Don't make me think!! -- no context menus on MAC LC9

[Lagi Pittas]

I thought I would give version 9 DP-10 a quick test drive I'm still in the comfortable shoes of version 6 ...

I have a mantra (or is it french / anglo saxon) when a program changes the default way of doing things for no good reason.

Why have you put my accelerator where the break peddle was and the steering wheel in the boot?

I son't count myself as a newbie anymore so this would have really turned me off.

I right click on a button - No script shows. I pressed Cmd (it's on my Mac - i'm not even gonna bother with windows until i'm happy on theMac) - No dice, Shift, ALT, ALT-Shift, Cmd-Alt - wiggle my nose say 3 Hail Marys - yet, Nada , Nothing. - Yes I do know I can right click on the project browser line - I've already done that - but this is more Muscle Memory than any abbreviation - It's like CTR-C, CTRL-X CTRL-V from the wordstar days that is still going strong on windows and Mac (alt-X).

I looked in preferences - can't find anything obvious to hit me in the face - maybe I'm to uptight finding my windscreen wiper up my **** and I can't function.

Please tell me it ain't so!!!

Oh an the second thing i tried I have a transparent button that has line of code to move the stack down by 30 pixels on startup if its on the Mac and development.

Try as I might if I click the mouse on this button whether right click or left click - the code executes in browse mode.

The can't select property is set to false and if I drag a new button to the card and add the same line it works perfectly - i.e. it doesn't execute in browse mode. Actually just made that new button transparent and it does execute in browse mode - Hmmm.

Anyway same problem with bringing up the property inspector _ have to find it in the browser object and right click.

So ..... I just installed LC 9 DP 10 into my Parallels windows 7 and guess what , it works exactly as God deems it should.

So my question(s) after such a rant is where are the preferences so that I don't need to jump through hoops to open property inspectors and control/stack/card scripts.

And the question of the transparent button still being live in browse mode - just checked and it works perfectly in LC 9 DP 10 for windows.

REgards Lagi

[LiveCode_Panos]

Hi Lagi,

This behaviour sounds like corrupt Prefs.

To clear your LiveCode Prefs on Mac:

1. Quit LiveCode
2. Navigate to /Users/your_user_name/Library/Preferences/RunRev folder

You should see one or two files there:

livecode.rev --> Prefs for LiveCode versions < 7
livecode7.rev --> Prefs for LiveCode 7,8 and 9

3. Remove those 2 files from this folder. You can either trash them, just put them in a different folder. Those files will be re-generated once you start LiveCode again.

4. Start LC 9.0 DP-10 again. Now hopefully the problem should be fixed.

Best,
Panos
--

[FourthWorld]

This behaviour sounds like corrupt Prefs.

How could you discern that from the description?

[richmond62]

How could you discern that from the description?

That's why LiveCode_Panos works for Livecode and the rest of us don't

[Lagi Pittas]

Hi Panos,

Ise Chakos!!

It Worked!!

All the Best Lagi

[matthiasr]

Hi Lagi,
in any case,do you have DataGridHelper installed in your plugins folder?

I ran into this problem now multiple times. Deleting the prefs file helps for some time, but sooner or later it happens again.

What i found out is, that in my case DGH2.1 was causing this in combination with LC8 AND 9. I removed DGH 2.1 from the plugin folder and my "corrupted" prefs file worked again. Moving the old DGH2.1 back again, showed exactly your observed behaviour with the missing context menus.
I´ve then installed a fresh copy of DGH2.1 from a TimeMachine Backup and the corrupted prefs file worked again. Context menus showed up again.
I am not totally sure, but i have the feeling that this first happened with LC9.
It seems that LC9 is changing something in DGH and the prefs file. And these changes seem to "block" the context menu.
If you don´t have DGH installed, then maybe an other plugin is causing it on your system.

Regards,
Matthias

[LiveCode_Panos]

@Richard

How could you discern that from the description?

In the past we have received at least 5-6 reports (from different users) describing the very same issue. In all cases, the problem was fixed once the existing Prefs were removed.

In general, if basic functionality is broken (such as not being able to right click, or opening the SE), this is quite likely to be caused because of corrupted Prefs or by bad interaction with a Plugin, otherwise we would have caught that in the pre-release testing.

BTW a placeholder report for all the corrupt_prefs-related bugs is this one:

http://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=15857

Best,
Panos
--

[Lagi Pittas]

Hi Panos

Because this is comes up relatively frequently and many newcomers might be averse to messing under the hood so to speak.

Why not a plugin - so we don't need the team taken away from more urgent matters - slipstreamed into the next build, that would save the prefs on bootup , archiving a certain number X - and installing it into the IDE menu or the startup screen and allowing the user to go back to prefs xyz if there is a problem.

I haven't had time to play with plugins and as usual a deadline is looming - and still the client changes the bloody specs!! - but it shouldn't take you much more time to do it than it takes to answer the same question umpteen times and it'll work to boot. Ill add to that my usual corollary ...

Everything is easy for the man who doesn't have to do it himself

Thanks again for your help - I will be using 8/9 on my next project starting in a couple of weeks.

@Mathias
I have datagrid helper installed on version 6 only Windows - not in the version on Mac. What I did notice though was BVG Doc wasn't creating its datafile and I had to dismiss it everytime. I got it to work before removing BVG DOC but it took 3 attempts. I have since removed BVG Doc just in case. Thanks for the headsup though

Regards Lagi