LiveCode and HyperStudio

[richmond62]

A tear-off Layout palette

Could you please explain whay you mean by 'tear off' as I do not understand that?

Is that different from, say, clicking on a button to open a palettised subStack?

[PaulDaMacMan]

A tear-off Layout palette

Could you please explain whay you mean by 'tear off' as I do not understand that?

Is that different from, say, clicking on a button to open a palettised subStack?

In HyperCard there were some IDE menus that you could drag or 'tear' out of the menu to display it as a floating palette.

TearOffToolsMenuInHyperCard.png (10.3 KiB) Viewed 1421 times

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It's one of those unique UI ideas that got forgotten over time, like the 'wheel menus'.

[richmond62]

Ah: it is amazing that I learnt that was a tear-off palette about 30 years after I first came across it in HyperCard.

Thank You.

[richmond62]

It would also be amazing to learn how to make a drop-down palette from the Mac menu bar, and then to learn how to make it into a tear-offable palette.

Unfortunately while my copy of 'The Complete HyperCard 2.2 Handbook Fourth Edition' has, on page 100, mention of the 2 tear-off palettes in the HyperCard menu, I can find nothing about how I might go about implementing my own.

That is page 93 in the version available here:

https://archive.org/download/The_Comple ... d_Handbook

[richmond62]

Oddly enough, I have just spent 90 minutes fooling around with the HyperStudio 5 Trial on a 32-bit Polycarbonate iMac running macOS 10.6.8 without finding any TEAR-OFF palettes.

HyperStudio could be characterised as "Palettes go bananas": but tear-off they ain't.

[jacque]

I suspect that was a feature of OS 9. The HC team had access to the system source code as well.

[richmond62]

As HyperCard was an "outgrowth" of Apple, rather like Claris, it does not surprise me that they had access to all sorts of things that Apple would keep very close to their corporate chest re other companies.

And as Mac OS 9 and Mac OS 10.0, while looking, superficially similar, were totally different species, anything that may have been relevant to Mac OS 9 has probably no value whatsoever to MacOS 10.0 and subsequent versions.

[PaulDaMacMan]

I suspect that was a feature of OS 9. The HC team had access to the system source code as well.

Access? Heck, Bill Atkinson wrote bunches of it, you know like 'QuickDraw' was one of his other projects (along with the awesome and fun MacPaint).

This feature may have been in part of the Macintosh Toolbox, I'm not sure, but I'd bet this behavior could be emulated, like by using 'menuStack'.

[FourthWorld]

In the few apps that used them, tear-off menus were custom code in an MDEF resource (Menu Definition). The OS Toolbox generally only provided direct support for GUI elements recommended in the HIG.

There was a old MacTech issue with a tutorial on how to code one. I ran that exercise through ThinkC back in the day. #GoodTimes

[richmond62]

It would be wonderful if you could remember which copy of Mac Tech that was in:

http://preserve.mactech.com/articles/index.html

[SparkOut]

Dunno, a google search revealed this, might be the requested one http://preserve.mactech.com/articles/ma ... index.html

[FourthWorld]

Dunno, a google search revealed this, might be the requested one http://preserve.mactech.com/articles/ma ... index.html

Yep, that's the one.

I still remember typing the hex pattern for the accompanying WDEF palette, so grateful I would never do that again.

[stam]

Dunno, a google search revealed this, might be the requested one http://preserve.mactech.com/articles/ma ... index.html

That’s an interesting read! (And a throwback to the good ole’ days…)

It seems likely we could actually emulate this in LiveCode (implemented as a test-off palette), but the question is: should we?

This isn’t really in any current interface guideline and may cause confusion. On the other hand it provides a very need way of giving access to palettes where space is limited, especially where desktop space is limited….

[richmond62]

This isn’t really in any current interface guideline and may cause confusion.

As Apple, Microsoft and so on, ride rough shod over everyone else's aesthetics I would NOT loose too much sleep over that.

It would be wonderful if it could be implemented, and then there would be no harm in popping a notice in the right place stating something like: "Satya and Cookie may not like this."

The article itself points in a certain direction:

"User-Interface Thought Police on Patrol"

"Whew! And you thought Apple was stuffy in their "Human Interface Guidelines: The Apple Desktop Interface," a recent must-read publication from Addison-Wesley. If you've got a copy handy, turn to pages 90 through 92 and see how close our definitions match."

Obviously the person who wrote that had a healthy dose of humour ("If you've got a copy handy").

Let's all give Cookie a big HUG.

[FourthWorld]

It seems likely we could actually emulate this in LiveCode (implemented as a test-off palette), but the question is: should we?

I wouldn't bother. It would be challenging enough on Windows and Linux, and the global menu bar in macOS would require some clever Builder hooks to get it working. And with the old Mac Toolbox long since replaced with NeXTStep/Cocoa APIs, there's almost nothing in the old code that could help with a modem implementation.

Tear-off menus were a rarity even then, almost unseen in the decades since. Just as simple for the user, and MUCH simpler for the developer, to just provide access to palletes with an ordinary menu command.

Bonus: a menu item can be invoked with a keyboard shortcut which is also visible to the user right in the menu item. One could of course add a shortcut anyway, but most users are slow to pick up shortcuts even when they're spelled right in the context of use; hidden shortcuts are generally never learned by anyone but power users who enjoy sifting through docs.