application Settings for MyMainstack Stacks 5 Oo A K amp A EEA General Stacks Copy Files Mac Windows Linux Web iOS Android Bug Reports Stack files in the application MyTutorial lc Add Stack File Remove Stack File Advanced Options For the selected stack file _ Move substacks into individual stackfiles Stacks in the selected stack file MyMainstack MySubstack For the selected stack _ Set destroyStack property to true _ Encrypt with password Fig 34 4 Standalone Settings Stacks Move substacks into individual stackfiles Important Livecode normally stores the mainstack and all substacks in a single file Check this box to insure that changes made by the user in the standalone can be saved As previously mentioned in a standalone changes cannot be saved in the mainstack To insure that changes can be saved it is important that anything that intended for the user to change in the standalone e g text in a text field is placed in a substack and the substacks are saved as individual files Use the mainstack as a simple single card which does not change and whi
67. ble Don t dither Preload in memory Angle 0 WI Show Border C Three D Border width Quality normal i GIF Frame 1 2 of 0 9 Repeat 0 v times __ Repeat in reverse Cursor Hotspot Layer Mode Static Behavior Fig 27 1 Image Basic Properties To import images as a referenced control either A create an Image Area object through the LiveCode menu bar File New Referenced Control Image File or B move an Image Area object from the Tools Palette onto the card Open the Image Area Property Inspector to Basic Properties and select the Source folder icon It will prompt you to browse to find your chosen picture of reference The Property Inspector for an image is the same whether or not the image is directly imported or referenced The Source field however will of course be empty when the image is directly imported since the image resides in the stack rather than at a distant location Next to the source folder icon in the image Property Inspector is a pencil icon This is useful in that it connects you with your image editor e g Photoshop to make on the spot alterations to your image You can also reach your image 129 editor by Right clicking on the image Control click with a one button mouse and selecting Launch Editor from the pop up menu The editor used is the image editor specified in the General panel of the LiveCode preferences If an image editor has not been
68. cal scrollbar m ry a Scrollbar width 20 Hilite one radio button at a time Mi Contents focus with keyboard C Arrow keys navigate contents Tab key skips to next group _ Find command ignores C Can t delete C Shared group C Behave like a background Auto place on new cards and put after card in message path Bounding Rect Layer Mode Static E Behavior Fig 33 1 Groups Property Inspector DISPLAY NAME showName Shows the name of the group in small letters to 146 the upper left of the group HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL SCROLLBARS hScrollbar vScrollbar Yes you can put a scrollbar on a group as a whole and scroll the entire group with all its buttons and what ever else you want to include in the group Scroll bars on text fields are quite familiar But what if you want to create a group that contains buttons or other objects that you want to scroll as a whole not just text You can do this by aligning the objects vertically or horizontally grouping them and adding a vertical or horizontal scrollbar to the group To prevent the dimensions of the group from automatically resizing when moving back and forth between cards be sure to check off the Lock Size and Position box in the Size and Position section of the group Property Inspector HILITE ONE RADIO BUTTON AT A TIME radioBehavior Checking this feature insures that anytime one radio button in a group is hilited the others
69. card E g hide this stack show this stack hide button start show btn start show fld info show image rainbow hide me hides whatever object you clicked on hide menubar hides the LiveCode menu bar at the top of the screen Note the following common optional abbreviations 47 button btn field fld card cd cr carriage return which is the same as return send The word send alternatively dispatch is used to send a message that triggers a handler in a different object For instance suppose there is a button titled MyName which contains the script on mouseUp beep end mouse and there is another button titled Transmitter that has the script on mouseUp send mouseUp to btn MyName or dispatch mouseUp to btn MyName end mouseUp If you click on button Transmitter it will send a mouseUp message to button MyName and there will be a beep quit Simply writing quit suffices to close the entire stack file or standalone after the standalone has been created For example on mouseUp quit end mouseUp Simple Yes answer vs ask The answer command takes the form answer lt question gt with lt reply1 gt or lt reply2 gt or lt reply3 gt or lt reply4 gt Up to 7 replies are allowed For instance answer What color are your eyes with Brown or Blue or Green or Cancel Try writing the abov
70. ce a text entry field in the center of the card simply to identify the card 5 Create a new card Object New Card Note that this card will be blank 6 While on this second card select from the Menu Bar Object Place Group Navigation This will place the group on the second card too In Run Mode note that clicking on either the left or right arrows will move you from one card to the other moving either back or forward No matter where you place the group on one card it will appear in the same place on the other card Say you want to make many cards now all with the same Navigation group You don t have to go through the tedium of creating blank cards and then placing the Navigation group on each This can be done automatically as follows 1 Open the Navigation group s Property Inspector Be sure that the box labeled Behave Like a BackGround Fig 4 8 is checked Now create a new card Object New Card The new card will automatically contain the Navigation group 30 group Navigation ID 1022 Basic Properties req Label Disabled M Visible Display name M Three D C Opaque M Select grouped controls O Border Border width 2 Horizontal scrollbar _ Vertical scrollbar Scrollbar width 20 M Hilite one radio button at a time M Contents focus with keyboard C Arrow keys navigate contents Tab key skips to next group C Find command ignores C Can t delete M Behave like a background Auto p
71. ch connects with the substacks Checking this box insures that changes can be made by the user in the standalone The icon for a Macintosh standalone is the only file you see i e the substacks are hidden However Windows shows not only the application icon but also each substack To avoid confusion with which icon to click on to open the program you may want also check off Rename stackfiles generically which 152 automatically renames the substacks with a boring name so as not to entice the user to click on them This is not necessary for Mac since Mac substacks are hidden from view in the standalone You can further isolate the substacks from the main application icon by checking off Create folder for stackfiles which places the substacks in a separate folder where they are not immediately next to the main application icon One more thing one has to be done to insure that changes are saved ina standalone There has to be a script in the substack indicating that the substack should be saved prior to quitting For instance the substack could have as part of its stack script on closeStack save this stack end closeStack Encrypt with password After creating a standalone the Windows version s stacks are visible in the application s folder on the Macintosh they are located within the application package To prevent Windows users who have LiveCode from viewing the script in these stacks pick the substack s you wan
72. ck Size and Position checkbox locks the position and size of the image so that it does not move around or resize inadvertently during development When the box is checked the image cannot be moved with the mouse However it can still be moved with the arrow keys when selected in Edit mode The Lock Size and Position checkbox is particularly important in dealing with imported images and movies If you try to resize a picture or movie on a card and then go back and forth from another card you will find to your consternation that the picture and movie resize to their original dimensions However this is prevented when Lock Size and Position is checked CHAPTER 28 THE QUICKTIME PLAYER PROPERTY INSPECTOR This information is mainly relevant to people using LiveCode 5 5 3 or earlier with Quicktime 7 0 or earlier which still can be used to create movies and QTVRs using the Quicktime player Quicktime movies and Quicktime VR though are currently undergoing changes by Apple and LiveCode so this information may need to be updated in the near future for later versions of Quicktime and LiveCode The Player object can reference Quicktime movies MPEGs Quicktime panoramas animated GIFs and even PDFs It can also reference sounds commonly in AIF or WAV formats PLAYER BASIC PROPERTIES Fig 28 1 131 player Player ID 1010 Basic Properties B g gt Name Player Source esources Sample mov Tool tip C Buffer i Vis
73. ck both have a white background let s distinguish their appearance 1 Open MySubstack s card Property Inspector by right clicking on the MySubstack card or just double clicking on the card and choose Card Property Inspector Name the card Green card 2 Choose Colors amp Patterns Fig 2 4 from the Card Inspector s pulldown menu at the top of the Property Inspector The row labeled Background has two boxes the left one for patterns and the right one for colors Click on the right hand box and select a green color Click OK MySubstack s card is now colored green to distinguish it from the white MyMainstack stack MySubstack ID 1004 Colors amp Patterns B b gt Patterns Colors Foreground 4 Clear Background Clear Hilite _ Clear _ Border Clear Top Clear Bottom Clear Shadow Clear Focus Clear Link Properties Normal Click Visited Underline Clear All Fig 2 4 Colors and Patterns Note If you move the mouse cursor over almost any of the words or symbols in a Property Inspector a tiny note generally appears called a tooltip For instance just positioning the mouse over the color box that you just clicked in the Property Inspector reveals the tooltip backgroundColor which can be used in a script There will be more about scripting later but as a quick example if you were to write as a script set the backgroundColor of this card to gree
74. close the stack You can create as many custom properties as you wish They don t have to be put into the Main Stack s Property Inspector They can be placed in a substack s Property Inspector or in the Property Inspectors of any of the objects in the main stack or substacks a tremendous number of storage rooms If you wish custom property names can be preceded by a c e g cMyLastScore to remember that you re talking about a custom property IMPORTANTI If you create a standalone application information that a user enters into the standalone cannot be saved to its mainstack Substacks though can save information Therefore it is better to use a substack as the place for any changes the user might want to make within a standalone For that reason many developers simply prepare the mainstack as a single card that connects to its substacks without putting any features in the mainstack that would require saving on using the standalone In addition to placing custom properties in a substack rather than in the mainstack one needs to do two other things to insure that changes made to a standalone e g typing in a field creating new values for a custom property are remembered 1 The script of the standalone s substack should contain the line save this stack prior to closing so that the stack is indeed saved 2 The programmer should check the box titled Move substacks into individual stackfiles in the FILE STANDALONE APPLIC
75. close box Click Yes when prompted if you want to keep the change in the script Let s test the script 1 Select the Run Tool in the Tools Palette 2 Click on button Go To MySubstack The program will open card 1 green of stack MySubstack Now we will create a button to return to stack MyMainstack 1 With the Edit Tool selected click on the first card green of MySubStack to make it the topmost and active stack Double click on the Rectangle button in the Tools Palette to place the Rectangle button in the center of the green card 2 Name the button GoToMyMainstack with the label Go To My Main Stack Close the Property Inspector 20 3 Enlarge the button to see the entire label 4 Edit the button s script to read on mouseUp go to stack MyMainstack end mouseUp 5 After applying the script and closing the Script Editor select the Run Tool in the Tools Palette and click on button Go To My Main stack This will navigate to stack MyMainstack 6 Save your work for future reference Quit LiveCode you already knew these things please accept my apologies for walking you through all these steps Buttons Open LiveCode and create a new mainstack Examine the Tools Palette by placing the cursor over each button type Fig 2 2 The tooltip will indicate each button s type Push button A rounded button in Macintosh square on Windows Default button A button that will act without us
76. closeCard indicates what should be done while the card is closing On openCard indicates what should be done as soon as a card is open and visible For instance in a 2 card stack if you have this script in card 1 on closeCard answer I m card 1 and I m sorry to see you leave end closeCard then the above message will appear just before you leave card 1 If you put the following in the script of card 2 on openCard answer I m card 2 Welcome end openCard then the message will appear after card 2 is open PreopenCard though acts behind the scenes before the card is open PreopenCard is useful since you might want to do some shuffling around of objects on the card before the card is actually seen mark card unmark card Marking a card either manually in the Basic Properties of a card s Property Inspector or by script flags it for future reference in a script Examples mark this card unmark this card go to next marked card get the number of marked cards tells you how many cards in the stack have been marked mark cards where field Customer name contains Arthur lockMessages lock messages 106 Locking messages enables you to navigate to other cards quickly by bypassing any openCard closeCard or openStack messages they may have Examples set lockMessages to true or lock messages When a handler is no longer executing IockMessages automatically reverts to false CHAPTER
77. contain a hidden character particularly if it was copied from a word processing document 6 Consider an alternative work around script have found the above approach sufficient for my own projects but for much longer and complex scripts LiveCode provides a more professional way of stepping through and examining the script line by line This will not be discussed here but a description of LiveCode s debugging process may be found in the LiveCode User Manual 90 SECTION 3 PROPERTY INSPECTORS Property Inspectors enable the modification of many properties of the stack card and controls on the card without scripting Open LiveCode create a new Main Stack and take a look at the pulldown menu of the card Property Inspector You see a number of categories in which you can change the properties of the card see below Basic Properties Colors and Patterns Custom Properties Geometry Blending Property Profiles Size and Position and Text Formatting O card id 1002 ID 1002 O card id 1002 ID 1002 Inspector locked e Inspector unlocked 5 Basic Properties HY Basic Properties H S amp Colors amp Patterns Custom Properties Name card id 1002 Geometry e Number fa 3 Blending Property Profiles E Marked Size amp Position _ Find command ignores Text Formatting lores Can t delete Er roerere _ Show border Show border M Opaque M Opaque v M Card Basic Properties Every object in
78. create a substack 1 Select File New Substack of MyMainstack 2 Right click on this substack select Stack Property Inspector 3 Name this substack MySubstack and close the stack s Inspector window 4 Save your work File Save and on the desktop change your desktop file name from MyMainstack livecode to MyTutorial livecode or MyTutorial rev if you are using an older version of LiveCode which was called Runtime Revolution Note that although the desktop file now is titled MyTutorial livecode the Mainstack is still titled MyMainstack and the substack is still called MySubstack 5 Quit LiveCode LIVECODE QUIT 6 Now open MyTutorial livecode MyTutorial rev by double clicking on its icon Uh Oh You only see one stack MyMainstack Where is MySubstack Did it disappear Actually it is by default closed only a mainstack opens when a LiveCode file is opened Confirm that stack MySubstack is really there as follows 1 Select Tools Application Browser Fig 2 3 10 ANA Application Browser Name Num of w g MyMainstack 0 A card id 1002 1 0 AudioClips VideoClips gt MySubstack 0 Fig 2 3 Application Browser 2 The Application Browser lists all the stacks and substacks in the stack file of MyTutorial livecode in this case MyMainstack and MySubstack 3 Double click on the word MySubstack in the Application Browser MySubstack opens so it is really there Since both MyMainstack and MySubsta
79. ctice to return to the default delimiter the comma mid handler once you are finished with what you want to do with your special delimiter in case you do other things in the handler that require the default A word cannot contain items Therefore item 2 of word a b c returns an error message item 2 of a b c returns b before after into Back to the same text Apple sauce sun dried tomatoes corn on the cob or off the cob Now type into the message box put Bread before field MyField This inserts the word Bread at the beginning of the line so that the line reads Bread Apple sauce sun dried tomatoes corn on the cob or off the cob put wine after field MyField would insert wine as the last item listed put Let s go home into field MyField would replace everything in the field with the words Let s go home When you put something into something else in LiveCode whether it is a field or a variable everything in that field or variable is replaced by what you put in put 3000 into tAmount puts 3000 into the variable tAmount replacing everything that is in tAmount 125 put Harold amp return amp Kate into field Names this inserts 2 lines one saying Harold and the other Kate into a field you had named Names The return part of the script inserts a carriage return thereby putting Kate on a new line begins
80. ction of the Property Inspector BUTTON GRAPHIC EFFECTS Fig 24 4 110 aA button Button ID 1004 Graphic Effects B v ia v Drop Shadow _ Inner Shadow Outer Glow Inner Glow Color Overlay Blend Mode Multiply B Opacity j 182 Filter Box 2 Passes B Spread O 79 Size 27 Distance Q 21 Angle p 124 vi Knockout Fig 24 4 Button Graphic Effects Button graphic effects allow for changes in the appearance of buttons through alteration of a number of features of shadows and glow and other graphic variables Perhaps the best way to learn about these is to explore the various sliders and checkboxes in this part of the button Property Inspector BUTTON BLENDING Fig 24 5 BLEND LEVEL blendLevel Note how sliding the Blend Level Bar alters the transparency of the button You can make the button partially or fully transparent if you wish The button s script works on clicking with the mouse even if the button is fully transparent INK ink The best way to demonstrate blending is by trying out the various ink options which will alter the coloring of the object you are working with particularly when overlying another object The effects are much more dramatic when applied to a color image You may wish to alter the blend for artistic reasons or when using an image as a button alter the hilite of the image through scripting when the mouse is applied to it t
81. ctionable language in your command as someone using your stack will be able to find them using the up arrow Quit LiveCode There is no need to save your work unless you want to pin it up on the refrigerator CHAPTER 3 THE TOOLS PALETTE Open the stack file MyTutorial livecode MyTutorial rev You should see a white Mainstack card and the Tools Palette The Tools Palette Fig 2 2 contains icons of the various controls also called objects that can be placed on a card Actually the term objects is a little broader than controls as objects includes cards and stacks as well as controls But we will not fuss over the difference If the tools palette is not visible select Tools Tools Palette By holding the mouse over any of the Tools Palette icons the name of the tool appears As you can see the tools include a variety of buttons fields menu objects scrollbars an image area control Quicktime player and a set of drawing and paint tools Fig 2 2 As mentioned the top of the Tools Palette contains an arrow on the left called the Run browse tool and a hatched arrow on the right the Edit tool pointer tool When you click on the Edit tool you are in Edit mode able to edit your stack When you click on the Run tool you are instantly taken to Run mode where you can test how the stack runs At the bottom of the Tools Palette you may have to click on the small arrow on the right to open it are the
82. ctly import include Image file Can import JPEG PNG BMP GIF can be animated GIF or PICT among other less used formats PICT however can only be used on Macintosh LiveCode will ask you if you want to convert the PICT image to a PNG Snapshot Takes a snapshot of any area of the screen outside LiveCode and places it on the card When you select Snapshot LiveCode is hidden so you are restricted to selecting the screenshot of areas outside LiveCode However you can still use a script to capture a screen shot of a card import snapshot from rect the rect of this stack Right clicking on the image will bring up the option of entering your image editor where you can modify the image e g making it a thumbnail image Audio file Can be AIF WAV or AU Video file Imports as videoClips Quicktime and AVI movies as well as mp4 movies which take up less space than Quicktime mov movies It is more reliable however to reference movies than to import them Image of selected object Places on the card an image of any selected object on the card All images in folder Takes all the images in a selected folder and places them on the card All audio files in folder Takes all the audio files in a selected folder and places them in the Application Browser under AudioClips FILE NEW REFERENCED CONTROL Fig 34 2 149 File Edit Tools Object Text Devi New Mainstack New Substack of MyMainstac
83. cture Examples repeat with repeat for each repeat with x 1 to the number of lines in field 1 put line x of field 1 amp return after tLineHolder end repeat put tLineHolder The above script does not specifically state the number of times to carry out the commands because the scriptor may not know the number of lines in field 1 when writing the script The script requests that LiveCode determine the number of lines in field 1 and then carry out the directions for each line in succession putting the information line by line into the variable tLineHolder and then putting tLineHolder into the Message Box Repeat for each enables a script to run faster through a list than repeat with E g repeat for each line x in field 1 put x amp return after tLineHolder end repeat put tLineHolder Repeat with and repeat for each are even faster if you do not work directly with the lines in the field but first put the contents of the field into a variable E g put field 1 into tFieldList repeat for each line x in tFieldList put x amp return after tLineHolder end repeat put tLineHolder Sometimes you have a stack with many cards and you want the script to go to each card in succession to extract certain information prepare it as a list and then do something with the compiled list While you could use the format push card repeat with x 3 to the number of cards go to card x put field 1 of card x amp return after tInfoHolde
84. d and on returninfield when written as handlers in an unlocked field s script tells LiveCode what to do when the Enter key or Return key is pressed while typing in the field ReturninField and enterinField are very useful when you have a series of fields in which you want to successively move from one field to the next after pressing Return or Enter on return nField this script would be in field 1 select after text of field 2 puts an insertion point after the text in field 2 after the return key is pressed end returnInField CHAPTER 27 THE IMAGE PROPERTY INSPECTOR There are two ways to bring an image into your stack The first is direct importing it as a control that is incorporated into the stack s memory The other way is to keep the image outside the stack and to reference it from within an Image Area Property Inspector The direct import way has the advantage in that you don t have to keep track of where the image is outside the stack It is always a part of the stack The disadvantage is that it takes up a certain amount of memory when the stack is loaded The greater the number of imported images the greater the memory requirements of the stack and the longer it takes for the stack to load since all directly imported images are loaded at once IMAGE BASIC PROPERTIES Fig 27 1 128 image Image ID 1008 Basic Properties B gt Name Image Source ID 1008 Tool tip W Visi
85. der 51 wait In writing several lines of script within a handler each line represents a different task for LiveCode to carry out as fast as it can If you want a time delay at some point in the handler you can use the wait command on mouseUp put Listen to this sound into field Listen wait 3 seconds beep end mouseUp The beep will occur after a 3 second delay You can also portray small time intervals as ticks A tick is 1 60 of a second A millisecond is 1 1000 of a second E g wait 10 ticks or just wait 10 A difficulty with the wait command is that no other script will run while the waiting occurs For instance suppose you wish there to be a 5 second delay after a user clicks on a button before the command myCommand is executed You could then have in the script of the button wait 5 seconds myCommand However using this construction means that clicking on any other buttons in that 5 second interval will have no effect until those five seconds are up A way around the problem is to use the wait with messages format E g in the button script on mouseUp wait 5 seconds with messages mCommand end mouseUp The user can then effectively click on other buttons or perform other actions in the 5 second interval edit script Edit script opens up the Script Editor of a stack card or object on a card Examples 52 Edit the script of this card Edit script of this stack Edit script of btn 1
86. der To make your own plugin create a stack that you would like to use as a plugin and place it in the LiveCode Plugins folder Then when you open LiveCode the stack the name you gave it in the stack s Property Inspector will open by selecting it from the Development Plugins pulldown menu If you want your plugin to open automatically just by opening LiveCode select Development Plugins Plugin Settings Fig 34 9 from the LiveCode Menu bar select your plugin and choose LiveCode Starts Up By default the plugin stack opens as a palette You have options within the Plugin Settings dialog box to open it as a palette modeless dialog box modal dialog box or invisible 159 e O Plugin Settings Plugin rev_tm_Wood_MR_1 gt Open plugin when LiveCode starts up Send messages to plugin e Chosen from Plugins menu revCloseStack 3 revEditScript revIDChanged revMouseMove revMoveControl Open as revNameChanged revNewToo l revPreOpenCard C Palette revPreOpenStack E revResizeControl Modal dialog box revResizeStack revResumeStack revSaveStackRequest revSelectedObjectChanged revSelectionChanged revShutdown LiveCode quits Modeless dialog box Invisible Fig 34 9 Plugin Settings Apart from opening the plugin stack you need to do one more thing To actually use plugin stack MyPluginStack you need to issue the command start using stack MyPluginStack The start using command is necessar
87. dow to see this controls on each card are listed the Green Card for instance should have one a button The sole card of stack MyMainstack has a GoMySubstack button that can be seen in the right side screen of the Application Browser At any given time there are many other stacks that are working in the background by default as part of the LiveCode system environment You can see these in the Application Browser by selecting VIEW LIVECODE UI ELEMENTS IN LISTS Yes the whole development environment of LiveCode itself is written in Livecode However unless you plan on rewriting parts of this interface not for the faint of heart it is better to leave this option unselected Quit LiveCode No need to save CHAPTER 6 THE MESSAGE FLOW HIERARCHY When the mouse cursor acts on a button it sends a variety of messages to the button including mouseDown When the mouse button is pressed down mouseUp When the mouse is released while still over the button mouseEnter When the mouse enters the boundaries of the button mouseLeave When the mouse has left the button mouseRelease When the mouse is released while the cursor is outside the button mouseMove When the mouse is moving within the button s boundaries after entering the button 34 mousestilldown Actions that occur continuously while the mouse is down To respond to one of these messages you would typically place a message handler in the button s script
88. dy contains the words on mouseUp and end mouseUp to indicate the usual conditions for the script to be enacted when the mouse is Up and ended end mouseUp Apply p C mouseUp button Left on mouseUp 2 go previous end mouseUp 9 Edit the script to read 28 on mouseUp go previous end mouseUp and apply the script 10 Name the other button Right uncheck its showName box and select a right pointing arrow symbol Have the script of the Right button read on mouseUp go next end mouseUp Save your work as Navigation LiveCode Now we will transform the buttons into a group 1 First be sure that Select Grouped is unhilited non bold text in the Icon Tool Bar showing the Select Grouped icon with widely separated corner dots The reason will be explained shortly 2 Drag the cursor to draw a marquis around the two buttons and select Group from the Icon You could also use Command G Mac or Control G Windows to do the grouping You have just created a group Toolbar Fig 4 7 Note that button handlebars rather than surrounding each button individually now surround the two button as one group The buttons can now be moved and positioned as if they were a single object 29 3 Open the group s Property Inspector by clicking on the group s Inspector icon in the Icon Toolbar and name the group Navigation Groups have their own Property Inspectors and Script Editor 4 Pla
89. e Button and select its Property Inspector 3 Name the button GoMySubstack Make sure you are working with the button property inspector not the stack property inspector 4 In the Label field of the Property Inspector type Go To My Substack The difference between a button s Name and its Label is that Name is the hidden term that is used in the button s script while the Label is what the user sees on the button If you don t fill out the Label field the button will use the Name as the label by default 5 Close the Property Inspector and resize the button so that all of its label is seen 6 Right click on the button and select Edit Script from its menu This opens the script editor for the button A button s script editor by default contains lines that read on mouseUp and end mouseUp On mouseup signifies the beginning of a handler something that handles in this case the message mouseUp which is sent when a user clicks on the button while end mouseUp indicates the end of the handler Our script will consist of these two lines and the script lines we will add between them Note a script may consist of many handlers e g on mouseUp on mouseDown 7 Type go to stack MySubstack between the two lines This tells the program to open and go to stack MySubstack Thus the button script reads on mouseUp go to stack MySubstack end mouseUp 8 Exit the Script Editor by clicking on the Script Editor s
90. e backdrop fills the screen outside the stack with a backdrop color or pattern This can help remove from view distracting desktop items Color and pattern details of the Backdrop are set in the LiveCode s Preferences section under Appearance Be sure VIEW BACKDROP is unchecked if you don t want to see a backdrop when you create a new stack VIEW LIVECODE UI ELEMENTS IN LISTS Allows you to see in the Application Browser all the LiveCode development environment stacks that are open and play a role behind the scenes in controlling LiveCode Be sure this is unchecked unless you want to go nuts looking what s in the Application Browser VIEW SHOW INVISIBLE OBJECTS When you have hidden objects in your stack and want to locate them Show Invisible Objects makes all of them visible Be sure to turn this off when you don t need it Otherwise you will wonder why you can t make an object invisible HELP Gives you access to the LiveCode Dictionary and other resources HELP BUY A LICENSE Connects to the LiveCode Internet store 161 THE SCRIPT MENU BAR SCRIPT EDIT QUICKFIND Opens a Find field at the bottom of the Script Editor to assist in finding words in the Script You can also open this Find field with Command F Macintosh or Control F Windows SCRIPT EDIT FIND AND REPLACE Finds and replaces specific words in the script SCRIPT EDIT FIND SELECTION Finds selected words in other areas of the script THE ICON TOOL
91. e in the Message Box On pressing Return an answer dialog appears with those choices Fig 9 1 48 What color are your eyes Brown Blue Green Cancel Fig 9 1 Answer box D 6b Whatever choice you make whether Brown Blue Green or Cancel those words go into the variable container called it in which case the script can act on that choice For instance on mouseUp answer What color are your eyes with Brown or Blue or Green or Cancel if it is Cancel then exit mouseUp the handler stops and nothing is done put it puts it into the Message Box if you made a choice of eye color end mouseUp Note that it is necessary to add the line if it is Cancel then exit mouseUp because clicking on Cancel places the word Cancel into it just as clicking on Brown Blue or Green would place those words into it and without that line about exiting the word Cancel would be placed into the Message Box You didn t have to use the word Cancel You could have used any other word or group of words such as None of your business The ask command differs from the answer command in that its dialog box contains a field in which the user types a response Fig 9 2 For instance put the following script in a button What color are your eyes Fig 9 2 Ask box 49 on mouseUp ask What color
92. e intersect btn target btn bullet is true then answer Direct hit 64 CUSTOM FUNCTIONS In addition to the functions built into LiveCode you can create your own These custom functions are always phrased in the function format rather than using the word the Why create functions when you most likely could do the same thing with an ordinary message handler Example Say for simplicity you want to add 3 numbers 20 30 and 50 and then put the total into field 1 You could write on mouseUp put 20 into tfirstno put 30 into tsecondno put 50 into tthirdno put tfirstno tsecondno tthirdno into field 1 end mouseUp Field 1 will show 100 No problem here But what if you want to perform this calculation on different sets of 3 numbers throughout the stack on a variety of numbers You could write the following pair of handlers with the handler on myCalc perhaps residing in the stack script on mouseUp a message handler put 20 into tfirstno put 30 into tsecondno put 50 into tthirdno myCalc tfirstno tsecondno tthirdno Note that 2 3 4 are not placed in parentheses here put the result into field 1 end mouseUp on myCalc num1 num2 num3 a message handler in the stack script put num1 num2 num3 into myTotal return myTotal end myCalc The numbers num7 num2 and num3 are termed parameters each of which is a value in a sense a kind of variable Note that the above second handler is an
93. e of a stack card or control This will help distinguish such words from LiveCode dictionary words and variables discussed in Chapter 11 which are never in quotes It is not necessary to use the Script Editor to practice many of the commands in this book You can write script in the Message Box For instance instead of a handler within a button that reads on mouseUp beep end mouseUp you could just type beep in the Message Box Tools Message Box and press Return or Enter Also instead of using the mouse to directly click on a button it is possible to direct LiveCode through scripting to click on a button or other object For instance you could type in the Message Box click at the loc of button MyButton or send mouseUp to button MyButton or dispatch mouseUp to btn MyButton all of which activate the mouseUp script of the button In the Message Box pressing the up or down keyboard arrow scrolls through past scripts that were entered in the Message Box so you don t have to retype them This can help when you want to retry a script a number of times Other mouse related words 42 the mouseH the mouseV the mouseLoc The mous eH the horizontal distance of the cursor s hot spot from the left side of the card the mouseV the vertical distance of the cursor s hot spot from the top side of the card If the mouseH is 100 for example and the mouseV is 150 then the cursor is
94. e the flipping of one card after another The system automatically becomes unlocked again after the script is finished Processes involving traveling to many cards are carried out faster when lockscreen is set to true If you want to unlock the screen sometime in the middle of a script then at that point use set lockscreen to false or alternatively unlock screen start using Part of the message hierarchy flow is from substack to mainstack It normally does not go from one substack to another or to a mainstack other than its own If you want to have the message flow go to another substack or mainstack the start using command can be useful E g if the second stack say MyOtherMainstack contains within its stack script On MySpecialCommand lt do something special gt end MySpecial Command then you could write in your first stack On mouseUp start using stack lt MyOtherMainstack gt MySpecialCommand end mouseUp This can be useful in accessing the scripts of another stack Of course if you are using the scripts in another stack repeatedly it may be a good idea to have the start using command appear in an on preopenStack handler of your mainstack so that you can use it throughout the application you are developing backdrop Setting the backdrop enables you to introduce a background color or pattern to the entire screen behind the stack removing from view other distracting elements of the desktop For example
95. e the forest for the trees It does not cover features that are seldom used or advanced areas such as databases and programming specific to mobile devices What the book describes though should be useful for almost any project idea One of the best selling games of all times was the point and click game Myst it was created with HyperCard which was far less powerful than Livecode This book emphasizes programming features that have found most useful in over 25 years of programming educational materials at the University of Miami School of Medicine and the Medmaster Publishing Company LiveCode is a much deeper program than can be covered in this brief book Yet you can accomplish much with these basics Throughout the book scripting words will be placed in italics while key words will be in boldface The pictures throughout this book are those taken with the Macintosh interface However the features in Windows are very similar thank Jacqueline Landman Gay who reviewed an earlier version of the manuscript for many helpful suggestions Let s get started CHAPTER 2 THE STACK METAPHOR LiveCode uses the original HyperCard metaphor of a stack deck of cards Fig 2 1 A stack consists of one or more cards on which you can place various objects such as buttons fields images and movies Although only one card ina stack can be seen at a time like a neatly piled deck of card the user can CARDS Fig 2 1 n
96. elected characters in a field to subscripts or superscripts TEXT FONT SIZE COLOR ALIGN Changes the font size color or alignment of selected text in a field or in a button name overriding any settings made within the stack card or field Property Inspector For instance if the field has a particular text setting and you want to change the font size style or color of certain words in that field without affecting the other words in the field you would do that through the Text menu which can change the properties of individual words in the field while the remainder of the field s words follow the settings of the field s Property Inspector DEVELOPMENT DEVELOPMENT IMAGE LIBRARY Fig 34 8 Has libraries of images that you can place on a card by selecting Place Image If you choose Place Reference it will place it as an iconed button rather than an image If you have an image that you imported into LiveCode you can add it to your personal library by choosing Import Selected You can import images from outside LiveCode into your personal library by choosing Import File Import File can import an entire set of pictures in a folder if you click the first and last picture in the folder with the Shift key down 158 00A Library Objects Images Standardimages fp Delete Library New Library Fig 34 8 Images Library DEVELOPMENT PLUGINS Accesses custom tool stacks in the Plugins fol
97. emind you that you are dealing with a global memory It is not necessary to do so but is considered good scripting practice as it acts as a visible reminder that the variable is a global Then the script might look like on mouseUp global gNumber put 5 into gNumber end mouseUp The declaration of the global variable is generally the first line within the handler If you don t declare it as a global global gnumber LiveCode assumes gNumber is a local variable When declared as a global the global variable will be 58 remembered as long as the stack file is open If you are say on another card even in another stack or substack and have a different script handler that wants to invoke the global gHolder the distant script handler would read on mouseUp global gNumber lt do something with gNumber gt end mouse In that case the original gNumber is remembered even in a distant area of the stack file For brevity in scripting if you have many message handlers within a script and you don t want to declare the global variable at the beginning of each handler you can just declare it once outside all the handlers at the top of the script Thus a script could read global gNumber on mouseDown put 5 into gNumber beep end mouseDown on mouseUp put gNumber into field Endresult end mouseUp For clarity in scripting it is wise to give variables names that call to mind what they are used for For instance if
98. erty Inspector source folder the long absolute path to the image or movie e g Hard Drive Application folder Images MyPhoto png for the Image object Hard Drive Application folder Images MyMovie mov for the QT Player object Once the standalone is created other computers may not recognize the long 139 absolute path so it is necessary to change the long absolute path to the shorter relative path that starts within the folder in which your application resides One way to do this is to create a folder for all the images and movies titled for instance IMAGES That folder should always be together with the stack file during development That is the stack file should reside in a folder together with another folder titled IMAGES which contains the referenced movies FOLDER MyMainstack rev IMAGES MyPhoto png MyMovie mov Once this is done you can manually shorten the paths within the Image and QT Player object Source field to a referenced path that begins within the folder in which the stack resides The shorter referenced paths note the absence of a forward slash at the beginning would be Images MyPhoto png for the Image Object Images MyMovie mov for the QT Player Object Then if the final standalone application is located together with the IMAGES folder the pictures and movies should show up in the standalone on all computers Doing this by script can be done as follows set the filename of pla
99. f Human Diseases available as a free standalone download from http medmaster net freedownloads html This task would take a lifetime in the old days for an ordinary print book but took only a few hours of programming using LiveCode once the list of diseases was prepared A LiveCode stack or built standalone application can be uploaded to one s website where a user can download it to the user s computer Downloading a standalone rather than a stack has an advantage in that the user who does not have LiveCode installed does not require the LiveCode player or Internet access to view the standalone after it is downloaded A stack prepared on Macintosh will run on Windows and vice versa provided you have LiveCode installed CHAPTER 20 SPECIAL EFFECTS SCRIPTING 86 Apart from excellent pictures and interesting looking buttons you can dress up the appearance of a stack with special effects that take place on opening a card Transitional effects visual effect barn door close or barn door open visual effect checkerboard visual effect dissolve visual effect iris close or iris open visual effect plain visual effect push up push down push right or push left visual effect reveal up reveal down reveal right or reveal left yh visual effect scroll up scroll down scroll right or scroll left visual effec
100. f lines in field test returns to the Message Box the number of lines in the field Item itemDelimiter By default an item is any string of characters word or words separated from others by a comma For example consider a field titled MyField with the following text Apple sauce sun dried tomatoes corn on the cob or off the cob there are 3 items apple sauce sundried tomatoes and corn on the cob or off the cob tem 1 of the field is apple sauce The item number can also be phrased as a negative For instance item 2 of line 1 of field MyField returns sundried tomatoes The itemDelimiter does not have to be a comma For instance consider the following script on mouseUp set the itemDelimiter to switches the default itemDelimiter to rather than a comma put item 1 of field MyField end mouseUp The Message Box will then show Apple sauce sun dried tomatoes corn on the cob because there are now only 2 items in the list separated by the rather than a comma 124 Variations on the usage of item put first item of line 1 of field test put last item of line 1 of field test The itemDelimiter can be any character you want Once the script handler ends you don t have to go to the trouble of setting the itemDelimiter back to a comma It automatically returns to the default comma on termination of the handler However in long handlers it is good pra
101. f stack cardNames property get the cardNames of group stack closeCard message closeCard create card command create card cardName deleteCard message deleteCard exitto HyperCard controlst exit to HyperCard exit to MetaCard control st exit to MetaCard exit to SuperCard control st exit to SuperCard hypercard keyword metacard keyword new card command new card cardName newCard message newCard openCard message openCard preOpenCard message preOpenCard recentCards property get the recentCards of stack printCardBorders property set the printCardBorders to true false revSetCardProfile command revSetCardProfile profileName stackName Desktop Server Web Desktop Server Web Desktop Server Web Desktop Server Web Desktop Server Web Desktop Server Web Desktop Server Web Desktop Server Web Desktop Server Web Desktop Server Web Desktop Server Web Desktop Server Web Desktop Server Web Desktop Server Web Desktop Server Web Desktop Server Web Desktop Server Web Desktop Server Web Desktop Server Web Mac OS X Windows Linux iOS Android Mac OS X Windows Linux iOS Android Mac OS X Windows Linux iOS Android Mac OS X Windows Linux iOS Android Mac OS X Windows Linux iOS Android Mac OS X Windows Linux iOS Android Mac OS X Windows Linux iOS Android Mac OS X Windows Linux iOS Android Mac OS X Windows Linux iOS Android Mac OS X Windows Linux iOS Android Mac OS X Windows Lin
102. f the Application Browser until called upon by script AudioClips are not objects An audioClip s Property Inspector is accessed by right clicking on the particular audioclip in the Application Browser The audioclip Property Inspector has several Basic Properties NAME name 137 SIZE in bytes size Describes the size in bytes of the audioclip VOLUME playLoudness Enables setting the audioClip loudness from 0 to 100 Sounds and Movies Scripting Sounds and movies can both be played as referenced files through the Quicktime Player object They can also be ingrained within LiveCode as audioClips and videoClips as seen in the Application Browser AUDIOCLIPS play audioClip play stop the playLoudness play audioClip MyMusic aif plays the audioClip play stop stops the audioClip from playing set the playLoudness to 100 without specifying an audioClip this in general sets the speaker system loudness to 100 for all sounds The playLoudness can be between 0 and 100 set the playLoudness of audioClip MyMusic aif to 60 When specifying a specific audioClip this sets the loudness of just that specific audioClip VIDEOCLIPS The QuickTime Player has more features than the videoClip and is less buggy suggest using the QuickTime Player for movies rather than the videoClip which will not be discussed further QUICKTIME PLAYER play stop playing player on playStarted on playStopped the playRa
103. for Untitied 1 General A Tools 2 DALI Android Bug Reports Oo E o is oS Hi I m a modal window B ow Default build folder C D i f Automatically build here A TopLevel stack B Modal stack C Modeless stack D Palette stack Fig 2 6 TopLevel stacks are the standard default type Fig 2 6A This is the only fully editable stack Modal stacks Fig 2 6B require a response from the user before any other stack can be used They frequently are in the form of a dialog box appearing in 14 response to answer or ask commands to be discussed later under Scripting requiring the user to input some information before the user can return to the underlying stack Modeless stacks Fig 2 6C are like the standard topLevel ones except the user is limited to typing in text in fields and clicking on buttons Palette stacks Fig 2 6D commonly contain tools may have your own personal icons that can be accessed for use in stack you are working on An example of a palette stack is the Tools palette that comes with LiveCode Usually you will only be creating TopLevel or modal stacks The Message Box The Message Box Fig 2 8 is very useful in testing scripting commands For example Global Variables Pending Messages Lock defaultStack Global Properties Front Scripts Intelligence Acts on mouseControl Multi line Messages Back Scripts Intelligence Acts on selectedObject Single line Messages
104. g by 3 In this case you need to tell LiveCode to carry out the operation in the order you want To do this place parentheses around those parts of the calculation you wish to work out first 5 4 3 returns 27 It multiplies 9 3 This is the standard way of notating calculations Parentheses also make for easier reading even at times when they are not necessary For instance the following two lines are correct scripting and mean the same thing but the second line reads more clearly put the number of cards in this stack into tCardNumber put the number of cards in this stack into tCardNumber Parentheses can t hurt the number The number can be used as a property as in the number of this card e g in a stack of 10 cards this card might be card number 4 the number of button ClickMe indicates the stacking position of the button in relationship with other buttons on the card For instance among the various objects on a card there might be 10 fields and 5 buttons with the buttons farther above the card than the fields and button ClickMe might be the 3 in the stacking order of the buttons so it is button number 3 The number can also be a function when referring to a quantity Examples 68 the number of cards in this stack the number of lines in field MyText the value The value can be used in reference to text For instance in a locked field the script put the clickline may return line 1
105. hat the script line is not finished and extends onto the next line If you use the V be sure you do not use it between quotation marks Otherwise Livecode would see the backslash as part of the string and not an operator indicating that the script line is split Examples put Congratulations you have just 13 passed the exam into field Diploma BAD put Congratulations you have just passed the exam into field Diploma GOOD Return Say you want to direct a script to put several lines into a field Each line would contain a carriage return at its end forming a new paragraph You could write put 1 First check the airway amp return amp 2 Then check the breathing amp return amp 3 Then check the circulation into field 1 If you wanted an extra blank line between the numbered steps you can write return amp return instead of just a single return The abbreviation cr for carriage return can be used instead of return Quote What if you want the script to place into a field a series of words containing quotes For instance you want the field to read Bob said Let s go home You can t just write a script saying put Bob said Let s go home into field 1 LiveCode would get confused since there are too many quotation marks You could approach this in two ways 1 You could change the quote marks around Let s go home to apostrophes s
106. ible M Controller C Controller toggle i Focus with keyboard Time 0 I gt of6 Start C Hilite selection C Play selection only Speed 1 _ Loop Volume en i Border au M 3 D Width 2 Layer Mode Static Z Behavior Fig 28 1 Player Basic Properties BUFFER a waysBuffer When Buffer is unchecked the player window floats above all other objects on the card so you can t for instance paste a button on top of the player but the movie takes up less memory When checked alwaysBuffer is true the movie takes up more memory when playing and the controller doesn t work However you can paste buttons or other objects on top of the movie and despite the lack of a functioning controller you can control the movie s play features through scripting CONTROLLER showController Gives you the option of showing or not showing a controller FOCUS WITH KEYBOARD traversalOn When true checked allows users to affect the movie with standard Quicktime keyboard shortcuts e g spacebar to start and stop playback TIME currentTime While a movie may be only a few seconds long its duration is much longer because duration is the number of seconds in the movie x the number of intervals per second in the movie Since duration is so much larger than seconds one uses duration units rather than seconds to precisely determine times within a movie 132 The currentTime describes in duration units the p
107. ick for single button mouse on the object and select Edit Script or Edit Card Script or Edit Stack Script if those are your interest Try this with the card you see Personally find right clicking the easiest way to open a script e or choose Edit Script from within the Property Inspector by clicking on the little arrow at the top of the Property Inspector window Fig 3 1 This reveals a pulldown menu with the option of Edit Script among other things 18 card id 1002 ID 1002 mires P Inspect be Name card id 1002 Property Profile F Number 1 Edit Script Marked _ Find command ignores Lock Inspector z Can t delete D Show border M Opaque w Fig 3 1 Card Property Inspector e or choose Object Object Script or Card Script or Stack Script from LiveCode s Menu Bar Fig 2 2 e or click on the Code Script icon in the icon menubar Fig 2 2 or press Command E Macintosh or Control E Windows to open a control The E is for Edit e or click on the object while holding down the option and command keys Mac control alt on Windows You don t have to do all of these Just use the most comfortable method for you Here we will write a script to navigate from the mainstack to the substack 1 With MyMainstack in view double click on the Tools Palette s Rectangular Button icon to place a rectangular button in the center of stack MyMainstack 2 Right click on th
108. ing a mouse simply by pressing the keyboard Return Key Rectangle button Shaped like a rectangle in both Macintosh and Windows Check box button Can be checked or unchecked If there are multiple check buttons on a card one can check off any number of them in combination Radio button Unlike the check button the idea behind radio buttons is that only one button at a time can be highlighted its circle filled in If you hilite one button the others in the group become unhilited These will be discussed further in Chapter 4 on Groups Fields Label Field A single line field designed for placing labels on the screen Text Entry Field A simple text field with no scroll bars It can have multiple lines 21 Scrolling Field Like the simple Text Entry Field you can type text in this field in fact many lines since a scrolling field has a scroll bar Scrolling List Field This field does not allow the user to type in text Rather the programmer preplaces text in the field via the field s Property Inspector discussed later When the user clicks on a given line of text an action is performed as determined by the field s script List fields can be made with or without a scrollbar Basic Table Field For inserting items in a table format Data Grid This field object can be used for presenting data in complex ways and will not be discussed in this book Menu Objects Fig 3 2 Choice 1 HH Pulldown Menu Choice 1 iv
109. k show stack MyStack Be cautious how you use these commands in removing a stack or substack from view If you use close stack or hide stack plan ahead with an appropriate open stack or show stack message respectively to be able to view the stack later Show and hide are also applied to any kind of control on a card hide field data show image flowers hide btn id 1015 show player MyMovie Stack is also very useful as a suffix in the following message handlers on openStack on closeStack on preOpenStack For example in the script of a stack you could write 99 on closeStack lt do something awesome gt end closeStack This tells LiveCode to carry out some command s at the time the stack is closed To tell LiveCode what to do when a stack is opened on openStack lt do something mind boggling gt when the stack is opened and becomes visible end openstack When openStack is used the directions lt do something mind boggling gt are not carried out until the stack is open PreOpenStack does the same thing as openStack except that it does it earlier before the stack is open This provides you the opportunity to do things behind the scenes e g adjusting the stack s position or adjusting the appearance of controls on the first card before the stack is open like straightening out your house before the company comes on preOpenStack lt do something secretive before opening the s
110. k Open Stack 0 Open Recent File gt Close AW Close and Remove From Memory Import As Control p New Referenced Control gt Image File uicktime Supported File Save 5 EE Save AS All Images In Folder Move Substack to File m Revert to Saved Share this Stack Standalone Application Settings Save As Standalone Application Page Setup Print Card P Fig 34 2 New Referenced Control Image file Brings a referenced image onto the card within an Image Area Object along with its Source the path to the stack Quicktime supported file Brings a referenced Quicktime mov or AVI avi movies onto the card within a Quicktime Player object showing its Source the path to the stack You can also use a Quicktime Player to import sounds particularly in aif or wav format All Images in Folder Brings in all the images in a folder onto the card each within its own Image Area Object including each one s referenced Source path to the stack FILE SAVE Saves the stack overwriting any previous version of the stack FILE SAVE AS Saves the stack as a new stack but preserves the previous file Both SAVE and SAVE AS give you the option of saving the stack as an older version of LiveCode FILE MOVE SUBSTACK TO FILE Changes a substack to a new mainstack independent of the original mainstack 150 FILE REVERT TO SAVED Reverts to the previous version of the stack
111. kes the mean of the list of number parameters enclosed in parentheses Examples average 5 12 37 returns 18 average tList tList being a variable that contains a set of number parameters separated by commas 70 abs The abs absolute refers to the magnitude of the number regardless of whether it is positive or negative Thus abs 12 returns 12 abs 12 also returns 12 equals lt is equal to or less than gt is greater than gt is equal or greater than Examples 5 4 1 returns true 5 3 1 returns false 5 gt 4 returns true 5 gt 4 returns true 5 lt 4 returns false if 5 lt 6 then beep will get a beep sound There is These are not technically math words but are related The phrases there is and there is no are very useful when you want to check whether a particular object exists before carrying out a script For instance on mouseUp go to next card if there is a field data then put lt something gt into field data end mouseUp If you had instead just written on mouseUp go to next card put lt something gt into field data end mouseUp then this would result in an error message if no field data exists first second last Examples 71 go to first card equivalent of go to card 1 go second equivalent to go to card 2 of this stack go last goes to the last card in the stack
112. lace on new cards and put after card in message path Bounding Rect Layer Mode Static B Behavior Fig 4 8 Behave Like a Background Now you have the navigation buttons on all three cards A most valuable feature of putting a group on different cards is that a change to the group on one card immediately appears on all the cards For instance try moving around the Navigation group on one card The position change will appear on the other 2 cards as well keeping the buttons consistently positioned You can also group a single object with itself It that case its bounding box appears somewhat larger than in the ungrouped state Such grouping can be useful if you want the object to appear on a number of cards always in the same position A group is an object in itself with its own Group Property Inspector and Group Script Editor Moving a group moves all the controls within it Deleting a group on one card deletes the group on all the cards in which the group appears But what if you want to remove the group from one of the cards but not from the other cards To do this select the group on the card in which you want to remove the group Select from the Menu Bar Object Remove Group The group will selectively disappear on that card If you had instead pressed the Delete 31 button LiveCode will warn you The group is placed on multiple cards really delete it to let you know that pressing the Delete button would rem
113. like the pan tilt and zoom to be for future reference in a script l e you would play around moving the Quicktime VR in Run Mode and when you get a pan tilt and zoom that looks nice determine these numbers via the Message Box 135 put the pan of player 1 or put the tilt of player 1 or put the zoom of player 1 You would record these values in the pan tilt and zoom fields of the Property Inspector for future reference If you now go to another card and return the panorama reverts to it default values So you need a script on opening the card to set the pan tilt and zoom to the desired values that you had notated e g on openCard set the pan of player My panorama to 140 set the tilt of player My panorama to 10 set the zoom of player My panorama to 45 end openCard Your Quicktime VR may include more than just the panoramic movie It may contain hotspots ingrained in the movie to cause some action when the hotspot is clicked on For example a door within a room in a Quicktime VR may contain a hotspot which when clicked on will effect an action e g opening the door to a different scene Hotspots are created in third party software that constructs Quicktime VR movies To get a list of the hotspots in the QTVR write in the Message Box put the hotSpots of player MyPanorama The list of hotspots if there are any will appear in the Message Box To determine which hotspots the mouse is over write i
114. lywood3 Note that each of LiveCode s color pickers has a small color grabbing magnifying glass icon in its upper left corner Fig 22 4 This can help you select special colors from within or outside LiveCode by clicking on them with the magnifying glass 95 10 8 Colors Image library Default Patterns B A Bor al 33 Hemi mrw Fig 22 4 Color grabber Fig 22 5 Pattern IDs Regarding patterns you can learn the ID number of the pattern you want by holding the mouse for a few seconds over the background pattern after clicking on the backgroundPattern box in the Colors and Patterns section Fig 22 5 This can then be incorporated into a script E g set the backgroundPattern of this stack to 208104 HILITE hiliteColor hilitePattern This is the hilite color like a hiliting pen that surrounds text within the stack when the text is selected in a field or a menu STACK BLENDING Fig 22 6 BLEND LEVEL blendLevel Note how sliding the Blend Level Bar alters the transparency of the stack You can make the stack partially or fully transparent if you wish 96 O stack Untitled 1 ID 1002 f Blending B Blend Level srcCopy v Preview 7 Preview selected image Fig 22 6 Stack Blending STACK SIZE AND POSITION Fig 22 6
115. message to the button but since there was no mouseUp handler to trap it will send it on to the card where it will be trapped by the card s mouseUp handler and generate a beep 35 FRONTSCRIPTS CONTROL BACKGROUND GROUP SUBSTACK MAINSTACK LIBRARY STACK S BACKSCRIPT S LIVECODE ENGINE Fig 6 1 LiveCode Message Hierarchy Note in Fig 6 1 the 4 areas with dark backgrounds These generally will be the only points in the message flow that you will need to be concerned about in most cases the control card substack and mainstack in that sequence There are however other places where you may place handlers e A frontscript is a special script you might write if you want it to be the first area to receive a command even when the mouse clicks on an object 36 e Anon background group is the next waystation after the controls is clicked If a group s Behave Like a Background property is checked the group now called a background is also situated just beyond the card in the chain e Library stacks are supplementary stacks whose scripts you may wish to use with the start using command e A backscript is a script that you want to be almost last in the message chain just before reaching the LiveCode Engine As an example if a control and non background group if present have no mouseUp handler but the card has a mouseUp handler directing to go to the next card clicking on either the control or the
116. more than one word in it set the name of field 1 to Score works 116 set the name of field 1 to My Score works set the name of field 1 to My Score doesn t work no quotes Note the difference between using name and the short name in a script 1 Type the words Goodby cruel world in field 1 2 Name field 1 Goodbye 3 Now open the Message Box and compare the following scripts typed in the Message Box put the name of field 1 returns field Goodbye in the Message Box put the short name of field 1 returns Goodbye in the Message Box put field 1 returns Goodbye cruel world the contents of field 1 in the Message Box SHARE TEXT sharedText If you make the field into a group that is placed on multiple cards with Behave Like a Background checked set to true do you want the text you type into one field to automatically be the same on all the cards or not For instance if every card contains a field at the top containing the name of your company you would want to check the Share Text option However if you want the field to contain different information for each card it is on e g the name of each new client you would want to leave the Share Text box unchecked DON T WRAP dontWrap If you check this box the line you type will continue going beyond the right edge of the field until you type a Return to start a new paragraph If you leave it unchecked the line will automatically stop at the
117. n this would set the color of the card to green without having to open the Inspector to make this change This is a powerful feature of LiveCode You can not only set the properties of objects in the stack through their Property Inspectors but you can using the script word set set any property of an object by script whose words can easily be looked up through the tooltip feature 3 Close the MySubstack Card Property Inspector Save your work Stack MySubstack has only one card Let s create 2 more 12 1 Click on stack MySubstack 2 Select Object New Card from the menubar Do this once more to create a total of 3 cards in the stack 3 Save your work 4 There are now 3 cards in stack MySubstack one green and 2 white But where are these new cards Only one card in a stack is visible at a time since cards lie directly under one another The number of each card appears in parentheses at the top of the card in the card s titlebar There should be number 1 2 or 3 in the titlebar of MySubstack indicating which of the three cards you are looking at To move from one card to the next select View Go Next or View Go Prev from the Menu Bar or pressing their keyboard equivalents shown on the Menu Bar Note how the number of the card changes as MySubstack cycles through its 3 cards 5 To even more clearly distinguish the three cards in stack MySubstack name the second card Red card and color it red
118. n in a Message Box Note the necessity of using the word the in calling a function or else using the abbreviated format Put the date also written put date or just the date returns e g 3 8 15 if that were today s date in the Message Box the short date returns 3 8 15 the long date returns Sunday March 8 2015 the time returns 9 34 AM the short time returns 9 34 AM the long time returns 7 49 31 PM set the twelvehourtime to false sets the time to 24 hr military time in which the time becomes 16 40 rather than 4 40 PM the seconds returns e g 1422542128 calculated since 1970 put the ticks returns e g 85352528513 a tick is 1 60 of a second calculated since 1970 as are the milliseconds a millisecond is 1 000 of a second Of course you most likely would not need to know the number of seconds or ticks since 1970 but you could make use of this information by measuring the differences in time between two events in a script such as on mouseUp put the ticks into tCounter1 wait one second put the ticks into tCounter2 put tCounter2 tCounter7 end mouseUp The Message Box will read 60 confirming that there are 60 ticks in a second This measurement of differences in time can be used to measure the time it takes to perform any scripting event Equivalent scripts wait 10 ticks wait 10 by default refers to ticks Intersect is function useful in certain games E g if th
119. n the script editor of the player on hotspotClicked someSpot put someSpot end hotspotClicked This will tell you the ID of the hotspot that you just clicked e g it may be 70 or 60 etc The only thing now is to create a script telling LiveCode what to do when the hotspot is clicked on hotspotClicked someSpot if someSpot is 70 then go to card NewScene 1 if someSpot is 60 then go to card NewScene 2 136 end hotspotClicked PLAYER SIZE amp POSITION The Lock Size and Position checkbox locks the position and size of the player so that it does not move around or resize inadvertently during development When the box is checked the player cannot be moved with the mouse However it can still be moved with the arrow keys when selected in Edit mode Locking fixes not only the position of the movie but keeps its size the same when moving back and forth between cards AUDIOCLIPS PROPERTY INSPECTOR Fig 28 5 audioclip patternsound aif ID 1013 Basic Properties B 8 gt Name patternsound aif Stop i Play Volume Di een rene fee ese amet 1s pment me s 100 Play through Internal Speaker External Audio Port Size Bytes 497504 Fig 28 5 AudioClips Property Inspector While audio files can be referenced through the Quicktime player they can be imported File Import As Control Audio File where they become ingrained within the stack in the audioClips sections o
120. name gt Showr Antialiased Antialiased Antialiased je Bord Border Unit rder Lin Siz 1 Size hicknes n C Dashed C Dashed lines Dashed lir Arrows Arrows Start A gt End Arr tA End A Sides 8 Siz si Rotat 0 Point 179 214 0 Point 182 214 3 186 214 191 216 v Fig 30 1 Graphic Tools More sophisticated programs such as Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop can be used to create graphics and images to import into LiveCode so these drawing tools will not be discussed here You may want to play around with these controls though for an intuitive idea of how they work for simpler illustrations CHAPTER 31 THE SCROLLBAR SLIDER LITTLE ARROWS AND PROGRESS BAR PROPERTY INSPECTORS Fig 31 1 142 scrollbar Scrollbar ID 1046 O scrollbar Scrollbar ID 1040 O scrollbar ar ID 1044 scrollbar Progress Scrollbar IO 1037 PROGRESS BAR Thumb size 8192 LITTLE ARROWS Scroll distance On arrowclick 512 On bar click 8192 l On bar click 1 SCROLLBAR SLIDER Fig 31 1 Scroll Bar Property Inspectors PROGRESS BAR PROPERTY INSPECTOR Progress bars are used to visually display the progress of a process over time START VALUE startValue Sets the number you would like to use as the starting value of the progress bar END VALUE endValue Sets the number you would like to use as the ending value of the progress bar CURRENT VALUE thumbPosition You may want to follow the progress of a
121. nd vector graphics movies sounds and Internet and database connectivity With a click of a button your creations whether developed on the Macintosh or Windows versions of LiveCode can be built for Macintosh Windows Linux and mobile devices Educators who are looking for a simple but powerful way to create applications for their classes or teach students to program will find LiveCode an excellent way to create even complex teaching materials or to teach the general principles of programming to their classes LiveCode while easy to use is a professional tool that gives developers a competitive edge in the speed at which they can complete their projects in comparison with program environments such as Java and C LiveCode is an outgrowth of Apple s HyperCard program of the late 1980s but is far more powerful While the original HyperCard language contained about 150 programming words LiveCode contains close to 2000 and many features far more advanced than the original HyperCard LiveCode has been described as HyperCard on steroids With so many advanced features and new ones every year it can be difficult for the beginner to get started with the program While some people can learn LiveCode from scattered tutorials others need a brief linear step by step approach as emphasized in this book This is not a reference text or a book for the expert It covers only the most basic aspects of LiveCode to enable the beginner to se
122. ndows use answer printer without open printing with dialog or close printing printMargins The printMargins sets the width of the margins of the page when printing The numbers are given in pixels assuming 72 dots per inch dpi set the printMargins to 18 18 18 36 the four numbers refer to the left top right and bottom margins of the page respectively printPaperScale PrintPaperScale sets the magnification of the printing Numbers between 0 and 1 represent 1 to 100 magnification set the printPaperScale to 8 80 magnification set the printPaperScale to 2 200 magnification CHAPTER 19 INTERNET COMMUNICATION LiveCode is extremely powerful in connecting with the Internet The launch URL command provides a direct way to go to a specific web page by simply typing the web page s URL after launch URL Example launch URL http www google com opens Google in the default browser To learn about Florida birds you could type Florida Birds in the Google search box Google would then list a series of articles using the browser search path https www google com gws_rd ssl q floridat birds You could do all this directly from LiveCode by using the script on mouseUp launch URL https www google com qws_rd ssl q floridat birds end mouseUp 85 You can carry this a step further using Google Images If you type Florida Birds into the Google Images search engine box a whole collection of pictures of
123. nels so they can exhibit transparencies FRAME currentFrame Sets the current frame number of the animated GIF If you move back and forth between cards though LiveCode doesn t remember the frame information so you have to reset it in a script when the card opens For example on preopenCard set the currentFrame of image Rotating Dollar to 2 end preopenCard REPEAT repeatCount Sets the number of times the animated GIF will repeat when the card opens If you don t want the GIF to play at all when the card opens set the Repeat repeatCount to 0 If you want it to play continuously set the repeatCount to 1 REPEAT IN REVERSE palindromeFrames When palindromeFrames is set to 130 true Repeat in Reverse checked the GIF loops back and forth When palindromeFrames is false a repeating GIF skips back to the beginning to start a new loop HOTSPOT hotSpot Should you wish to use an image as a cursor you may want to specify the point on the image that is active the hotSpot in sending the mouse message For instance a hotSpot of 1 1 the usual default will set the hot spot at 1 pixel from the left side of the image and 1 pixel from the top of the image the upper left corner of the image IMAGE GRAPHIC EFFECTS Image Graphic Effects enables you to create and modify shadows around images Playing around with these features will give the best idea of how they can be used IMAGE SIZE amp POSITION The Lo
124. next time the button in clicked But Holder is not remembered in other buttons or anywhere else in the stack and the memory totally disappears after the stack is closed 57 Like other properties of an object s Property Inspector scripts are also properties so you need the set command rather than the put command to change a script For instance if button MyButton has the script on mouseUp put 2 into fld MyField end mouseUp and you wanted to use the Message Box to change this script to on mouseUp put 3 into fld MyField end mouseUp you can t just write put 3 into word 2 of line 2 of btn MyButton This won t work because you can t change a script using the put command You could however use a variable in the following sequence put the script of btn MyButton into tHolder puts the script into a temporary variable put 3 into word 2 of line 2 of tHolder modifies the variable set the script of btn MyButton to tHolder sets the script to the modified variable Global Variables Even if you declare local tHolder in the above example LiveCode will forget what tHolder meant once you are outside that particular object What if you want LiveCode to remember what a variable means throughout the stack so long as the stack is open This can be done with a global variable Customarily one uses a g rather than a t at the beginning of the global variable name to r
125. nificant number of menu items many people find it easier to use the switch case break format but you can stick with the format you feel most comfortable with The if then format may be more attractive to others like me because it is more English like and resembles LiveCode s standard if then scripting LiveCode s Menu Builder will not be discussed here For most purposes it will suffice to create your own menu using LiveCode s menu controls A nice menu can be created by preparing a group of Pulldown Menus aligned side to side Subcategories of each menu item can be prepared simply by using Tab indents on the choices list in the menu button Property Inspector You can also create an interesting type of menu by creating your own tools palette in the form of a palette stack that is called upon to open from the card Rather than a floating pallet stack separate from the card you can have the stack appear as a pulldown menu from a pulldown menu button You do this by checking the radio button Use Stack Panel at the bottom of the Basic Properties section of the pulldown menu button s Property Inspector CHAPTER 26 THE FIELD PROPERTY INSPECTOR Close LiveCode if it is not already closed no need to save and then reopen it FIELD BASIC PROPERTIES Fig 26 1 115 ea field Field ID 1006 Basic Properties B gt O field Field ID 1006 Contents H b Tooltip Name Field C
126. nt Location i io __ Resize Right Bottom Layer Number Fig 24 6 Button Size amp Position LEFT eft RIGHT right TOP top BOTTOM bottom Sets the locations of the left right top and bottom of the button Left and Right are x coordinates while Top and Bottom are y coordinates Together all four constitute the rect of the button E g set the left of button 1 to 225 set the top of button 1 to 256 set the right of button 1 to 339 set the bottom of button 1 to 326 The above four lines of code are the equivalent of writing set the rect of button 1 to 225 256 339 326 LAYER layer Indicates the layered position of the button in reference to all other controls on the card NUMBER number Indicates the position of the button in reference only to other buttons on the card Thus a button s Number may be less than a button s Layer BUTTON TEXT FORMATTING MARGINS Sets how far left or right justified text can be set next to the margin of the button You can add an icon and make it appear either to the left right or top 113 of the text depending on whether or not you choose left center or right justified in the button s text formatting CHAPTER 25 MENU PROPERTY INSPECTOR Fig 24 1C Menu controls option menu pulldown menu combo box and pop up menu may look like fields but are not even though they may have lists of words in their menus They are called buttons but
127. nto the Message Box You could do more important things with on keyDown MyKey on keyDown MyKey if MyKey is not a number then answer You must enter a number else pass keyDown end keyDown The above script uses the conditional if else format which is discussed in Chapter 16 Briefly though the idea is that here you want a field that accepts only numbers not letters If the user mistakenly types a letter the message You must enter a number appears instead of the letter being typed in the field If it is a number the else pass keyDown part of the script passes the number along to the field wnere the number then appears 54 The toUpper and toLower words are functions that direct LiveCode to convert any typed letters to upper or lower case Try this in a field script on keyDown MyKey put toUpper MyKey into the selection end keyDown This script converts any typed letters into upper case The reason it works is When you select text within a field the selected text is called the selection which is also a type of container You can put things into a container so if you put text into a selection it replaces what was selected If the user clicks in a field but doesn t select any words and there is only an insertion point this is still a selection but one than consists of 0 characters If you put text into that barebones selection the result is text added at that insertion point In the above keyDown script the
128. nu choices to be displayed on the menu button The Basic Properties section of the Tab Menu Tab Panel button Fig 24 1C has a Tabs box for giving names to the individual tabs The script of the Tab Menu button resembles that of other menu buttons Commonly the Tab Menu control is used to navigate to different cards or to show changing images or text in the box below the Tabs BUTTON ICONS amp BORDER Fig 24 2 108 O button Button ID 1004 Icons amp Border rey Icon 0 Hilitelcon 0 Disabled Icon 0 Visited Icon 0 Armed icon 0 PRZ EN EL Hover Icon 0 ral Three D M Border Mi Hilite border Border width 2 _ Shadow Shadow Offset 4 Fig 24 2 Buttons Icons amp Border ICON icon You can choose any image even an animated GIF to appear as an icon on the button by choosing its ID number provided the image resides with the stack whether visible or invisible A good place to store the image is the mainstack since all the substacks refer back to the mainstack The position of the icon left center or right justified on the button can be set in the Text Formatting section of the button object inspector HILITE ICON hilitelcon With this option a different icon of choice appears when the mouse is down on the button returning to the original icon when the mouse is released i e the mouse is up or the cursor moves outside the button DISABLED ICON disabledicon Changes t
129. o the script reads put Bob said Let s go home into field 1 Good Or you could keep the quotation marks in the form of the script word quote put Bob said amp quote amp Let s go home amp quote into field 1 CHAPTER 16 IF THEN ELSE AND REPEAT STRUCTURES 74 The if then else structure is a powerful tool that enables the construction of conditional statements within scripts Examples if there is a field data then put 12 into field data beep end if The end if part is needed if there are more than one command line End if informs LiveCode that the sequence of conditional directions after then has ended If there is only a single command though one can shorten everything to just one line and there is no need for an end if For example if there is a field data then put 12 into field data Good For clarity some programmers feel it is always clearer to use the end if using 3 lines of code even if the statement could technically be written on one line Thus if there is a field data then put 12 into field data end if else The e se word is used when an alternative choice is introduced into the script Example on mouseUp if there is a field data then put 12 into field data else go next end if end mouseUp Alternatively on mouseup if there is a field data then put 12 into field data el
130. o use the stack s name rather than its title when scripting MAIN STACK mainStack If you have a mainstack A and a mainstack B open and no substacks and you want mainstack B to become the substack of mainstack A you can change mainstack B to a substack of A by selecting A from B s Main Stack pulldown menu Then when you open Stack A s Application Browser you will see that A is listed as the Main Stack and B as the substack of A At that point you can discard stack B livecode since you have just duplicated it to be a part of Stack A as a substack In doing this bear in mind that a main stack can have a substack but a substack cannot have its own substack CONTROLS decorations Enables you to select which combination of title bar controls you would like to see for open close or magnify Fig 22 2 SHAPE windowShape If you import an image into LiveCode particularly a PNG image which can have transparent areas note the ID number of the image in that image s Property Inspector If you then set the Shape of the stack to the image s ID number the stack will take on the shape of the image A stack doesn t have to be rectangular It can have any shape and even have holes in it where the transparencies are located VISIBLE visible Checking the visible box enables you to see the stack Unchecked the stack is hidden not closed but invisible Note tha
131. o a disabled icon of your choice when the button is disabled E g set the disabledicon of btn 1 to 210001 HOVER ICON hoverlcon Specifies your icon of choice when the mouse hovers over the button SHADOW shadow Determines if the button has a shadow BUTTON COLORS amp PATTERNS Fig 24 3 109 O button Button ID 1004 Colors amp Patterns HH u la Text f Clear Fill Clear Hilited text f Clear Border Color f Clear Top 3D bevel FClear 3 Bottom 3D bevel Clear Shadow f Clear Focus border f Clear Fig 24 3 Button Colors amp Patterns TEXT foregroundColor alternatively textcolor Sets the button s text color FILL backgroundColor backgroundPattern Sets the button s background color or pattern HILITED TEXT hiliteColor hilitePattern Sets the color or pattern surrounding the button s text when the button is clicked on To see this effect uncheck the Three D box in the Icons amp Border section of the Property Inspector BORDER COLOR borderColor borderPattern Colors the button s border To see this effect uncheck the Three D box in the Icons amp Border section of the Property Inspector and be sure the button s border is set wide enough to see You can do the same for a card or field SHADOW shadowColor shadowPattern Sets the color or pattern of the button s shadow Be sure the Shadow box is checked in the Icons amp Border se
132. o indicate when the mouse has entered left or is pressed down on the image E g 111 on mouseDown set the ink of btn 1 to notSrcCopy end mouseDown on mouseUp set the ink of btn 1 to srcCopy end mouseUp 3 button Button ID 1004 Blending gt Blend Level QE 0 Ink noop notSrcAnd notSrcAndReverse notSrcCopy notSrcOr notSrcOrReverse notSrcXor reverse set srcAnd srcAndReverse srcCopy Preview selected image Preview Fig 24 5 Button Blending BUTTON SIZE AND POSITION The Lock Size and Position checkbox locks the position and size of the button so that it does not move around or resize inadvertently during development When the box is checked the button cannot be moved with the mouse However it can still be moved with the arrow keys when selected in Edit mode more quickly 10 pixels vs 1 pixel if you hold the Shift Key down while using the arrow keys FIT CONTENT Narrows the button to fit the length and height of the words LOCATION oc The oc of a button is where the center of the button lies in x and y coordinates relative to the stack The upper left corner of a stack by default has a loc of 0 0 The diagram to the right of the Location area illustrates the x and y axes of the button s loc Fig 24 6 112 button Button ID 1004 Size amp Position Zz 8 gt _ Lock size and position Width 8 Fit content gt Height gt Fit conte
133. of field 2 while put the value of the clickline returns the actual text of the line Similarly in regard to numbers you might have a script like ask What numbers would you like to multiply put it If you had typed in 6 9 in the ask dialog box and clicked the OK button the Message Box would just say 6 9 However if you scripted it as ask What numbers would you like to multiply put the value of it then the Message Box would indicate 54 Here use of the value calculated the expression the user intended 6 9 and returned the result 54 the random Use the random to generate random numbers Example put the random of 10 or put random 10 randomly generates a number from 1 through 10 the round The round rounds off numbers to the nearest whole digit Examples the round of 12 4 returns 12 the round of 12 5 returns 13 the next number up the round of 12 5 returns 13 the next number down the numberFormat There are times when you want to produce a number with many decimal places to the right for accuracy At other times you may just want to list the number in dollars format with only two decimal places to the right for cents In each message handler in which you describe a calculation you should first indicate the numberFormat that you would like to use unless of course you are OK with the default numberFormat Once the message handler ends LiveCode 69 automatically rever
134. on Fit Content resets the width and height of the field to fit the field s content FIELD TEXT FORMATTING Fig 26 3 120 O field Field ID 1006 Text Formatting is a gt Font i Size f g Style F B GO amp Align 5 o Margins f 8 f Change Case Fig 26 3 field Text Formatting FONT textFont Sets the type of font for the field If the field s Font option is empty the default is that of the card If the card s Font field is empty the default is the Font setting of the stack If the stack s Font field is also empty the default is that of the system Sometimes a font that appears one way on Macintosh appears significantly different on Windows like to use Arial as a font that looks fairly the same on both computers but it is a good idea to compare how your standalone application looks on both Mac and Windows SIZE textSize Sets the size of the text STYLE font Sets whether the font is Plain Bold Italic or Underline MARGINS margins Sets the margins between the text and the edges of the field The Change Case button is grayed out in buttons it applies to fields though In fields you have the option of making the text all capitals all lower case the first letter of each word capitalized Title case or placing the first letter of sentences in capitals Sentence case although this doesn t capitalize the first letter of the second and further par
135. operty Inspector is unlocked which means that every time you open a new Property Inspector the previous Inspector closes so only one Property Inspector remains open at a time By locking the Inspector it remains open so that more than one inspector can remain open for comparison To avoid repetition when discussing the Property Inspectors of stacks cards and other objects since the various Property Inspectors are largely similar will confine the discussion to the pertinent differences For further information consult the LiveCode dictionary CHAPTER 22 THE STACK PROPERTY INSPECTOR Open the stack Property Inspector by right clicking on the stack and selecting Stack Property Inspector If you only have a single button mouse click with the Control key down Look at the pulldown menu at the top of the stack Property Inspector which enables you to access a number of properties of the stack that you can modify For the purposes of this introductory book will only discuss the most useful features in my experience STACK BASIC PROPERTIES Fig 22 1 92 Basic Properties La Select a set of title bar controls DOR Name Untitled 1 Title eoe IE Main stack Untitled 1 B Controls default x oY Shape 0 TX _ Metal texture M Live Resizing M Shadow visible Underline links Format for printing Float above everything Minimized Open minimized Buffer display Purge stack on close Purge
136. ordinary on message handler and the line return myTotal places myTotal into a system container called the result But the result is like the variable it we discussed previously it can get lost Nothing is done with the result unless the first handler asks for it put the result into field 1 If you forgot to write put the result in the first handler the first handler wouldn t find out about the result And even if the first handler does write put the result it had better do so immediately since lots of other script lines can call for 65 the result which may change so if the request for the result is written too late in the script there is the possibility that a different result might replace the original This problem is avoided with function handlers where the result is automatically returned immediately to the original handler on mouseUp a message handler put 20 into tfirstno put 30 into tsecondno put 50 into tthirdno put myCalc tfirstno tsecondno tthirdno into field 1 Note that tfirstno tsecondno tthirdno are enclosed in parentheses here because myCalc is now a function end mouseUp function myCalc num1 num2 num3 a function handler in the stack script put num1 num2 num3 into myTotal return myTotal end myCalc The difference between using the function handler as opposed to a second message handler is that myTotal is automatically returned from the function handler to the mouseUp message handler without h
137. ouseUp on calculateEverything lt do this long and detailed calculation gt end calculateEverything You could have both of these handlers in a single button script Then when the mouse is up the script will carry out the long and complicated calculation However what if you want to use this script on every card in the stack e g a stack of invoices in which the long and complicated calculation needs to be carried out on every card Then it would make more sense to leave the mouseUp handler in the button but place the on calculateEverything handler in the stack script In that way you don t have to keep duplicating the on calculateEverything script on every button or card Moreover if you decide to make some changes to the long and detailed calculation you don t have to tediously change it in each card s button or card You just need to change the script once in the stack script Thus it requires a little judgment as to whether to place scripts in objects cards or stack Putting a script in a card makes it available to all objects on the card Putting a script in a stack makes it available to all cards in the stack and their objects Putting a script in a mainstack makes it available to all the substacks as well Scripts Inside Groups Caution Be cautious in assigning scripts to background groups particularly those with a mouseUp handler It can lead to confusing results A background group however small visu
138. ove the group from all cards on which it appears The Select Grouped Feature The icon in the Icon Toolbar titled Select Grouped can be a source of confusion but shouldn t be Lets examine what this does When a group in Edit mode is selected showing its bounding box around the group as a whole checking Edit Select Grouped Controls changes the group s appearance so that now each of the controls within the group has its own individual selection box when you click on any of the controls so you can then Select each control within the group individually in Edit mode The 4 dots around the Select Grouped icon also move inward confirming that each control within the book will have its own selection box This does not mean that the group has been ungrouped The group is still there It is simply a way in which the programmer can conveniently make individual changes to the properties of any individual control within the group You can for instance alter the size or position of one of the group s controls or modify any of the control s other properties or its script Those changes will take place on all the cards that contain the group Some programmers may choose to always leave the group in Select Grouped mode compressed dots for the convenience of quickly modifying components of the group when desired If you try to delete one of the controls in Select Grouped mode that same control will be deleted on any of the cards tha
139. p as well as make any other changes to the group So Edit group provides more flexibility than does Select Grouped in editing the group So why not just use Edit group to do all the editing since it is the most versatile The only problem with Edit group is that when you use it on a group all the other objects on the card the field in this case are hidden so you cannot see them for reference as you modify the positions of controls within the group itself So use Select Grouped the dot handles surround each control in the group without removing from view other controls on the card for all the modifications you want to make to individual controls in a group except if you want to add or delete a new control in the group in which case you would need to use Edit Group When you finish editing a group using Edit Group either click again on the Edit Group icon in the Icon Toolbar or choose Object Stop Editing Group from the top LiveCode menu bar Then you have stopped editing and all the controls on the card will be visible again A group can contain a scrollbar so that buttons fields or images in the group will scroll with the group as whole Quit LiveCode There is no need to save your work but you can if you really want to CHAPTER 5 THE APPLICATION BROWSER Open MyTutorial livecode and open its Application Browser Fig 2 5 by selecting Tools Application Browser from the LiveCode menu bar This important tool lists all you
140. p box To transfer text from another document e g Word simply select the text and slide it onto the card field FIELD COLORS amp PATTERNS TEXT foregroundColor foregroundPattern Enables you to set the color or texture of the text An alternative word is textcolor which is easier to remember FILL backgroundColor backgroundPattern Fills in the background behind the text 119 You can be even more specific than setting the field s entire background color you can change the background color of individual lines or words in a field such as in the script set the backgroundColor of line 3 of field 1 to green set the backgroundColor of word 1 of line 2 of field 1 to red TEXTHILITE hiliteColor hilitePattern Sets the color of the background around the text when the text is selected like a highlighting marker pen would do SHADOW shadowColor shadowPattern Sets the shadow color or pattern of the field You first have to give the field a shadow and a shadow size shadowOffset through scripting as in set the shadow of field 1 to true gives the field a shadow set the shadowOffset of field 1 to 10 sets a size to the shadow set the shadowColor of field 1 to blue FIELD GRAPHIC EFFECTS Experiment with these graphic modifications of shadows The shadow effects also apply to text when the field is transparent FIELD SIZE AND POSITION Similar to Button size and position FIT CONTENT Clicking
141. ply a comment to a very long segment of text or block a long segment of script this can also be done by placing at the beginning and at the end of the text sequence TOO Ge eG ON EE ES OE BN as ie Coe Gin Ge eS ne oN OS This script was borrowed with permission from the Acme Script Writing Company www acmescript com Is was modified slightly on June 12 2008 RERUN LPR E REN EAA RERE SRAM STS ee ON RAN Ne RN eS RRNA ee RTM ee ea The comment sign can be used to deactivate a number of script lines at once on mouseUp lt do A gt lt do B gt 40 lt do C gt end mouseUp In the above script the only thing that will be carried out is B The comment sign can also inactivate an entire handler simply by putting the double dash right before the first line of the handler For instance on mouseUp lt do something gt end mouseUp The above script as a whole is inactive because the dashes were placed before on mouseUp There is then no need to place dashes before the other lines in the script Scripting pearl Sometimes when reading someone else s button script you come across an unfamiliar word and you don t know whether or not this is an actual LiveCode dictionary word or one made up by the programmer that refers to a handler the developer created somewhere else in a card or stack script By right clicking on the word LiveCode will take you directly to the dictionary if itis a legitimate LiveCode wo
142. put Every before field Test for a field put 6 into tTemporaryLevel for a local variable put Total before gFinalscore for a global variable However you can t use the put command to make an alteration within a custom property Since custom properties are indeed properties you can only use the set command as is done for all other kinds of properties Thus set the gameLevel of this stack to 12 and don t forget to include the word the Also do not use quotes to refer to a custom property If you want to make more detailed changes to a custom property you need a somewhat roundabout way first putting the property into a temporary variable and then setting the custom property to the temporary variable as in the following on mouseUp put the myLastScore of this stack into tTempscore tTempscore being a local variable put Beginner after tTempscore changes the tTempscore variable set the myLastScore of this stack to ttempscore end mouseUp Yes we also used the same technique of using an intermediary temporary variable when we wanted to script a change to an object s script because scripts and custom properties are properties 62 CHAPTER 12 ME vs THE TARGET Sometimes buttons can do different things even though their scripts are the same if you use the word me on mouseUp put the short name of me after field 1 end mouseUp Then whenever you click the button that b
143. r end repeat pop card lt then use tlnfoHolder in some way on the originally pushed card gt This script can unfold much faster by not traveling directly to the cards Th repeat with x 3 to the number of cards put field 1 of card x amp return after tInfoHolder end repeat lt then use tlnfoHolder in some way on the original card gt If you do want to actually go from one card to the next through the stack this will go much quicker by first setting lockscreen to true set lockscreen to true or lock screen In that way all the action is done behind the scenes without having to add time by visually showing each card in succession Sometimes when there is a repeat loop that takes a long time to act you may want to add some sort of progress indicator to let the user know that yes the script is progressing and the program did not freeze This could be an animated button a busy cursor a text field that progressively indicates the number of times the loop has repeated or a progress bar Unfortunately for a long process the overhead of showing this progress also adds time to the process Depending on what you are trying to do you may want to take this into account when choosing how to display this progress In general the speed of an animated button is quicker than a busy cursor which in turn is quicker than a text based progress field which in turn is quicker than a progress bar Thanks to Sarah Reichelt for these speed suggestion
144. r routine with lots of other scripting gt put tHolder into field Total 56 end mouseUp The message handler remembers what tHo der refers to and can act on this information at some further point in the handler s script tHolder has a limited memory span though since once the handler finishes tHolder forgets what it held For instance consider the following two handlers in the same button script one for mouseDown an one for mouseUp on mouseDown add 1 to tHolder by default Holder is originally considered to contain 0 end mouseDown on mouseUp put tHolder end mouseUp You might expect that the Message Box on mouseUp would show a number referring to the contents of tHo der But the Message Box will only say tHolder That is because from one handler to another the script forgot what tHolder meant so it just puts the word tHolder into the Message Box by default Local Variables If one declares a local variable customarily preceded by an I at the top of the script outside the handlers LiveCode remembers the value for Ho der anywhere within the script Thus in script local Holder on mouseDown add 1 to Holder end mouseDown on mouseUp put IHolder end mouseUp the Message Box would say 1 Not only that continuing to click on the button will result in the continuous adding of the number When IHolder is declared outside the handlers the button remembers I Holder for the
145. r stacks main and sub their cards and other objects on the cards It also lists any audioClips and videoClips that you have directly imported Since audioClips and videoClips remain unseen unless they are referred to in the scripting the application Browser lets you know they are there and reminds you of their name so they can be referred to in a script You can 33 also check how an audioclip sounds or a movie looks by double clicking on its name in the Application Browser If you do not directly import an audioClip or videoClip and incorporate it as part of the stack but have simply referred to it externally via a Quicktime Player object on the card the referenced sound or movie will be referenced within the Player object and not listed in the audioClips or videoClips sections Right clicking or Control clicking with a one button mouse on any card listed in the Application Browser brings up a menu that allows you to quickly go to that card or bring up the card s Property Inspector or Script which you can change You can for instance change the order of the card within the stack by changing the card s number within its Property Inspector Right clicking on any of the column headings of the Application Browser brings up other options for column heads Just passing the cursor over a column head reveals the column s purpose On the right side screen of the Application Browser you may have to expand the Application Browser win
146. rd or directly to the developer s handler if it is a word made up by the developer It is also useful to name the word something that immediately lets the user know that it is made up e g MyVariable The terms on and command are synonymous but some people prefer to use command instead of on as a reminder that the word that follows is their own made up word and not an established LiveCode word CHAPTER 7 MOUSE RELATED WORDS We begin with mouse handlers since they will be used in scripting examples described below on mouseUp on mouseDown on mouseEnter on mouseLeave on mouseRelease on mouseMove on mousestillDown 4 Note that it is conventional to capitalize the U in mouseUp and the D in mouseDown etc for easier reading However LiveCode is generally case insensitive and it make little difference whether you capitalize letters Speech command voice names are an exception see Chapter 20 Note also that a string a sequence of characters or words e g the words The mouse has just been pressed as in the script On mouseUp put The mouse has just been pressed into Message Box End mouseUp has to be in quotes in the script or LiveCode won t understand Actually if there were only one word in the quoted text quotes are usually not needed but it is good practice when referring to a text string regardless of whether it is one word or more to place in quotes any object name e g the nam
147. re is an insertion point in the field just before you type anything When you put toUpper MyKey into the selection you are inserting the upper case form of the letter you are typing at the insertion point This type of scripting is further clarified in the Chapter 13 which discusses Functions The keyboard contains 4 arrow keys up down left and right Scripting to direct what happens when an arrow key is pressed has the following format on arrowKey MyKey if MyKey is right then beep if MyKey is left then lt do something else gt if MyKey is up then lt do another thing gt if MyKey is down then lt do yet another thing gt end arrowKey CHAPTER 11 VARIABLES AND CUSTOM PROPERTIES It Temporary Variables Local Variables Global Variables Custom Properties Variables are extremely valuable unseen storage containers into which one can put something particularly words and or numbers The purpose of using a variable is to have the script remember some information for future reference How long the variable remembers its contents depends on the type of variable 55 The variable it has the shortest term memory Local and global variables and custom properties have progressively longer memory spans When naming variables the first letter of the variable must be either a letter or an underscore and the variable name should not contain spaces The variable name should not duplicate an e
148. right edge of the field and continue to the next line without starting a new paragraph LOCK TEXT ockText This is a critically important feature of the field Property Inspector If Lock Text is left unchecked the user will be able to type into the field If the text is locked the user cannot type in the field but may still be able to select see Focusable below When locked the field will behave like a button responding to mouse clicks to do things according to the field s script OPAQUE opaque When unchecked the space around the letters is transparent and the underlying color and texture of the card or other object shows through When checked the color of the background of the letters is by default white but could be any color you wish to set it at in the Colors amp Patterns section of the field s Property Inspector FOCUSABLE traversalOn When checked it means that the user can select and copy the text within the field even if the field is locked and the user cannot type text in the field FOCUS BORDER showFocusBorder When this is checked the showFocusBorder is true the border of the field will hilite when the user clicks on the field regardless of whether or not the field is locked Hiliting a border 117 confirms to the user that the field has been clicked on TAB ON RETURN autoTab When Tab On Return is checked the cursor when at the bottom of a field moves to the next field number when the Ta
149. rt into LiveCode an odd shaped PNG image with its accompanying transparent areas note the image s ID number in the image s Property Inspector in the Basic Properties section For instance if the ID number is 1008 you can set the shape of the stack to the shape of the image the image does not have to be visible by typing set the windowShape of this stack to 1008 To return to the default stack shape type set the windowShape of this stack to none The only problem with setting the stack to a unique windowShape is that there is no title bar and the stack cannot be moved manually You can resolve this problem in several ways You can type set the loc of this stack to the screenloc This will at least position your stack at the center of the screen Alternatively you can write a special stack script thanks to LiveCode guru and artist Scott Rossi to allow you to drag the unusually shaped stack manually local sgDragging sgLeftOffset sgTopOffset on mouseDown put item 1 of the mouseLoc into sgLeftOffset put item 2 of the mouseLoc into sgTopOffset put true into sgDragging end mouseDown on mouseMove lock screen if sgDragging is true then set the left of this stack to item 1 of globalloc the mouseLoc sgLeftOffset set the top of this stack to item 2 of globalloc the mouseLoc sgTopOffset end if unlock screen end mouseMove on mouseRelease put false into sgDragging end mouseRelease 89 on mouseUp put false into sg
150. rums livecode com index php LiveCode Forums http lessons runrev com LiveCode lessons http livecode com resources LiveCode Resources https www youtube com user RunRevLtd videos YouTube videos http newsletters livecode com september issue57 newsletter1 php arrays http lessons runrev com m datagrid Datagrid instruction http quality runrev com Bugs MOBILE DEVICES Holgate C LiveCode Mobile Development Beginner s Guide 2012 Packt Publishing 163 Lavieri E LiveCode Mobile Development Hotshot 2013 Packt Publishing Lavieri E LiveCode Mobile Development Cookbook 2014 Packt Publishing MobGUI Custom controls for mobile devices http lessons runrev com m 257 1 I 23275 how do i become an ios developer How do I Become an 10S Developer 164
151. s A variation in the form of a countdown to blastoff on mouseUp repeat with x 10 down to 1 put x into msg wait 1 second end repeat put Blast off end mouseUp repeat until An example on mouseUp put 0 into tCounter repeat until tCounter 30 put tCounter 1 into tCounter put tCounter into msg or just write put tCounter wait 10 ticks or just write wait 10 end repeat end mouseUp 78 The first line of the script starts off Counter at 0 Counter being a made up variable you could have made up any other word e g Hummingbird Actually you don t even have to write the line put 0 into tCounter since LiveCode will by default assume tCounter is 0 The script tells the counting process to put the evolving sum after every 10 ticks into the Message Box until tCounter reaches 30 Repeat until can also be used in other contexts on mouseUp repeat until the mouse is down lt perform some process gt end repeat end mouseUp The value of a handler such as the above is that it provides the user a way of interrupting a script by pressing the mouse down repeat while An example on mouseDown put 0 into tHolder repeat while the mouse is down put tHolder 1 into tHolder put tHolder end repeat end mouseDown This script will put a continuous counting sequence into the Message Box continuing as long as the mouse is down next repeat Sometimes when operating on a collection of things within a
152. s can be used to set the properties of any Inspector You can find these script words using the tooltip positioned over the words within each Property Inspector If you want to change a particular property such as the color of a card you could just click on the card s background color box and choose a color manually Or you could do it in a script E g set the backgroundColor of this card to red The set command then is very useful for setting the properties of objects The get command gets some particular information and doesn t do anything with it except store it temporarily in an invisible container called it t is a type of variable but then again we haven t discussed variables as yet One can then do something with the it For example say there is a field titled food and the field contains the word chocolate Then if one writes the script get the text of field food put it into msg the first of the above two lines will get the text chocolate from the field titled food and put the word chocolate into the container called it The second line puts the contents of it into the Message Box This is the same as saying put the text of field food into it put it into msg More briefly one could just write put field food into msg or just put field food Just different ways of expressing the same thing hide show You can hide or show stacks or controls placed on a
153. s designed as a series of Tabs Clicking on any of the Tabs can elicit a different action Scrollbars fig 3 3 Progress bar m Little arrows Slider Scrollbar 3 1l Fig 3 3 Scrollbars While you might not think all the following are really scrollbars that is what the title bars of their Property Inspectors say and it is how they are referred to in scripts Chapter 25 Progress Bar Can be programmed to display the progress of an event Slider Can manually change the parameters of an event e g sound level Little Arrows Can be used to create a customized vertical scrollbar often used to increase or decrease a numerical count in a field Scrollbar Can be used to create a customized horizontal or vertical scrollbar IMAGE AND QUICKTIME CONTROLS Fig 3 4 23 IMAGE AREA QUICKTIME PLAYER Fig 3 4 Image Area Used to import images particularly in JPEG PNG GIF or BMP format PNG images can be imported with alpha channels This means that transparent areas will show up as transparent in LiveCode JPEG is a compressed format that saves space and is useful particularly for photographs GIF images do not support as many colors as do JPEGs but take up less memory and are excellent for cartoon images GIFs can also be imported as GIF animations and can have transparent areas Quicktime Player Can import Quicktime movies as well as sounds in the common AIF and WAV formats and image files including GIF anima
154. s field the word s you want to find In Select from the pulldown menu the areas where you want to search the current selection this card this stack etc Case Sensitive if checked the search is exact in regard to case e g d versus D Obey Don t Search Properties Gives directions not to search the text in fields that have Find Command Ignores in their Property Inspectors Search Marked Unmarked Cards Limits the search to either marked or unmarked cards Name Script Custom Field Text Button Text All Other Check each of these areas in which you want to search Custom means that the search should include Custom Properties as well Type Name Card Stack Columns Once the search is done by clicking on the Find button LiveCode indicates the places where the search term was found Clicking on the found word s will take you to the spot where the word s appear s The number of finds is displayed right under the Find button Remove From List Button Removes a selected line from the list of locations in the above columns Replace With Type in this field what word s you would like to use as a replacement for the search word s Replace All Clicking this button replaces all the found words with the words in the Replace With field Sometimes when the number of occurrences of the search term is large you have go through the search and replace process several times until clicking on the Find b
155. s titled Sunflower it can be made gradually visible with a special effect show image Sunflower with visual effect dissolve show image Sunflower with visual effect the myStackEffect of this stack Human Speech You can introduce the spoken sounds through the command revSpeak How are you today revSpeak field Lesson 1 If you want a particular male female or other voice to speak and not the default voice type in the Message Box on Mac as different voices do not appear to work on Windows revSpeechVoices That will give you a list within the Message Box of the different voices that can be used for revSpeak Once you have picked a voice you like e g Bruce use it in the following script revSetSpeechVoice Bruce revSpeak How are you today it will be Bruce s voice Interestingly case sensitive letters generally not important in LiveCode scripting are important in typing the voice name revSetSpeechVoice bruce won t work since B is not capitalized revSetSpeechPitch sets the pitch of the speech from 30 to 127 on Mac revSetSpeechSpeed sets the speed of the speech from 1 to 300 on mouseUp revSetSpeechVoice Agnes revsetSpeechPitch 40 revSetSpeechSpeed 100 revSpeak Hello everybody end mouseUp 88 windowShape You don t have to be satisfied with the plain old rectangular stack window A stack can be any shape If you impo
156. se go next end mouseUp if then statements can be nested For instance 75 on mouseUp if there is a field data then if field data is empty then put 12 into field data beep end if end if end mouseUp Pearl Pressing the Tab key while in the Script Editor automatically indents the script lines neatly If the lines don t align suspect something wrong with the script syntax and or The words and or enable greater versatility in creating conditions for if then else statements Example if tCounter is 10 and tColor is red or tColor is blue then beep In the latter statement a beep will not occur unless tCounter is 10 and tColor is either red or blue Do not confuse the word and with the concatenation amp The latter is just used to connect strings or add spaces Chapter 15 repeat lt number gt repeat with repeat for each repeat until repeat while next repeat exit repeat repeat lt number gt The repeat structure is used in scripts where you want to repeat an action a number of times Like if then else statements with their end if repeat must have an ending end repeat signifying the end of the repeat directions For example repeat 10 times or just repeat 10 wait 1 second go to next card end repeat The above script takes you to the next 10 cards in succession each time with a delay of 1 second 76 There are several variations on the phrasing of a repeat stru
157. stablished LiveCode script or reserved word and it should not be in quotes The way variables are used can be demonstrated in the following examples It As you may recall in Chapter 9 in discussing the answer and ask dialogs the response of the user is immediately put into the unseen variable it ask What is your name put it into field UserName When the dialog box appears in the course of the above script the user types in his her name and then presses OK the user s name is immediately placed into the variable it You can then do with it whatever you want in the context of the script t though has a very short term memory If you have a later spot in the same script that also put something into an it the first it is lost from memory since one can only have one it at a time Thus if one is going to rely on it as a container it is best to use it immediately Any Any is a quick way to randomly select one of a list of things put any line of field 1 put the name of any button of this card or on this card put any field of this card Temporary Variables Temporary variables like it have a short memory It is good practice to put a small t before the name of your temporary variable to remind you that it is only temporary It can be used only within the confines of one message handler For instance on mouseUp put the number of lines in field data into tHolder add 5 to tHolder lt do some othe
158. such as Florida birds the script directs navigation to go to the card of the same name Florida birds as the link select selectedLine selectedText selection select before select after put empty replace You can regard the selection as a container into which you can add words or numbers Thus put something else into the selection completely replaces your selection with something else even if your selection is just an insertion point put empty into the selection putting empty deletes the selection You can do this with an entire field or a selection within the field put empty into word 2 of field 1 just removes word 2 put empty into field 1 removes the text in the entire field An alternative to put empty is put The word none is equivalent to saying 0 So while putting empty into a field erases the field putting none into the field would put a 0 into the field replace Replace replaces every instance of a word or phrase in a field or other container with another E g replace which with that in field 1 127 You can do this for an entire stack at once with Find and Replace in the Edit menu scroll The scroll or vscroll is the amount a field or group is scrolled down in pixels For instance set the scroll of field MyField to 50 The field text will shift vertically setting the scroll to 50 on enterInfield on returninField On enter nFiel
159. t shrink to bottom shrink to center or shrink to top visual effect stretch from bottom stretch from center or stretch from top visual effect venetian blinds visual effect wipe up wipe down wipe right or wipe left yk yh visual effect zoom close zoom in zoom open or zoom out The visual effect should be declared before the command to go to the card Examples on mouseUp visual effect barn door close go next end mouseUp The speed of the transitional effect can be specified as normal slow fast or very fast Example visual effect checkerboard slow You can also add an audioclip to the visual effect visual effect checkerboard slow with sound Whoosh aif You can expand upon the number of visual effects in your repertoire by calling up QuickTime s special effect dialog box answer effect brings up the Quicktime dialog box from which you choose the effect you want which is put into the variable it set the myStackEffect of this stack to it saves the QuickTime visual effect as a custom property of the stack for future use Then the effect can then be called from a handler e g 87 on mouseUp visual effect the myStackEffect of this stack go next end mouseUp Transitional effects can also be applied to objects on a card when showing or hiding an object For instance if a hidden image i
160. t contain the group But you cannot add a new control e g another button or field to the group when Select Grouped is hilited Compressed dots In order to do that Select Grouped needs to first be unhilited dots far apart Let s do that 1 Go to the first card the one with the field on it 2 Click on and unhilite the Select Group icon in the icon Toolbar so that the dots on the icon s corners are far apart 3 In Edit mode click on the Navigation button The button s dot handles should then surround the group as a whole 4 Select the Edit Group icon in the icon Toolbar Note that the field you had placed on the card becomes invisible enabling you to focus solely on editing the Navigation group In this mode you could remove a control add a control modify the size or position of a control etc When you are finished editing a group click again on the Edit Group icon this returns the card to the normal state where you 32 can see the rest of the contents on the card the field in this case The changes you have made will occur in all the cards in the stack that contain the group If you really wanted to ungroup a group click on the Ungroup icon in the Icon Toolbar To review When Edit Group is chosen all the objects on the cards other than the group that is to be edited are hidden enabling the programmer to focus attention solely on the group to be edited In this mode you can add other controls to the grou
161. t to protect and assign a password to The user will not be able to view the scripts in that stack without the password FILE STANDALONE APPL SETTINGS MAC Fig 34 5 an Standalone Application Settings for MyMainstack OS X 5 A K amp F amp F 2 General Stacks Copy Files Mac Windows Linux Web iOS Android Bug Reports Build for mM Mac OS X Universal _ Mac OS X PowerPC Only _ Mac OS X Intel Only Application Icon Use None Choose 4 Document Icon lt Use None Choose Icons to display on ask and answer dialogs Application Icon N Small Application Icon S PLIST O Enter the information and have Revolution write the PLIST file for you s Choose a PLIST file to import into the application bundle Name MyMainstack Document Type Signature 777 Document Extension Version Information Short Version 1 0 0 0 Long Version MyMainstack 1 0 0 0 Get Info String MyMainstack Version 1 0 0 0 Copyright Notice 2012 Allrights reserved worldwide Bundle Identifier com mymainstack Fig 34 5 Standalone Settings Mac 153 Build for Check MacOS X Intel if you are building for Mac Application icon Choose an icon for the Mac OS X application use icns icon format for Mac ico format for Windows An easy and immediate way to apply an icon to your Mac application is simply to slide the image file of interest onto the generic image in the upper left corner of the built application s Get Information
162. t when there is a checkbox involved in a Property Inspector checking off the box sets the property to true while unchecking it sets the property to false E g set the visible of this stack to false unchecks the Visible box and hides the stack USER CAN T ABORT SCRIPTS cantAbort Normally pressing command period Mac or control period Windows will stop an endlessly looping script Checking this box set cantAbort to true will not allow you to stop the script but will allow you to go nuts trying to decide how to turn off the script Better leave this box unchecked Note that positioning the mouse cursor over a word in the Property Inspector in most cases gives you the script word for setting the property STACK COLORS AND PATTERNS Fig 22 3 94 stack Untitled 1 ID 1002 Colors amp Patterns He Patterns Foreground Background Hilite Border Top Bottom Shadow Focus Link Colors Normal Click Visited Fig 22 3 Stack Colors and Patterns FOREGROUND foregroundColor This sets the color or the pattern of text in the stack s fields and buttons BACKGROUND backgroundColor backgroundPattern This sets the color or the pattern of all the cards in the stack If you want to select from a wide variety of colors simply type the colornames in the message box This will provide you with over 500 additional colors to select from set the backgroundColor of this stack to Bur
163. tack gt end preOpenStack The preOpenStack and OpenStack commands are automatically sent to every stack that opens If the stacks have no handlers for these words nothing happens However if the mainstack contains a preOpenStack or OpenStack handler then whenever a substack opens it will enact these handlers because of the message hierarchy flow from substack to stack To prevent this from happening it is a good idea to put the preOpenStack and OpenStack handlers in the script of the first card in the mainstack rather than in the stack script itself lockscreen lock screen unlock screen go invisible Suppose you want LiveCode to carry out a script in which the program goes to all the cards in a stack one by one and collects information from each For instance there may be a name field on each card and you want to compile a list of all names in the stack You could of course simply direct LiveCode to go to each card in succession a relatively slow process in which you see each card being flipped as the information is collected You can speed up the process significantly by setting lockscreen to true 100 On mouseUp set lockscreen to true or alternatively lock screen lt go to all the cards and do something with each behind the scenes and then return gt end mouseUp In that way you suspend all visibility of what is going on while the cards are visited The screen never refreshes until the end of the process and you don t se
164. te the playLoudness Examples 138 play player 1 equivalent of start player 1 and set the paused of player 1 to false When a player is paused play player resumes play from the paused spot stop playing player 1 equivalent of set the paused of player 1 to true Scripts inside the player on playStarted takes effect when the movie starts lt do something gt end playStarted on playStopped takes effect when the movie ends lt do something else gt end playStopped One line of code can set the player playing or not playing set the paused of player myPlayer to not the paused of player myPlayer You can also toggle pausing and resuming with the spacebar if focus with keyboard in the player Property Inspector is checked traversalOn is true set the playRate of player 1 to 2 double speed set the playLoudness of player 1 to 100 the maximum player loudness the QTversion The QTVersion returns the version of Quicktime on your computer if the QTVersion is 0 0 then answer Quicktime is not installed CHAPTER 29 ABSOLUTE VS REFERENCED FILE PATHS The Image and Quicktime Player objects can respectively reference images and movies from outside LiveCode The QuickTime Player as mentioned can also reference sounds Clicking on the source filename folder in the Basic Properties section of the Image or Player Property Inspector asks you to pick a file the Inspector then inscribes within the Prop
165. the result is not empty then beep indicating an unsuccessful search end mouseUp There are many commands within Livecode that return their success or failure by placing information into the result For example if there is no card Rumplestiltskin there would be a beep with the following script on mouseUp go to card Rumplestiltskin if the result is not empty then beep end mouseUp char word line text LiveCode is extremely powerful in dealing with individual components of text whether characters chars words strings or items all of which are termed chunks Example This is line 1 of this field It s a very nice line I think FII make more lines like this put char 1 of word 4 of line 3 of field MyField Message Box reads m put char 2 to 4 of word 4 of line 2 of field MyField Message Box reads ice Spaces and returns are chars 123 put line 3 of field MyField Message box reads I think PII make more lines like this You can refer to the entire text of a field put the text of field MyField into message or the text of field MyField same thing as the above script line but abbreviated or put field MyField even more abbreviated Note that the script word line refers to a string of characters up to a Return or Enter If the line goes to the right end of the field and automatically wraps to the next line it is still only one line the number o
166. the tooltip Arrow keys navigate through cards If checked this provides an easy way to navigate through the stack s cards using the right and left arrow keys Image editor Choose the image editor you want to use e g Photoshop to modify imported images FILE FILE NEW MAINSTACK Creates a new mainstack FILE NEW SUBSTACK Creates a new substack of the mainstack FILE CLOSE If there are more than one stack open this closes the selected stack as opposed to Quit Macintosh or Exit Windows which closes LiveCode and all the stacks that are open FILE IMPORT AS CONTROL Fig 34 1 EW Edit Tools Object Text Dev New Mainstack New Substack of MyMainstack Open Stack 0 Open Recent File gt Close W Close and Remove From Memory Image File 3 gt New Referenced Control gt Snapshot Audio File save S Video File Save As Text File Move Substack to File Revert to Saved All Images In Folder Share this Stack All Audio Files In Folder Standalone Application Settings Save As Standalone Application Page Setup Print Card P Fig 34 1 File Import As Control 148 Import as Control Imports the chosen files directly into LiveCode as part of the stack rather than sitting outside the stack and having to be referred to Directly imported files don t have to be stored separately outside the standalone application you create The kinds of files you can dire
167. tions It can even import PDF files Draw and Paint Tools Fig 2 2 Vector draw tools Draw vectors graphics which are geometric primitives such as points lines curves and shapes are based on mathematical equations to represent images as in a drawing program like Adobe Illustrator Experiment with the various tools including the gradient feature in the object s Inspector While vector drawings are generally less complex than bitmap images they can be increased in size without becoming pixelated Bitmap paint tools Can paint bitmaps images drawn as pixels as in a paint program like Adobe Photoshop You can use these tools to modify an image that has been imported into LiveCode You can also use them to create an image 24 from scratch in which case using one of the paint tools automatically creates an Image Area control that fills the card You draw within the Image Area similar to drawing on a canvas Bitmap images can be more complex than vector images and are good for photos Unlike vector images though they can become pixelated on attempting to enlarge the original image you have to plan the size and resolution of the original image in advance of placing it Experiment with the various tools There are other controls not shown in the Tools Palette that can be selected through the OBJECT NEW CONTROL menu Quit LiveCode no need to save Yay CHAPTER 4 GROUPS One or more controls on a card can be combined into
168. to place a backdrop of a particular color 101 set the backdrop to black set backdrop to none removes the backdrop set the backdrop to 153 255 51 It is also possible to set the backdrop with a pattern patterns can be found in the Colors and Patterns section of any Property Inspector To find the ID of a pattern simply hold the cursor over the pattern in the Property Inspector until the pattern s ID number appears as a tooltip LiveCode has over 150 of them You might want to try some Example set the backdrop to 208007 palette topLevel modeless modal Chapter 2 discussed the 4 general types of stack windows topLevel modal modeless and palette One stack type can be converted to another through scripting palette stack MyPersonalToolsStack go to stack MyPersonalToolsStack as palette an alternative script open stack MyPersonalToolsStack as palette still another alternative topLevel stack MyRegularStack modeless stack MyPreferencesStack modal stack MyCantLeaveSoEasilyStack Be careful in creating a modal stack It has no close box and you can t leave the stack until the user provides a response that allows the stack to close So you might want to include a button on the stack with a script such as close this stack to enable the user to leave If during development you want to get rid of an unwanted substack you can do this through the Application Browser TOOLS APPLICATION
169. ts it FIXED LINE HEIGHT fixedLineHeight Say you have five lines in the field and one of the words on line 2 is superlarge The word might overlap line 1 and look bad If you uncheck Fixed Line Height the distance between lines 2 and 1 will increase to adjust for the increased height of the word Otherwise the lines will remain the same distance from one another Another way of controlling this problem of large words is through the Text Height textHeight option Increasing the Text Height will in general increase the spacing between all the lines TEXT HEIGHT textHeight Sets the distance between lines Also sets the row width in tables FIRST INDENT firstindent The default is 0 meaning that there is no paragraph indentation If you increase the First Indent the first word of each paragraph will be indented accordingly Conversely if you make the First Indent a minus number the first paragraph line will not be indented but the other lines will This 118 is great but may cause the first word of the paragraph to be situated to the left of the left margin of the field and not visible This can be corrected by increasing the Margins property of the field which can be done in the Text Formatting section of the Property Inspector discussed below FIND COMMAND IGNORES dontSearch A very useful feature There is a Find command that can find any words wherever they may be in any field in the stack For instance you may have an
170. ts to the default numberFormat so you have to declare the numberFormat in each script handler that does a calculation if you want to use a special numberFormat The default numberFormat is O 7 HHHFF This means the maximum number of decimal places to the right of the decimal is 6 If the result of a calculation is 1 230456789 the script set the numberformat to lt numberformat gt the numberformat must be in quotes prior to the calculation shows the calculated number in different ways numberformat 0 1 230457 numberformat 0 1 23 a O at the end would be irrelevant numberformat 00 1 23 numberformat 00 01 23 The number of s after the decimal in the numberformat indicates the MAXIMUM no of decimal places to the right of the decimal that can appear in the result The number of Os after the decimal in the numberformat indicates PRECISELY the number of decimal places to the right of decimal that should appear The number of s or Os before numberformat decimal indicates the MINIMUM number of digits to the left of decimal that can appear Hence 1 23 appears as 01 23 for numberformat 00 00 or 0 00 is the general format used for money The bottom line e Use 00 for the dollar format which will always be calculated to 2 decimal places e In general keep 0 as the default which will calculate up to 6 decimal places if needed average The average is a function that ta
171. ures Chapter 17 Cursors Chapter 18 Printing Chapter 19 Internet Communication Chapter 20 Special Effects Scripting Chapter 21 Script Debugging SECTION 3 PROPERTY INSPECTORS Chapter 22 Stack Property Inspector Stack Scripting Chapter 23 Card Property Inspectors Card Scripting Chapter 24 Button Property Inspector Chapter 25 Menu Property Inspectors Menu Scripting Chapter 26 Field Property Inspector Field Scripting Chapter 27 Image Property Inspector Chapter 28 Player amp AudioClips Property Inspectors Chapter 29 Absolute vs Referenced File Paths Chapter 30 Graphics Property Inspectors Chapter 31 Scrollbar Slider Little Arrows Progress Bar Property Inspectors Chapter 32 Multiple Objects Property Inspector Chapter 33 Groups Property Inspector SECTION 4 THE MENU BARS Chapter 34 The LiveCode Menu Bars REFERENCES SECTION 1 LIVECODE BASICS CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION What Is LiveCode LiveCode formerly called Runtime Revolution is an intuitive and powerful programming environment with a short learning curve in which programming is done in simple English with rapid results Whether in business education or game development many people do not have the resources to hire an IT person or the time to learn programming languages with steep learning curves LiveCode is an extremely versatile program where in very little time one can create advanced applications with text interactive buttons images a
172. utton s particular name is put after field 1 This saves time in scripting as every button has the same script The word target can be even more efficient Consider the following script in a group that contains many buttons on mouseUp put the short name of the target after field display end mouseUp In this case there are no scripts at all in the buttons in the group when clicking on a button the mouseUp command passed through to the group which traps and enacts the message Since the actual target of the click was the button the short name of the button is put into the Message Box So you can see how the words me and target differ Grab me Grab me is sort of an oddball command that relies on the word me Grab me is used to drag an object in Run Mode when the mouse is down The button can be dragged all around the card following the cursor if it has the script on mouseDown grab me end mouseDown This can be useful in certain kinds of game development or if you want to provide a degree of user customization in positioning to your stack CHAPTER 13 FUNCTIONS Both a function and a command ask the program to do some action A function also asks the program to bring back some information so in a sense it can be 63 regarded as a special type of command that expects some information to be returned first TIME AND DATE FUNCTIONS To illustrate how time and date functions work consider the following functions as writte
173. utton results in no further finds of the search word s TOOLS TOOLS TOOLS PALETTE Shows or hides the Tools Palette TOOLS APPLICATION BROWSER Fig 2 5 Shows the Application Browser See Chapter 5 for a description of the Application Browser 156 TOOLS MENU BUILDER Not discussed in this book Personally have found it easier to construct my own menus outside the Menu Builder TOOLS MESSAGE BOX Toggles the showing and hiding of the Message Box OBJECT OBJECT GROUP UNGROUP SELECTED Places the selected objects into a group or ungroups them OBJECT EDIT GROUP Hides all objects on the card except the selected group You can then focus on editing the group whether changing the properties of objects within the group or adding or removing controls from the group OBJECT REMOVE GROUP When a selected group is a background on a number of cards selecting Remove Group will remove that group from the card of interest without removing the group from the other cards It is important to select Remove Group rather than just pressing the keyboard Delete button or choosing Clear Objects from the LiveCode Edit menu Those choices would delete the group from all cards in the stack and LiveCode will issue a warning that this will occur if you proceed OBJECT PLACE GROUP When you have a group that you want to place on a card that does not yet have that group on it selecting Place Group puts the group on that card Thus Remove
174. ux iOS Android Mac OS X Windows Linux iOS Android Mac OS X Windows Linux iOS Android Mac OS X Windows Linux iOS Android Mac OS X Windows Linux iOS Android Mac OS X Windows Linux iOS Android Mac OS X Windows Linux iOS Mac OS X Windows Linux iOS Android Mac OS X Windows Linux Type object Synonyms cd See Also templatecard Keyword Introduced 1 0 Platforms Desktop Server Web and Mobile Supported Operating Systems B amp Ale Summary An object type that is a single page of a stack Examples zard to true Comments LiveCode Dictionary Use the card object type to display different sets of controls in the same stack window show cards command show number all cards Desktop Server Web Mac OS X Windows Linux iOS Android supercard keyword Desktop Server Web Mac OS X Windows Linux iOS Android templateCard keyword Desktop Server Web Mac OS X Windows Linux iOS Android ES lt gt card A card corresponds to a single page of a stack one card of each stack can be seen at a time Each stack contains one or more cards To access the scripting dictionary select Dictionary from the top LiveCode tools bar To access all the LiveCode words be sure the All option is selected at the top of the leftmost column You have already been exposed to some scripting words The good news is that you don t have to remember all of the many useful words They are remembered for you being
175. where the stack somehow gets stuck way at the top of the monitor and you can t grab its title bar to reposition the stack manually STACK TEXT FORMATTING Fig 22 7 O stack Untitled 1 ID 1002 Text Formatting aa vie Ei Font Size iv Style P B Align S Margins Fig 22 8 Stack text formatting You can set the font and font size for all the buttons and fields in the stack You 98 can also set the Style of the text Plain Bold Italic Underlined and the text alignment right center or left justified Note that cards and fields also have the option of text formatting When there is a conflict the card setting overrides the stack setting and the field setting overrides the card and stack Different fields can have different text properties FONT textFont Sets the type of font for the stack as a whole SIZE textSize Sets the size of the text STYLE Sets whether the font is Plain Bold Italic or Underline with additional options of Box text 3D box text Link text and Strikeout Stack Scripting open close vs show hide Open stack and close stack differ from show stack and hide stack even though both sets of commands change the visibility of the stack When you hide a stack it is still open but is just invisible When you close a stack it actually closes and cannot be seen by just issuing a show command E g close stack MyStack open stack MyStack hide stack MyStac
176. window on close Default Can t delete Can t modify User can t abort scripts s Te E Fig 22 1 Stack basic properties Fig 22 2 Decorations NAME name The Name field is where you give the stack a name commonly a single word for easy scripting reference When you refer to a stack in a script you will use that name when referring to the stack E g set the name of this stack to MyStack put the name of this stack into message Do not prefix the name of a stack with rev This is reserved for the LiveCode engine Also even if you use a single word for the name always surround names or other strings of text with quote marks to avoid conflict with other words such as variables discussed later which never have quote marks Note that the script word set is used when setting any of the properties of an object via a script TITLE title The Title you give the stack is not used in scripting It is simply the words that you want the user to see in the stack s title bar at the top of the stack The Title may be more colorful than the stack s name which the user does not see If you do not give the stack a title then the stack s name becomes the title by default 93 You may have wondered why your stack has an asterisk next to its name in the stack title bar The asterisk disappears when you have assigned a title to the stack The absence of the asterisk serves as a reminder to the programmer t
177. y any time you want to access another stack that is not part of the stack file that you are in If you build a standalone and want your plugin stack to be included for example to access scripts in the plugin stack then include the plugin stack together with the standalone As long as the standalone application has the start using stack MyPlugin Stack within it the plugin stack will be accessed VIEW VIEW GO FIRST Command 1 Goes to the first card in the stack VIEW GO PREV Command 2 Goes to the previous card in the stacking order e g from card 5 to card 4 VIEW GO NEXT Command 3 Goes to the next card in the stacking 160 order e g from card 4 to card 5 VIEW GO LAST Command 4 Goes to the last card in the stack VIEW GO RECENT Goes to the card you just came from The equivalent of go back VIEW TOOLBAR TEXT Shows the text accompanying the Icon Toolbar VIEW TOOLBAR ICONS Shows the icons of the Icon Toolbar which lies just under the LiveCode menubar VIEW PALETTES Shows or hides the various palettes that are open VIEW RULERS Shows or hides the horizontal and vertical rulers at the edges of the stack VIEW GRID The grid is not actually visible but it s snap to effect can be turned on or off as seen by dragging an object across the card You may have to increase the grid spacing in the PREFERENCES APPEARANCE pane to see the effect clearly VIEW BACKDROP Activating th
178. yer 1 to Images MyMovie mov If you want more than just an Images folder but subfolders as well this will work too FOLDER MyMainstack rev Media Images MyPhoto png Movies MyMovie mov The relative path would then read Media Images Movies MyMovie MyPhoto png At the time of this writing LiveCode versions 6 7 and higher do not allow the creation of relative paths in the movie player on Macintosh This presents certain 140 problems in displaying movies consistently in the stack and standalones created on Mac There are several relatively easy ways to get around this at this time 1 Work with a LiveCode version less than 6 7 on Mac unitl the problem is corrected This will not only allow you to create the standalones as above but also use Quicktime VR movies which LC 6 7 and above will not show 2 Work with the following script modification on Mac in a preopenCard script on preopenCard if the environment is development then set the filename of player 1 to to Images MyMovie mov end if if the environment is standalone application then set the filename of player 1 to the defaultfolder amp Images MyMovie mov end if end preopenCard This will insure that the movie shows up in the stack development environment as well as in the standalone application Work to address this issue of relative vs absolute paths is currently under way by the LiveCode team CHAPTER 30 THE GRAPHICS PROP

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