show all cards

[richmond62]

Does NOT seem to do anything.

[dunbarx]

Richmond.

Sure it does. This is an old HC command, albeit one which I never once used.

But what I, and you, are missing is a "delay" setting. I can see the interior cards of a group of several flash by, but I do not know how to set a wait period for the running of them.

Craig

[dunbarx]

Richmond.

So I went back to my "Hypercard 2.2, The Book" and discovered that the "show all cards" is not a command with a wait parameter, but rather a queueing gadget. Try this, as I did, with a new stack of five cards, and put some sort of markers on one or more of them:

Code: Select all

on mouseUp
   repeat until the mouse is down
      wait 45
      show 5 cards
      end repeat
end mouseUp

Oddly, if I change to this:

Code: Select all

on mouseUp
   repeat until the mouse is down
      wait 45
      show all cards
      end repeat
end mouseUp

The result is erratic. Not sure why. Anyway the dictionary is woefully inadequate. This command goes back to HC v.1.0. 38 years. It likely has a rolodex in mind.

Craig

[dunbarx]

Even with the relatively stable:

Code: Select all

on mouseUp
   repeat until the mouse is down
      wait 45
      show 5 cards
      end repeat
end mouseUp

There is erratic behavior. I placed a field on each card showing the card number. If I then place another control on, say card 3, now and then, as the handler runs, that control will flash even though the card shown is not the one it lives on.

I never used HC for that sort of graphical shenanigans, nor LC either. But many people cut their teeth on the graphical tools available there, as opposed to making working stacks that I used for all kinds of, well, different shenanigans.

Craig

[FourthWorld]

What are you building that uses that command?

[richmond62]

I am not building anything with that command.

I came across this command in something called SimpleTalk and thought it might be useful in some context, tried it out and saw it was fairly useless.

[FourthWorld]

I think the last time it was useful was just before the Macintosh Plus was retired.

By the time the SE30 premiered the timing was too fast to do much interesting with it

[richmond62]

If that is a fact why is it still 'there'?

[dunbarx]

@Richard.

By the time the SE30 premiered the timing was too fast to do much interesting with it

Are you saying that a Mac Plus was so slow that the command flipped through cards at a comfortable rate? And both the Plus and SE had 8MHz clock speeds and very similar architecture.

@Richmond.
Recall though that in 1987, the rolodex paradigm was the main paradigm. Such a command made sense in that, er, sense.
Anyway, it does no harm to keep, and who knows if it might be useful?

The problem here is there is no rate control. And, per my reply to Richard above, does it seem reasonable that the processing speed of the host computer was the timing basis for this command? Say it ain't so.


Craig

[dunbarx]

I thought I had a 38 year old "Eureka" moment.

The HC Handbook mentions that at idle time the system "prewarms" the upcoming card to be shown. HC did not have an "idleTime" property, and I thought that if I set that in LC it would provide timing control between successive "shows"

Nope.

Anyway, the command works just fine. It requires very young eyes to see it though.

Craig

[richmond62]

Is anyone who uses xTalk that young?

[CFCFCF]

Lots of younger people bump into LiveCode these days.

… Amazon has a platform for virtual interviews/live coding called Amazon LiveCode

[richmond62]

Wow! That's impressive.

[dunbarx]

Richmond.

38?

I was almost that old when I first picked up HC.

Craig

[CFCFCF]

No, I mean that's the only thing it has in common with LiveCode the language -- the name. Amazon LiveCode is just a code editor or something like that.