Mac/PC OPENGL hardware acceleration...a report and a request

[Mathew Ray]

James,

I tried the test with software rendering, detail set to 100%, with 1-sided
model on and all the other texture and effects options off. These settings
gave me a frame rate of 51fps.

With all of the effects options on and a two-sided model, the frame rate
dropped to 10fps.

Actually, I tried the same settings but with the directX renderer and got
frame rates slower by 1-2 fps.

I am running an AthlonXP 1600+ (1.4 gHz) with 256 MB PC2100 DDR RAM and a
Matrox G550 DualHead video card with 32MB of DDR memory. Perhaps the
discrepancy between the DirectX and software results are due to my Matrox
card not being a powerhouse in the 3d area or is not completely compliant
with the renderer.

Thanks,
Mathew J. Ray
Senior Designer
..
  + seriphDesign +
new media and print design specialists

  phone: 912.484.0099
fax: 509.691.2683
web: www.seriphdesign.com
..





Original message

Given the above facts...we are considering using SOFTWARE RENDERING...so we
basically need the most powerful computer.

Here's where I need your help...can some folks out there (the ones who have
powerful computers) run the macromedia
http://www.macromedia.com/support/director/ts/documents/render_test.htm
"Shockwave player 3D rendering test"

but only use SOFTWARE RENDERING!

Can you guys give me your frame rate and computer config?  Processor,
speed, system memory, OS, video card, VRAM?

THANKS!


James Tu
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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Installation Related Questions

[Mathew Ray]

Jason,

I-Cube
---
I actually was working with the I-Cube last month doing some interactive
storytelling projects and ended up creating an external cast with a few
behaviors to handle MIDI events sent from the XMIDI xtra. I am still working
on the Open-Source behaviors, but I can post the beta versions publicly if
you'd like. I also have notes about how to set the whole thing up and a
usage notes for the xtra - it is a little dodgy on the usability end...I
haven't had time to explore the MUS extra for dynamic dialog boxes.

If people have had good luck with the MIDIio xtra from AudioMulch, I may
look at converting the MIDI capture behavior over to that from the xMIDI
since MIDIio is cross platform.

Basically the way it works is that the I-Cube sends a MIDI message(usually
comprised of four parts) to your midi controller connected to your computer
via serial or USB connection and into the required OMS software. Using the
MIDI xtra and my behaviors, Director can detect these signals and either
display the message received or react to it by going to a frame, marker, or
by running a handler. I built the behavior with several filters so that you
can perform an action if an element in the MIDI message is equal, less than,
greater than, or between the values you input. There is also an option to
react to ALL midi messages. It was pretty flexible for my project and
another student who developed a kiosk-like interface, so it may help you out
as well.

Other Options
-
I found the I-Cube to be pretty useful and simple to use, although I have
found some other setups that may work and be significantly less expensive
(albeit quite a bit more technical):
=> Phidgets (http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/grouplab/phidgets/index.html)
=> Parallax Microcontrollers (http://www.parallaxinc.com/index.asp)
=> BasicX Microcontrollers (http://www.basicx.com/)

Switches, Servos, and Show Control
---
As far as actuators go (the things that actually "do" stuff) and MIDI
controlled power switches, I found a good table of companies that provide
"Motion Control" and "Show Control" (good key terms to look up) products at
these places:
=> http://www.zircondesigns.com/Manufacturers-ShowControl.htm
=>
http://dmoz.org/Business/Industries/Arts_and_Entertainment/Equipment/Manufac
turers/Lighting/
=> http://www.mediamat.com/


Let me know if there is any additional information I may be able to help
with...

Good Luck,
Mathew J. Ray
Senior Interactive Design Student
Savannah College of Art & Design
http://www.seriphdesign.com/mathew

--Original Message--

Message: 19
From: "Jason Je" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 15:06:32 -0500
Subject:  Installation Related Questions
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Hi, Guys...

I am thinking of making an installation piece utilizing censors and kiosk(s)
for my thesis project...

Here are few questions regarding this project...

1. I am thinking of using I-Cube from InfusionSystems... I did a piece with
Houdini before that is driven by the sensors... And I saw that there was
XMidi Xtra(http://troikaranch.org/troikatronix/xmidi.html) that runs on
Macintosh... Does anybody know if there is any Windows counterpart that will
let Director communicate through the midi connection??? I see that there are
some such as DirectCommunication Xtra, Serial Xtra, Sequence Xtra and so on,
but can't find anything particular for this project.


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The Wonders of Squeak - Was: Silly Mac users

[Mathew Ray]

Hi Warren,

I am quite platform-agnostic, but I do like the premise of Open-Source
software. The Squeak language is something I have come across over the years
and it seems to be steadily developing into a Director-like tool but with
many, many more advantages. Imagine Director that was opensource, editable,
and recompilable... If we don't like how Macromedia is doing things, then
hey, we can go create our own module to plug into it and add functionality
(kind of like Xtras, but all the way down to the fundamental App level).
Also interesting is that Alan Kay is one of the people behind squeak,
ironically enough. Perhaps squeak is his solution for Apple and MS making
BILLIONS off of his team's ideas. Anyway, be sure to check it out at:

http://www.squeak.org/index.html

The virtual machine is a lot like Java, but MUCH MUCH faster and Squeak is
also completely PLATFORM INDEPENDANT. Makes sense to me...now they just need
to get 200 million people to download the virual machine :0)

~Mathew J. Ray
Senior Interactive Design Student
www.seriphdesign.com/mathew




The closest I have seen to a Directoresque language for nix is Python, which
is another one of those command-prompt languages (initially). But it doesn't
have the particular suite of graphic,
sound and time manipulation tools Director owns which makes it such a
distinctly usable critter. Director is really rather unique in that sense --
invented *after* GUIs became widely available, it is one of the few major
programmer tools that doesn't more or less require you to start with ASCII
and project files in text format. It incorporates the graphics from the
start. I like that, and I think a lot of UNIX programmers would like it too.


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The Wonders of Squeak - Was: Silly Mac users

[Mathew Ray]

Grimm,

>> ~Mathew J. Ray
>> Senior Interactive Design Student
>> www.seriphdesign.com/mathew

>Sorry - but I'm really curious about this - senior interactive design
>STUDENT? I mean are you in your senior year, or do you tell the other
>students what to do...?

Hmm...
Maybe if I was in a military school, which I am not.

I am in my senior year, last quarter actually, but I see the environment
more as a collaborative effort rather than harsh dictatorship.


~Mathew J. Ray
Interactive Design Student Who Happens To Be In His Final Quarter of
Enrollment
(I like the other one better)


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Taskbar Icon for Fullscreen Projectors

[Mathew Ray]

I am having problems with getting a fullscreen projector to show an icon on
the taskbar or task switcher on windows 2000, with a projector exported from
Dir 8.5.1. Exporting the projector in a window with or without a menu works
fine...the icons show up. I used Microangelo 5.5 to create the resource and
I edited the .skl file in the director folder to get around the issue of
Microangelo overwriting the .exe with an icon resource.

Does anyone know of any specific issues with fullscreen projectors and
taskbar/switcher icons?

Thanks,
Mathew

..
 + mathew j. ray +
  Interaction Designer

web: www.seriphdesign.com/mathew
..

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Re: Movie transparency

[Mathew Ray]

Actually, I just exported a png sequence with an embedded alpha channel
using AFX5.5, and it works fine... its true a VIDEO file doesn't have
transparency per-se unless you add a mask to it, but you can fake it with
image sequences, just watch out for performance issues as Charlie mentioned.

~Mathew


Robin Said:
> After effects cannot render movies with a transparent background, the only
> way I would achieve what your trying to do is use still images. one for
the
> image and on for the alpha/mask of each frame of the sequence.
>
> you can output the sequence from after fx once with the main image and
once
> for the alpha then import those into director and place the images in this
> sequence,,



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Re: Posting a job to Lingo Slingers

[Mathew Ray]

Is this it?

from http://www.zeusprod.com/site/listgrp.html

Job Offers List - if you are looking for freelance or full-time Lingo
programmers to help on current or future projects, please e-mail a copy of
the job description to Zeus.

- Original Message -
From: "Jonathyn B. Tellez" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, January 31, 2003 2:18 PM
Subject:  Posting a job to Lingo Slingers


> Hi,
>
> My company has a Lingo Programmer position opening up in a bit.  Does
anybody know how to post a job to the famous "Lingo Slingers" site?
>
> JB Tellez
> Lead Lingo Programmer
> Scientific Learning Corporation
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>



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Re: Movie transparency

[Mathew Ray]

Jeremy,

All I did was import a static png image, added some AFX text with effects on
it, sent it to the render queue, and then under 'Output Module' I changed
the format to PNG sequence. Under 'Video Output' of that same dialogue, I
changed the Channels to be 'RGB + Alpha'

In my test, everything that was the background (white), was rendered as
transparent.  Of course, I haven't tried doing any keying but I am
pretty sure masking would work Try doing a simple test with your file,
like one frame with no keying...that may be causing a problem, but I would
imagine that it SHOULD work..

~Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "Jeremy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, February 01, 2003 12:58 AM
Subject: RE:  Movie transparency


> Can you point me towards how to get the transparent background from AFX
> 5.5. When I key out a color it shows the background color, and I don't
> see an option for transparent background color, so when I render out the
> png sequence it has a bg color. Thanks
>
> J
>
> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Mathew Ray
> Sent: Friday, January 31, 2003 9:27 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re:  Movie transparency
>
>
> Actually, I just exported a png sequence with an embedded alpha channel
> using AFX5.5, and it works fine... its true a VIDEO file doesn't have
> transparency per-se unless you add a mask to it, but you can fake it
> with image sequences, just watch out for performance issues as Charlie
> mentioned.
>
> ~Mathew
>
>
> Robin Said:
> > After effects cannot render movies with a transparent background, the
> > only way I would achieve what your trying to do is use still images.
> > one for
> the
> > image and on for the alpha/mask of each frame of the sequence.
> >
> > you can output the sequence from after fx once with the main image and
> once
> > for the alpha then import those into director and place the images in
> > this sequence,,
>
>
>
> [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to
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> [EMAIL PROTECTED]  (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]).
> Lingo-L is for learning and helping with programming Lingo.  Thanks!]
>
>
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>



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[OT] Quartz/Aqua port to Intel

[Mathew Ray]

Umm, doesn't apple make most of its money off of the hardware, which allows
it to create great software for a low price (iTunes, iPhoto, etc)? They
would be shooting themselves in the foot?

If they DID however, I would be at the front of the linecheap PC
hardware, nice Mac OSmulti boot Linux, Win, Mac...awwhawhaw.

~Mathew

> I'm still wondering when there'll be a Quartz/Aqua port to Intel. Heh
> heh.
>
> -- WthmO



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Re: barcode reader and other devices

[Mathew Ray]

Mike,

I think what Colin is saying is that the barcode reader IMITATES a
keyboard. so when you plug in the barcode, it acts as a
keyboard...sending keyboard commands just as if you had added a SECOND
keyboard to the machine yes/no?

~Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "Mike Warner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, February 06, 2003 1:05 PM
Subject: Re:  barcode reader and other devices


> Wouldn't you still need an xtra to listen to the USB port?  Does the
> DirectCommunication xtra do this?
>
> Mike
>
> > Message: 4
> > Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2003 11:08:19 -0500
> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > From: Colin Holgate <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Subject: Re:  barcode reader and other devices
> > Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> > >Does anyone knows if it's possible interact director with devices like
> > >barcode reader and credit card machines? How it can be done? there's
> > anybody
> > >else around with crazy ideas like this? :-)
> >
> >
> > Mostly ignore the other two posts. You can get USB barcode and credit
> > card readers, they plug into a USB port (on any platform that
> > supports USB) and work right away, without any Xtras. The numbers
> > coming from a barcode exactly match what you can read on the label.
> > You can configure the barcode reader to put characters before or
> > after that, so for example you could append a return character, and
> >
> === message truncated ===
>
>
> __
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
> http://mailplus.yahoo.com
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>



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Re: Web Services

[Mathew Ray]

My first inclination is to use flash as an intermediary inside of
director... Let flash interact with the web services and when it is done, it
can let director know so that director can take that information and do
stuff with it. There are some articles out there regarding the Flashcom
server and its integration into director, I would image integrating web
services wouldn't be terribly different. Also keep in mind that DirectorMX's
new flash mx support allows it to create AS objects on the fly without any
flash sprites presentmay be helpful.

~Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "pjg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2003 1:21 AM
Subject:  Web Services


> Hi all,
>
> I haven't been actively involved in the lingo list for some time now
> (although that is soon set to change). I was wanting to know if anyone on
> this list has had some experience using web services with director. If so
do
> you know of any good resources for integrating and working with web
services
> and director. Seems that Macromedia has heaps of documentation on web
> services and flash but little (if not nothing) on web services and
director.
>
> Any assistance is greatly appreciated!
>
> Paul
>
> [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to
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>



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Re: [ANN] New Director related website

[Mathew Ray]

Yup, Gary posted the release version a couple days ago...woohoo!

>From his newsletter:
"Version 1.4 of Buddy API for Mac is now available from the download page.
This version includes both OSX and Classic xtras for use with Director MX."

~Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "Kerry Thompson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2003 2:16 PM
Subject: RE:  [ANN] New Director related website


> > A new web site for Director Developers is online at
> > http://www.xtrasy.com
> >
> > As a start we have put together a complete list of Xtras currently
> > available for Director, a list of useful books for developers and a
> > collection of useful links related to our favorite software.
>
> Well done! It immediately went to my IE favorites.
>
> I think you can add Buddy API to OS X-compatible Xtras. Check out the
> Buddy downloads tab at http://www.mods.com.au. I think you'll see
> version 1.4 for the Mac, with MX compatibility. I know an OS X version
> has been in beta for months, and I'm assuming MX compatibility means OS
> X compatibility.
>
> Cordially,
>
> Kerry Thompson
>
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>



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Re: Web Services

[Mathew Ray]

Fabrice,

You would use Flash Remoting and ColdFusion MX to access the web service
Using the flash sprite in director you would remote to coldFusion, it uses
the SOAP protocol to get stuff from the web service, and relays the info
back to flash using Remoting. Then flash would relay that back into
director... Kinda complicated, and as of now, I think it only supports CF...
Supposedly a version of the Remoting components were going to be released
for JDBC and PHP (for a nominal fee).

If you want to get around this stumbling-block, Alessandro Crugnola has
started reverse-engineering the AMF protocol that enables Flash Remoting for
PHP... If you feel like getting your hands dirty, and you want to use PHP,
this may be the way to go...
http://sourceforge.net/projects/amfphp


If you have the ability to take advantage of ColdFusion MX then here is an
example using just flash...
http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/flashremoting/consuming_ws_using_cfm
x/consuming_ws_using_cfmx03.html

Here is another one that uses google's web service...
http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/applications/google_search/


Hope that helps!
~Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "Fabrice Closier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2003 2:49 PM
Subject: Re:  Web Services


> Can you do that in flash?
> i know how to retrieve using the bytesloaded and bytestotal in flash
> but thats always compare to itzelf,
> how do you manage to use flash to record if something outside the swf
> is being loaded...
> also that flash could give you some usable information about the web
> services... on the way getNetthing does report... Flash remote might do
> that but...
> i know it is a bit out of topic, but if you could dev a bit, show the
> AS trick...
>
>
> Fabrice
> On Thursday, February 13, 2003, at 03:08 PM, Mathew Ray wrote:
>
> > My first inclination is to use flash as an intermediary inside of
> > director... Let flash interact with the web services and when it is
> > done, it
> > can let director know so that director can take that information and do
> > stuff with it. There are some articles out there regarding the Flashcom
> > server and its integration into director, I would image integrating web
> > services wouldn't be terribly different. Also keep in mind that
> > DirectorMX's
> > new flash mx support allows it to create AS objects on the fly without
> > any
> > flash sprites presentmay be helpful.
> >
> > ~Mathew
> >
> > - Original Message -
> > From: "pjg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2003 1:21 AM
> > Subject:  Web Services
> >
> >
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> I haven't been actively involved in the lingo list for some time now
> >> (although that is soon set to change). I was wanting to know if
> >> anyone on
> >> this list has had some experience using web services with director.
> >> If so
> > do
> >> you know of any good resources for integrating and working with web
> > services
> >> and director. Seems that Macromedia has heaps of documentation on web
> >> services and flash but little (if not nothing) on web services and
> > director.
> >>
> >> Any assistance is greatly appreciated!
> >>
> >> Paul




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[OT-Video] MPEG artifacts created on encode or decode -or- Using non-standard MPEG sizes

[Mathew Ray]

To those on the list with uber-mpeg knowledge...

When creating an mpeg file from a source NOT divisible by 16, are artifacts
created upon encode or decode, or both? Theoretically, if upon encode, then
the file can be watched and if no artifacts are present, then it should be
the same for all decoders, right?. However, if artifacts are a result of the
DEcoding process, then visible artifacts could vary between video cards the
drivers that decode the mpeg.

Chances are that I will play it safe, but I am just curious if anybody else
was able to glean this info from the arcane specs... I know the
non-intrablock Quantize Matrix starts with 16... so I would assume that any
artifacts would be created upon encoding when the quantize matrix is
used Can anybody shed some light on this?

Thanks,
Mathew




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Re: Mac "bundle" data question

[Mathew Ray]

In the Contents folder I believe...

~Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "Slava Paperno" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2003 12:37 PM
Subject:  Mac "bundle" data question



> When your disc includes data that is used by both the your MacOSClassic
and
> Mac OS (X) applications, where does that data go?




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List reference persistance?

[Mathew Ray]

Simple one...

I have a list-reference added to another list, and I delete the original
list, yet
the reference still exists?

What happens to list references when the list it is referencing is deleted?
Is there any way to update these references so garbage collection can do its
thing?

Here is an example... even though I set the value to be void, the sound
still
plays... still must have a reference to the member ~somewhere~

The Code:
---
sound(1).setPlaylist([])

myReg=[:]
myReg[#one]=[:]
myReg[#one][#member] = member("EndMusic2Loop","audio")


sound(1).queue(myReg[#one])
put sound(1).getPlaylist()

myReg[#one][#member] = void
myReg.deleteProp(#one)
put myReg

put sound(1).getPlaylist()

sound(1).play()
---

---
Outputs:
-- [[#member: (member 2 of castLib 8)]]
-- [:]
-- [[#member: ]]
---


Spooky...
Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Mathew



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Re: List reference persistance?

[Mathew Ray]

Thanks Buzz,

I was hoping that wasn't the case :0)

I think my way around it is to keep a virtual queue that DOESN'T make
duplicates, and then add that to the playlist...I just have to refresh the
REAL playlist every time I make a change to the virtual one...

~Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "Buzz Kettles" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2003 4:59 PM

> the playlist is not a referenced list.
> When you load it up, it makes copies of what it needs (in this case a
> member reference).
>
> hth
> -Buzz



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Re: Lingo and SOAP?

[Mathew Ray]

Also, from my little knowledge of Flash and SOAP integration, if you want to
use Web Services through flash (like SOAP) with those nifty built-in
connection objects and such, then you need to remote out to a CFMX gateway
of some sort... Which can cause some problems on some browsers (like Safari
on MACR's new site)...

Correct me if I am wrong...

~Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "Buzz Kettles" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 12:01 PM
Subject: Re:  Lingo and SOAP?


> At 4:21 PM -0500 3/10/03, you wrote:
> >Hi all:
> >   Does anyone on the list have experience interfacing with SOAP
> >(Simple Object Access Protocol) using Lingo?  There seems to be
> >plenty of Visual Basic and PERL code examples to use SOAP, but
> >unable to find anything regarding Lingo. Oh, I did find something in
> >the Macromedia DB about FLASH MX handling SOAP requests.  FLASH?
> >Yikes.  Surely, the Director Team has something in mind for SOAP.
>
> Nowadays the logic would be for you to get at your SOAP using a Flash
> Asset member from within Director.  I believe that with MX it doesn't
> need to have actual Flash graphics or be a sprite or anything - it
> can just be a new(#flash) that you address to get your SOAP stuff.
>
> hth
> -Buzz
>
> >
> >   Any ideas, suggestions, rumors, etc.?
> >
> >TIA,
> >John Hart
> >John Hart
> >Send email, get paid!
> >Sign up with my id, please:
> >http://www.zwallet.com/join.html?user=johnhart
> >
> >
> >__
> >Get Paid... With Your Free Email at
> >http://www.zwallet.com/index.html?user=johnhart
> >[To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go
> >to http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi  To post messages to the
> >list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]  (Problems, email
> >[EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is for learning and helping with
> >programming Lingo.  Thanks!]
>
> [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to
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>



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Re: sprite().member

[Mathew Ray]

Umm... I think several people mentioned that the way to get the name of a
cast member like that is:

put sprite(59).member.name
-- "myCastMemberName"

Am I understanding the question correctly?

~Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "Simon Wheatley (lists)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 3:39 PM
Subject: Re:  sprite().member


> Sorry, this is badly explained. I want to be able to do this:
>
> sprite(59).member = "myCastMemberName"
> put sprite(59).someProperty
> -- "myCastMemberName"
>
> - Original Message -
> From: "Simon Wheatley (lists)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "Lingo-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 8:05 PM
> Subject:  sprite().member
>
>
> Hello
>
> Is it possible to get the text name of a cast member? Ie I can say:
>
> sprite(59).member = "myCastMemberName"
>
> Can I then extract "myCastMemberName" given a sprite channel number?
>
> Thanks
>
> Simon



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Re: OK to go from 8.0 to MX?

[Mathew Ray]

...just a little too slow...

As Charlie said, most of the changes were to the interface itself within
director. The only other changes were to xtras that shipped with MX, namely
the new flash xtra and the accessibility xtra

As long as your project didn't use those, I would imagine you would be ok...

~Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "Charlie Fiskeaux II" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 4:54 PM
Subject: Re:  OK to go from 8.0 to MX?


> It's the only major difference besides the upgraded Flash integration.
The
> other significant differences are the speech xtra, and UI changes, as well
> as adding editing integration with the other MX apps.
>
> Charlie Fiskeaux II
> Media Designer
> The Creative Group
> www.cre8tivegroup.com
> 859/858-9054x29
>
> - Original Message -
> From: "Fletcher Moore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 4:48 PM
> Subject: Re:  OK to go from 8.0 to MX?
>
>
> > I began writing an app in Mx and was forced to move it to 8.5. To my
> > surprise, 8.5 was able to open the MX file, and everything worked just
as
> it
> > had in MX. I wonder if maybe native OSX support is the only difference?
> >
> > f
> >
> > on 3/11/03 3:16 PM, Cole Tierney at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >
> > >> I'm getting ready to "go prime time" with a Director app written in
> > >> 8.0 - does anyone see a reason why I shouldn't create the projector
> > >> using MX? Would your answer hold true for both Mac and PC?
> > >
> > > Depends on your audience. The biggest benefit for the mac side is
> > > native support for MacOSX, which is becoming increasingly important.
> >
> > [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to
> http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi  To post messages to the list, email
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]  (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L
is
> for learning and helping with programming Lingo.  Thanks!]
> >
>
>
> [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to
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>



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Re: Finding the sprite from the member

[Mathew Ray]

Well, first of all, there could be 500 members all on the stage at once and
they would have the same member...

So would you want a list of all the sprite references that have a given
member?

spritesOfMember = getSpritesWithMember( member("somemember") )
put spritesOfMember
-- [(sprite 1), (sprite 18), (sprite 400)]

~Mathew
- Original Message -
From: "Ron Woodland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 5:06 PM
Subject:  Finding the sprite from the member


> A recent discussion thread discussed how to find the name of a cast
> member attached to a sprite.  That's pretty straightforward and answered
> well by several list members.
>
> Here's a challenge that has puzzled me for a long time.  I usually take
> a coding shortcut because of time, but is there a way to find the sprite
> if the member number or name is known?
>
> (x = the spriteNum of member "junk")
>
> At first glance, this expression seems it would work.  Even a
> rudimentary understanding of the concept of object properties shows this
> is a ludicrous expression.  A cast member can't possibly have this
> property.  However, it seems that there should be way to identify which
> sprite is using a known cast member.
>
> -
> Ronald Woodland -- St. George, Utah  84770
> -
> "I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but
> it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as
> if they were great and noble."  -- Helen Keller
>
> [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to
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>



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Re: Replace text within a string

[Mathew Ray]

I was looking at this not too long ago... best thing I have found is the
pRegEx xtra (free) to use regular expressions... very powerful.
Alternatively, you could use the textcruncher xtra (not free) from
updatestage if you needed
If all you are looking at is to replace words, look into the Lingo chunk
expressions...

HTH,
~Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "Simon Wheatley (lists)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Lingo-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 5:28 PM
Subject:  Replace text within a string


> Hello again, sorry for barging in with all my questions... I promise I'm
doing
> my best to rtfm and google for the answers before asking.
>
> I'm interested in replacing text within a string. See the psuedo-lingo
below:
>
> 
>   myTextString = "this is carolyn's text string"
>   myTextString = subStringReplace(myTextString, "carolyn", "simon")
>   -- where myTextString is the string to be operated on, "carolyn" is the
>   -- text to be searched for and "simon" is the replacement text
>   put myTextString
>   -- "this is simon's string"
> 
>
> Is this possible?
>
> Thanks
>
> Simon
>
>
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Re: line break

[Mathew Ray]

Look up RETURN and the other string constants in the docs... that along with
chunk expressions can do a lot.

str = "my words"
str2 = str.word[1] & RETURN & str.word[2]
put str2

results in:
"my
words"

HTH,
~Mathew


- Original Message -
From: "DT-Rene Vazquez" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 6:21 PM


> Hi, how can I insert with lingo in a string expression a line break
> after a word and then another word
>
> Thanks a lot in advance




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Re: object inspector window - scriptinstancelist issue

[Mathew Ray]

Hi Charlie,

On a related note (and to further muddy the waters) I found out yesterday
that if I have a sprite ref in my object window and I am looking at the
scriptinstancelist of a sprite, weird things can start to happen if your
movie terminates with a script error or something... Like, sprite numbers
being reassigned and director not knowing which scripts are assigned to a
sprite. One time I started replaying my movie, and the background for the
navigation started scaling instead of the loading bar. If I don't look at
scriptinstancelist, it doesn't happen. Anybody else seen this?

~Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "Charlie Fiskeaux II" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 10:18 AM
Subject: Re:  object inspector window


> I have a related question; how is the object inspector used to watch
> variables when the movie is running?  I know to see the inside of a 3D
> member I have to drag it to the object inspector, but I can't find
> information anywhere on how to use the object inspector to watch variables
> and such.  How is this done?
>
> Charlie Fiskeaux II
> Media Designer
> The Creative Group
> www.cre8tivegroup.com
> 859/858-9054x29
>
> - Original Message -
> From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 2:27 AM
> Subject:  object inspector window
>
>
> > hey - is there a way to unfold ALL items of an object? I've got a list
of
> > proplists I'd like to unfold...
> >
> > I should say this works on the mac - option-clicking on the main
triangle,
> > like the finder - but can't find the same on the pc.
> >
> > [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to
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> for learning and helping with programming Lingo.  Thanks!]
> >
>
>
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>



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LoadMovie() in flash sprite working inconsistently

[Mathew Ray]

I am having a big problem with flash sprites using loadmovie() in a cd-based
directorMX project...


[The Overview]
I have an externally linked flash member on the stage that I change the
filename of in order to dynamically change flash content. This flash
performs a loadmovie command to pull in a controls.swf into a level or
existing clip and stops the playback. All the swfs exist in the same
location. As soon as the controls.swf has loaded (bytesloaded ==
bytestotal), the controls restart the _root timeline.


[The Problem]
On most machines, this works fine, but on some others the loadmovie command
does not work. The problem machines have no resemblance to each other except
OS - they are all WinXP. I have gotten it to work on a super-fast p4 and a
super slow 300 mhz pII, so I don't think it is a processor-speed issue.
Additionally, there is no variation of the issue within the problem
machines - if it doesn't play on a particular computer, it will never play
on that computer, despite repeated testing. The same is true on the machines
it works on...once it works, it always works.

It is this discrepancy that bothers me most.

So, I tried very very many approaches to making sure that the flash is
COMPLETELY loaded before it plays in director, in addition to putting
preloading in the base swf AND in the controls.swf. I even used
setInterval() to check every second or two if the target movieclip or level
had loaded enough bytes (>50) to continue, otherwise the loadMovie command
was called again... to no avail. The machines that exhibit the problem just
refuse to load even very very simple swf files into either a level or clip.

Just to test further, I made two VERY simple swf's and a test projector that
has exactly the same code and functionality. Both the compressed projector
and the shockwave projector worked fine.

So it seems that even within the problem machines, something within the
flash or the director is irritating the swf such that it breaks the
loadMovie() function... very discouraging to say the least.


[The Ramifications]
The biggest drawback if this problem proved unworkaround-able (if that's a
word), is that now I am either FORCED to have two instances of the flash
xtra at a time, both not being directToStage, or I have to FLATTEN all 72 of
my swfs, and change each one if something in the controls changes.


Any suggestions on how to get around this issue?


Thanks,
~Mathew



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Re: Flash functions from lingo

[Mathew Ray]

Try doing a search on the Direct-L archives... this was covered in depth a
few weeks ago with some great examples...
http://listserv.uark.edu/archives/direct-l.html

HTH,
~Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "Mendelsohn, Michael" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2003 1:54 PM
Subject:  Flash functions from lingo


> Hi all...
>
> Does anyone know of a technote, or could otherwise shed some light on a
> quick way to call a specific actionscript function in a flash sprite from
a
> lingo behavior on that sprite?
>
> Thanks,
> Michael M.
> [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to
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>



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Re: Flash functions from lingo

[Mathew Ray]

I used Mark Jonkman's approach with a few tweaks it is working
marvelously for my needs
http://listserv.uark.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0302A&L=direct-l&P=R4235

HTH,
~Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "Mendelsohn, Michael" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2003 2:53 PM
Subject: RE:  Flash functions from lingo


> Hi Grimmwerks...
>
> Are you talking about the Darrel Plant article?  Did it end up working for
> you?
>
> - Michael M.
>
>
>
>
>
> I had the very same question a while ago. Though not directly, you can. Go
> to the doug site and do a search for flash function.
>
>
> > Does anyone know of a technote, or could otherwise shed some light on
> > a quick way to call a specific actionscript function in a flash sprite
> > from a lingo behavior on that sprite?
>
>
>
>
> [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to
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>



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Flash xtra breaking?

[Mathew Ray]

Hi all,

Having a bit of a flash crisis here... for some reason on SOME machines,
flash elements of my project will play fine and then with no discernable
cause, they will start this studdering type thing where the sound seems to
be stopping and restarting several times a second. the visuals
continue(albeit slowly) and the sound continues, but with a very annoying
tat-tat-tat. Once this happens, it happens for ALL flash sprites in a movie,
even if going to a frame where the flash does not exist and then going to a
different movie.

The flash movies are all time-based motion and have a streaming sound in
their base timeline. I make sure to wait until the entire flash is preloaded
before playing and set a flag so that flash will not be played again. I have
tested to see what would happen if mysprite.play() was being called on every
enterframe, and the result is not the same as the behavior we are seeing on
some machines. I am also using global flash objects in the movie to set the
volume, but I am not messing around with playback at all.

I would love to get this to happen on my development machine, but it seems
like none of my testing machines on any os or my dev machine can recreate
the problem. I am running dirMX on winXP pro, problem in my office all have
XP, but specs vary widely.

What concerns me is that the problem can start occuring at any point (even
if user has already seen flash in the movie before) and will not go away
until the whole projector is restarted :0o

Any possible suggestions?

TIA,
~Mathew




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Re: =VOID vs. voidP

[Mathew Ray]

Hi Charlie,

Kerry mentioned his experiences, which closely match my own, but I think
Franco just spoke to that very question:
"VOID can't be used at the right of a comparison operator without
getting a value. This value is zero. I'd suggest you use voidP()
to check out if a var is void."

That is, if Director follows the "ANSI/IEEE 754
standard for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic"  :0)

I think I will just keep using voidP(), as nobody seems to have any problems
with that, although it just adds another element to any logical conditional
statement that I do where the variable is not guaranteed to exist.

HTH,
Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "Charlie Fiskeaux II" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 2:58 PM
Subject:  =VOID vs. voidP


> Given the debate about the value of VOID, here's a similar question.  Is
> there any difference between the following two conditions?
>
> if voidP(myVariable) then...
>
> if myVariable=VOID then...
>
> I've always used the latter without any buggy results, but is it proper?
>
> Charlie Fiskeaux II
> Media Designer
> The Creative Group
> www.cre8tivegroup.com
> 859/858-9054x29
>
>
> [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to
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>



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Re: one more for da geeks - xtras in dir...

[Mathew Ray]

Hi Grimm,

Just noticed this in the dictionary...

HTH,
Mathew
-

movieXtraList

Syntax
---
the movieXtraList

Description

Movie property; displays a linear property list of all Xtra extensions in
the Movies/Xtras dialog box that have been added to the movie.
#name--Specifies the filename of the Xtra on the current platform. It is
possible to have a list without a #name entry, such as when the Xtra exists
only on one platform.

#packagefiles--Set only when the Xtra is marked for downloading. The value
of this property is another list containing a property list for each file in
the download package for the current platform. The properties in this
subproperty list are #name and #version, which contain the same information
as found in the XtraList.

Two possible properties can appear in movieXtraList:


Example
-
This statement displays output from movieXtraList in the Message window:
put the movieXtraList
-- [[#name: "Mix Services"], [#name: "Sound Import Export"], [#name: "SWA
Streaming  \ PPC Xtra"], [#name: "TextXtra PPC"], [#name: "Font Xtra
PPC"],[#name: "Flash Asset  \ Options PPC"], [#name: "Font Asset PPC"],
[#name: "Flash Asset PPC",  \ #packagefiles: [[#fileName: "Flash Asset PPC",
#version: "1.0.3"


See also
-
xtraList


- Original Message -
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 3:37 PM
Subject:  one more for da geeks - xtras in dir...


>
> Is there any way to create a list in the message window (or hell anywhere,
> but I can handle that) of the xtras being used in a movie? Ie the same
> thing as looking at the modify - movie xtras window, but in a list.
>
> [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to
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>



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Re: Flash xtra breaking?

[Mathew Ray]

Wow, thanks for the info Evan,

Thankfully this project is not yet in the client's hands, but it will be
shortly... Gotta love the thing about Palm as well...geez. One other
question, if you were to leave the flash sprite that was having the problem
and to to a frame and return to a different flash sprite, did you still
experience the problem?  That is one of the weirdest things that I have
noticed is that it seems like once it happens, flash from that point forward
is screwed up. You mentioned you were using flash 5, but were you using the
newer flash xtra or the one from dir 8.5.1?

Thanks,
Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "Evan Adelman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 5:32 PM
Subject: Re:  Flash xtra breaking?


> Mathew,
>
> I've had the same problem, and, perhaps like you, didn't know there was
> a problem until the project was in the client's hands (and we did a
> *lot* of qc). I found that there was definitely some kooky kooky
> problems with largish flash movies and the flash 5 player.  i tried
> hundreds of variations of bug fixing and i got the issue down to a
> manageable level (but never fixed quite right). hotsync for palms
> running at the same time as my movie exacerbated the problem (i know
> this sounds crazy, but trust me, i verified on a couple different
> platforms - and don't ask me how long it took to figure it out ). also,
> ibm thinkpads (again, don't ask me why, but this one i think was related
> to their soundcards) experienced the problems more. and windows ME flash
> handling is a joke. I found that I could *occasionally* (and i can't
> emphasize that enough) could get the problem to occur on my win2k
> machine by stressing memory levels ( i would open up every large psd i
> could find, have a large flash movie open in authoring mode, play music
> through winamp, any taxing thing i could think of). i would watch the
> memory climb as the flash movie streamed, then if it hit a particularly
> cpu taxing moment in the flash animation, everything would start
> stuttering like a drunken me at Lucky Chengs.
>
> shudders
>
> anyway, look for high memory usage, cpu overload, sound compression
> issues, and the like.
>
> hth,
> evan
>
> Mathew Ray wrote:
>
> >Hi all,
> >
> >Having a bit of a flash crisis here... for some reason on SOME machines,
> >flash elements of my project will play fine and then with no discernable
> >cause, they will start this studdering type thing where the sound seems
to
> >be stopping and restarting several times a second. the visuals
> >continue(albeit slowly) and the sound continues, but with a very annoying
> >tat-tat-tat. Once this happens, it happens for ALL flash sprites in a
movie,
> >even if going to a frame where the flash does not exist and then going to
a
> >different movie.
> >
> >The flash movies are all time-based motion and have a streaming sound in
> >their base timeline. I make sure to wait until the entire flash is
preloaded
> >before playing and set a flag so that flash will not be played again. I
have
> >tested to see what would happen if mysprite.play() was being called on
every
> >enterframe, and the result is not the same as the behavior we are seeing
on
> >some machines. I am also using global flash objects in the movie to set
the
> >volume, but I am not messing around with playback at all.
> >
> >I would love to get this to happen on my development machine, but it
seems
> >like none of my testing machines on any os or my dev machine can recreate
> >the problem. I am running dirMX on winXP pro, problem in my office all
have
> >XP, but specs vary widely.
> >
> >What concerns me is that the problem can start occuring at any point
(even
> >if user has already seen flash in the movie before) and will not go away
> >until the whole projector is restarted :0o
> >
> >Any possible suggestions?
> >
> >TIA,
> >~Mathew
> >
>
> --
>
> _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _
>
>
> m u t a n t
>  m e d i a  > solutions for success
>
>
> Evan Adelman | 917.916.7378 | 598 Broadway  NY NY 10012
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | www.mutantmedia.com
> <http://www.mutantmedia.com>
>
>
>



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Re: Flash xtra breaking?

[Mathew Ray]

Hi Evan,

Yeah, I am using the new flash Xtra that comes with DirMX, and it appears as
if macromedia has put an update on their website this month to fix several
issues...

All of the problem machines are running WinXP Pro, but then again, that's
just what we have in the office. Here are the other specs for the  problem
machines:

1 x Celeron 1.8 gHz, 256 MB RAM, SiS 650_651_M650_740 integrated graphics
2 x p4 2.8 gHz 512 MB RAM, Matrox Parhelia 128MB
1 x p3 500 mHz, 128 MB RAM, NVIDIA RIVA TNT2

My Testing machines that have multiple OSes on em haven't exhibited the
problem once:
(PII 300, 128 MB RAM, Win 95/98/ME/NT4/2000Pro/XPPro)
(G3 500, 128 MB RAM, OS9.2/OSX.2).

The swf files are all less than a meg... so it seems like that may not be
the issue... And what is weird is that it would happen on some high end
machines, but just as rarely as low end machines.

I am going to try several things like the soundKeepDevice, and the
soundMixEnabled, just to see if that helps... If I find anything I will be
sure to post it.

Thanks,
Mathew


- Original Message -
From: "Evan Adelman" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2003 11:51 AM

> I was most surely using the older xtra - i tried using dir 8.0 and dir
> 8.5, but don't have documented xtra versions. If there's a new xtra out,
> I'd most definitely use that. since there wasn't a good way to determine
> failure/stuttering at run time, i didn't try leaving the sprite and
> coming back. what i did do was break the flash movie up in more pieces
> (so individual file size was lower - thus lower memory stress) and that
> helped alleviate the problem. but yes, you're right, once it started
> stuttering, it never recovered. is your flash sprite all that large? i
> think mine were around 5MB base size, probably around 20-30MB in memory
> (while they were playing). I guess I didn't mention before, but I could
> also get the stuttering w/  a Dell Web PC - like low of the low line -
> 32MB memory, 400 mhz celeron, crap video card, crap sound card. but
> again, it was never like - "Ohhh- there's the problem!" I would have to
> watch the thing over and over and over and over and...well you get the
idea.
>
> cheers,
> Evan



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Re: Projectors for WinXP affected by custom icons? Addendum

[Mathew Ray]

I had this problem a while back and was using an eval version of
Microangelo... After trying Axialis Icon Workshop, I got spoiled... No more
fidgeting and messing around... Open the exe, put what you want in there...
voila.

I'd try downloading a trial and see if you like it...the skl thing just
ended up being an unneeded hassle.

~Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "Slava Paperno" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, June 06, 2003 12:55 PM
Subject: Re:  Projectors for WinXP affected by custom icons?
Addendum


> Carl,
>
> You may want to look up "Microangelo" and "icon" in the list archives for
> the past month. This came up a few times and people posted various bits of
> info about this subject. I discovered the same situation when switching
the
> D version and Windows version, and my solution is to use Microangelo from
> www.microangelo.us and follow their specific directions for Director users
> in their Web page FAQ. Slava
>
> At 09:30 AM 6/6/03 -0400, you wrote:
> >I wrote:
> >
> > >The D8.5 projectors I'm sending to my client are being 'rejected' by
his
> > system as, "not valid win32 application". They work on Win 98. He's
> > running XP.
> >
> >He's got DMX, I tried to tell him how to make his own stub projector,
> >making sure that FileIO was included, but apparently the
> >Modify>Movie>Xtras dialog is different in MX from 8.5 so I couldn't help
> >him there. So I've told him to copy the Xtras folder from his Director
> >into the folder of my stuff. Maybe that'll work.
> >
> >What're my chances?
> >
> >What've I missed?
>
> [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to
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>



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Re: Dimming lights then show Video

[Mathew Ray]

Hi Benjamin,

I looked at doing an installation similar to this in the past and never had
the funds to get anything actually completed, but I would suggesting looking
into "show control" equipment and the like. You can use midi to talk to many
different kinds of things, but last time I checked, a simple midi controlled
power strip goes for $200+. I have some links at home, I will try to shoot
them to the list when I get back in this evening...

As for the midi stuff, you will need some sort of midi controller. I liked
the usb midiman ones for the mac... I also did some simple midi management
scripts where you could enter instrument, volume, pitch parameters and
compare them > < = etc...and have various frames be navigated to or
functions called... I'll try to dig up that as well. I did have some good
luck with the iCube hardware and sensors to detect movement, knob turning,
etc, but its pricey and I was using the schools... There are other kits
(EZIO board) where you can build your own simple sensors and everything is
much cheaper...

HTH,
~Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "Benjamin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2003 12:10 PM
Subject:  Dimming lights then show Video


Hi all,



I am using director to create an interactive installation, which shows
videos in a container (seacontainer). This installation shows video s
which can be chosen by the audience.


We thought it would be great if the container was lit by some spots,
when no video was playing. But when a user chooses one, the lights
should dimm!



Is this possible? How? I know about xtras, but haven t used any of them!
Then, I have to know which hardware I need? I now use some switches, but
I hook these up on a keyboard to get the input into Director.



Any ideas?



Thanks,

Benjamin

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Flash Sprites with Streaming Sounds Freezing/Stuttering

[Mathew Ray]

OK... after much testing and quite a bit of chagrin, I have exhausted all my
options with flash animations that include streaming sounds on the root
timeline.

I have tried:
the soundKeepDevice = false
the soundMixMedia = false
all flash sprites directToStage = false

After some simplification of code and a little voodoo magic, director isn't
crashing constantly in that one location anymore (most likely to video
issues), but I can replicate the stuttering problem far too often for my
comfort. However, on some machines, it is nearly impossible to recreate the
issue, including my development and testing machines. So far, all reported
instances of the issue have occured on WinXP or Win2K PCs with specs that
range the gamut from mom&pop home computers to high-end video workstations.

I am using the newest flash and text xtras provided for download at the end
of last month on the macromedia website. Without any luck.

The stuttering only occurs in flash that has stream sounds on the root
timeline. If I go to a section that has no sound, animation works fine. I
have also set the debugPlaybackEnabled on the latest build and after
recreating the problem used the message window to try to jumpstart the
flash...

I can grab the root timeline of the flash sprite using
getVariable("_root",false) just fine, and I can see individual objects in
the sprite's objectList. I can even move the frozen animation to another
frame and see it updated in director, but regular play() or gotoandplay()
comands do not work. For all intensive purposes, the flash playback is
frozen in a particular frame, even though flash is still registered as
'playing'. Using gotoandPlay to go to the last frame of the flash movie,
where the stream sound is over, the animation resumes. I guess the only
option at this point is to remove the audio from flash and play it through
director.

I would submit this to the buglist, but it is so difficult to reproduce I
doubt it would warrant a follow up. If I can get time (after I retrofit my
whole project), I will attempt to create a file that reflects this
behavior...until then, is there any more voodoo magic I can try out that I
may not be aware of?? :0)

Many thanks,
Mathew


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First few playbacks of DirectMedia/MpegAdvance in MIAWs - audio, no video

[Mathew Ray]

Has anyone ever seen a DirectMedia or MPEG Advance sprite not play properly
within a MIAW for the first couple playbacks (audio is fine, but only a
black box visually)? I have tried both the older DirectMedia and newer
MpegAdvance with the same results. (WinXP, 256MB RAM, DirMX)

I have an mpeg imported into my cast and placed into the timeline but
offstage. When a button is clicked in the MIAW, the video is placed onstage
and is told to play. This works fine in the authoring environment, but
causes problems in the projector. What's odd is that after a few clicks to
show other media (sequences of bitmaps), the video starts working fine!

..so, sounds like a refresh issue...

I have tried:
- refreshing the stagecolor and updating the stage
- telling the stage to refresh the stagecolor and updatestage
- telling the content window to refresh the stagecolor and updatestage
- moving a bitmap over the stage, updating it, and moving it off
- placing video on the stage and communicating with it via movie scripts
- using mpegAdvance rather than directMedia
- turning DTS off for a flash sprite on the stage at the same time as the
video
- faking out hardware scaling by increasing the height and width of the
video by 1 px

Am I missing anything?? Is there any way to make sure that the video is
visible the first time I move it onto the stage?

Thanks,
Mathew



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Lingo-L archives

[Mathew Ray]

ummm

the tamu.edu one is only useful if you want to know more about "Idioms
around the world and how they compare" Besides, looks like there isn't much
traffic anyway...

~Mathew


- Original Message -
From: "Cole Tierney" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2003 11:06 AM
Subject: Re:  Choose a question: MUI dialog units OR Lingo-L
archives


> >I think I may have asked this question before, but I can't figure out how
to
> >go about searching Lingo-L archives online.  Is that possible?
>
> Here are a couple places:
> http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
> http://postal.tamu.edu/archives/lingo-l.html
>
> --
> Cole
> [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to
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>



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Re: tell when importFileInto is done?

[Mathew Ray]

Hi Michael,

If the files are external, you could try changing the filename of the
member...would be quick and easy as long as the folder containing the images
can stay relative to the projector. Or are you looking at importing the
files into the cast and then saving it?

~Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "Michael von Aichberger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2003 9:27 AM
Subject:  tell when importFileInto is done?


> Hi list!
>
> For a simple slide show application I am using very large images (4096 x
> 768).
>
> I am using two cast members. When cast member A is displaying a slide, I
use
> importFileInto to import the next slide into cast member B. And vice
versa.
>
> My problem: Even though the images are on the local hard disk, it
> importFileInto takes some time. I need the execution of the next "step
> forward" to wait for the next slide to be available.
>
> Is there a way to tell when importFileInto is done?
>
> I looked into preloadnetthing, but I am not downloading from the internet.
>
> Any solution?
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Michael



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Re: rounding numbers....

[Mathew Ray]

Ahhh optimistic programming...sounds dangerous :0)

If you rely want a bunch of math functions, you can always create a new
flash object in directorMX... then you have access to all the math functions
present in flash...

~Mathew

- Original Message -
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2003 9:33 AM
Subject: Re:  rounding numbers


>
> on Ceil aFloat
>   vInt = integer(aFloat + 0.4)
>
>   return vInt
> end Ceil
>
> And no, it doesn't account for negatives. I'm a positive thinker. :-P
>
> Regards,
> Pranav Negandhi
>
>
> 
> put Ceil(1.0)
> -- 2
>
> A little modification is needed
>
> 
>
>
>
> [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to
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>



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Re: Multiuser Xtra and databases

[Mathew Ray]

I agree with Troy...I am using php/mysql and it works pretty well. I've
heard you can do similar things with flash and coldfusion, but it seems much
more expensive without a big payoff. If you are using some complicated
SOAP-compliant app or something, flash may be easier to interface with, but
for simple database stuff posting to a web form and getting a reply is
usually good enough.

Although, I seem to remember reading something quite a while ago about MUS
being able to access databases and stuff, but I can't recall in what
capacity or technically how it was done :0/ Overall though, the end product
is much more flexible if done with some sort of full-featured middleware
like php or asp.

~Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "Troy Rollins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2003 12:12 PM
Subject: Re:  Multiuser Xtra and databases


>
> On Tuesday, June 17, 2003, at 12:01  PM, Rodrigo Peres wrote:
>
> > Is it possible to use multiuser xtra to connect to databases like
> > mysql,
> > oracle etc. I need to connect and retrieve some data. If possible I'd
> > like
> > to run away from third part xtras, but...
>
> You'll probably want to use a PHP/ASP intermediary.
>
> > ps: DirectorMX doesn't use multiuser anymore??
>
> Yes it does (on all platforms), but the xtra has been moved to the
> "goodies" folder on the distribution CD. Macromedia needs to reconsider
> this. That xtra can serve many purposes - more than what the Flash
> Communications Server alone can offer.
>
>
>
> --
> Troy
> RPSystems, Ltd.
> http://www.rpsystems.net



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Re: Multiuser Xtra and databases

[Mathew Ray]

I know it is not a desired solution, but I think the ADO xtra is free and it
can connect to databases if need-be.

By the way, I think the stuff I read about database access was somewhere in
a MACR whitepaper for MUS 1.0 or 2.0, if that helps at all...

What may help the search is a little more detailed description of what
exactly you are doing and why an xtra is not an option. It may be that there
is an xtra out there that can help out. Is it a shocked project, cd-based,
disk-based? Where is the database in relationship to the app?

HTH,
~Mathew

- Original Message -
From: "Rodrigo Peres" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Lingo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2003 1:28 PM
Subject: Re:  Multiuser Xtra and databases


First, thank's for the answers use PHP or ASP is not the case here, because
I need a quick response and this aproach can delay things a little. The
other problem is that there's no way to put a webserver in this project.

on 6/17/03 2:00 PM, Mathew Ray at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> I agree with Troy...I am using php/mysql and it works pretty well. I've
> heard you can do similar things with flash and coldfusion, but it seems
much
> more expensive without a big payoff. If you are using some complicated
> SOAP-compliant app or something, flash may be easier to interface with,
but
> for simple database stuff posting to a web form and getting a reply is
> usually good enough.
>
> Although, I seem to remember reading something quite a while ago about MUS
> being able to access databases and stuff, but I can't recall in what
> capacity or technically how it was done :0/ Overall though, the end
product
> is much more flexible if done with some sort of full-featured middleware
> like php or asp.
>
> ~Mathew
>
> - Original Message -
> From: "Troy Rollins" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2003 12:12 PM
> Subject: Re:  Multiuser Xtra and databases
>
>
>>
>> On Tuesday, June 17, 2003, at 12:01  PM, Rodrigo Peres wrote:
>>
>>> Is it possible to use multiuser xtra to connect to databases like
>>> mysql,
>>> oracle etc. I need to connect and retrieve some data. If possible I'd
>>> like
>>> to run away from third part xtras, but...
>>
>> You'll probably want to use a PHP/ASP intermediary.
>>
>>> ps: DirectorMX doesn't use multiuser anymore??
>>
>> Yes it does (on all platforms), but the xtra has been moved to the
>> "goodies" folder on the distribution CD. Macromedia needs to reconsider
>> this. That xtra can serve many purposes - more than what the Flash
>> Communications Server alone can offer.
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Troy
>> RPSystems, Ltd.
>> http://www.rpsystems.net
>
>
>
> [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go to
> http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi  To post messages to the list, email
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]  (Problems, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L
is
> for learning and helping with programming Lingo.  Thanks!]
>

--
Rodrigo Peres
www.rodrigoperes.com.br
escritório/office: +55(11) 3781.7017
celular/mobile: +55(11) 9108.6169
--

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RE: displaying text from list

[Mathew Ray]

Chris,

You may need to build a little routine that loops through the list and
builds the string... The RETURN constant can add line wrapping for you.

Quick untested lingo...

myList = ["one","two","three"]
repeat with x=1 to myList.count
if voidP(myString) then
myString = myList[x]
else
myString = myString + RETURN + myList[x] 
end if
end repeat

member("myfield") = myString

HTH,
Mathew

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, June 27, 2003 11:01 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:  displaying text from list

Hi,
Is there any way to insert a RETURN or SPACE after each item in a linear
list? I am working on a questionaire with checkboxes that stores the
text in
a global list and after the user is finished with the questionaire I
want
them to be able to read the answers. So I've dumped the list into a
field
but there are no spaces between each item and the text is hard to read.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Chris Satory



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RE: OSX/9 bundle puzzle: foo.app = foo.app

[Mathew Ray]

What do your plist files look like?

~Mathew

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Slava Paperno
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2003 4:39 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:  OSX/9 bundle puzzle: foo.app = foo.app

I'm trying to create a Mac OS 9 / OS X bundle for my Director
application, 
and I've run into a puzzle. I wonder if anyone else has seen the same
thing.

I followed the directions at 
http://www.macromedia.com/support/director/ts/documents/bundle_proj.htm

One of the first claims made there is that a volume root folder that you

name "foo.app" will actually display its name as "foo" and will appear
to 
be an application rather than a folder (both under OS 9 and OS X) until
you 
Ctrl-click it and select Show Package Contents. This works fine for me 
under OS X but fails under OS 9.2.

I burned the volume to a CD under OS X. The disk works fine under OS X
on 
other machines, but on OS 9.2 machines, the name of the folder is
foo.app 
and it looks and acts just like a folder. I can start my application by 
opening this folder and then opening folder Contents inside, and then 
double-clicking the alias for the OS 9 projector in that folder--but
that 
should not be necessary.

A couple of things I discovered while practicing this arcane art:

If you use lingo.ini and MyProjector.ini, these have to be duplicated
and 
placed alongside each of the two projectors. This is not mentioned in
the 
MM writeup.

If you use "the moviePath" anywhere in your movies, that will return the

actual path on the volume, i.e. MyVolume:foo.app:contents:MacOS: etc.
This 
was not apparent to me at first. The consequences are dramatic for a
movie 
that needs to access files by specifying the complete path.

Any tips on why my volume's root "foo.app" folder is still called
foo.app 
under OS 9.2 would be appreciated.

Slava

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RE: OSX/9 bundle puzzle: foo.app = foo.app

[Mathew Ray]

Slava,

I am not exactly sure what format your plist files are in, but in the
bundles I have done, they are in an XML format...

Based on the download from:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/director/ts/documents/bundle_proj.htm

My  info.plist file reads (watch for linebreaks):




CFBundleInfoDictionaryVersion
6.0
CFBundlePackageType
APPL
CFBundleSignature
foo!
CFBundleName
foo
CFBundleIconFile
MyIcon.icns
CFBundleIdentifier
com.macromedia.Otto
CSResourcesFileMapped

CFBundleExecutable
stubX
CFBundleShortVersionString
1.0
CFBundleVersion
1.0
CFBundleGetInfoString
1.0, © 2002 Macromedia.  All rights reserved.



and the contents of the pkgInfo file looks like:
APPLfoo!


So the bundle signature of the info.plist file matches the line in
pkgInfo.

Is your notation an alternative to this syntax, or is it just simplified
for readability?

Also notice, that I added the CFBundleIconFile key to the existing plist
file so that you can use a custom icon for the projector bundle. I
believe there were some good postings on how to create icon resource
files (.icns) and corresponding paste-able icons for the getInfo window
earlier this year in either this list's archives or the Direct-L list...
I can't locate the exact message at the moment though...

Hope this helps!
~Mathew


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Slava Paperno
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2003 6:28 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE:  OSX/9 bundle puzzle: foo.app = foo.app

Thanks a million for responding, Matt. Here they are:

{
 CFBundleDevelopmentRegion = English;
 CFBundleExecutable = Start;
 CFBundleGetInfoString = "Start Application";
 CFBundleIconFile = "Start.icns";
 CFBundleInfoDictionaryVersion = "6.0";
 CFBundleName = Start;
 CFBundlePackageType = APPL;
 CFBundleShortVersionString = "1.0";
 CFBundleSignature = CFINTRO;
 CFBundleVersion = "1.0";
}

{
 BuildVersion = 02;
 CFBundleShortVersionString = "1.0";
 CFBundleVersion = "1.0";
 ProjectName = Start;
 ReleaseStatus = GM;
 SourceVersion = 0200;
}

"Start" is the name of my projectors and the topmost folder, Start.app.
(I 
used "foo.app" in my original post because that's what the MM write-up
uses.)

Slava

At 05:58 PM 7/8/03 -0400, Mathew Ray wrote:
>What do your plist files look like?
>
>~Mathew
>
>-Original Message-
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Slava Paperno
>Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2003 4:39 PM
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject:  OSX/9 bundle puzzle: foo.app = foo.app
>
>I'm trying to create a Mac OS 9 / OS X bundle for my Director
>application,
>and I've run into a puzzle. I wonder if anyone else has seen the same
>thing.
>
>I followed the directions at
>http://www.macromedia.com/support/director/ts/documents/bundle_proj.htm
>
>One of the first claims made there is that a volume root folder that
you
>
>name "foo.app" will actually display its name as "foo" and will appear
>to
>be an application rather than a folder (both under OS 9 and OS X) until
>you
>Ctrl-click it and select Show Package Contents. This works fine for me
>under OS X but fails under OS 9.2.
>
>I burned the volume to a CD under OS X. The disk works fine under OS X
>on
>other machines, but on OS 9.2 machines, the name of the folder is
>foo.app
>and it looks and acts just like a folder. I can start my application by
>opening this folder and then opening folder Contents inside, and then
>double-clicking the alias for the OS 9 projector in that folder--but
>that
>should not be necessary.
>
>A couple of things I discovered while practicing this arcane art:
>
>If you use lingo.ini and MyProjector.ini, these have to be duplicated
>and
>placed alongside each of the two projectors. This is not mentioned in
>the
>MM writeup.
>
>If you use "the moviePath" anywhere in your movies, that will return
the
>
>actual path on the volume, i.e. MyVolume:foo.app:contents:MacOS: etc.
>This
>was not apparent to me at first. The consequences are dramatic for a
>movie
>that needs to access files by specifying the complete path.
>
>Any tips on why my volume's root "foo.app" folder is still called
>foo.app
>under OS 9.2 would be appreciated.
>
>Slava

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RE: Databases in Lingo

[Mathew Ray]

Hi Diego,

I have used Valentina DB (www.paradigmasoft.com) with success for these
sorts of things and have been fairly happy. You have the option of
storing filenames/paths in a text field, or actually storing the image
data ITSELF inside a BLOB field. With the xtra you can also bind
specific cast members to fields and they will update when you navigate
through your cursor (aka recordset). You can also use INM's V12 xtra for
this, but I chose Valentina because it appeared to be more flexible,
faster, and it uses SQL, which I have use on a regular basis.

Valentina is a little more cryptic and takes some getting used to, but
it's a neat little tool to use once you get the hang of it.

HTH,
~Mathew

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Diego Landro
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2003 1:21 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:  Databases in Lingo

I am working on a project where i need to manage a huge quantity of
images,
so i need to use a databse to sort the images. Question is: can i use
databases with lingo. What kind of databases? can you suggest somewhere
where i can get info on how to do this? What i need to do is load images
into director selected among the images which are in the database. The
database is just a pointer to the real image in the disk, meaning i use
the
database to sort images, put the real images in a directory in the disk
and
use director to perform a series of things to load a numer of those
images,
then i need director to access the database and oad into memory the
selected
images.

Thanks

Diego Landro

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RE: Xml parser xtra question

[Mathew Ray]

Try using Andy White's XML Parser scripts... Organizes everything nice
and neat for ya... Even provides search functions...
http://www.shocknet.org.uk/defpage.asp?pageID=90

If you like the way flash does it (and if you find out it is more
efficient), you can always use global flash objects in director without
having to use the xml xtra. But I like Andy's personally and avoided the
xml xtra after hearing some of the issues people had with it and
remaining bugs that are not fixed.

~Mathew



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mendelsohn,
Michael
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 3:07 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:  Xml parser xtra question


Hi list...

When debugging, is there any way to see the structure of parsed xml
under the variable tabs (DMX interface).  Currently, all I see there is
the instance of the xtra: .  I'd like
to be able to see a tree view of the data.  Am I missing something?

Flash does it, so Director should
too.

Thanks in advance,
Michael M.



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RE: Flash globals inside Director -- revisited

[Mathew Ray]

Shouldn't global be a scope followed by "." like:
_global.gData = new Object();

Other than that, Flash vars have worked flawlessly for me in the past,
as long as I am sure the flash movie is loaded and the frame that
contains the actions has executed... By the way, gData is actually
scoped to _level0 and _root if placed in the lowest level of an swf,
_global is a different deal altogether, more like session variables or
environment variables I would say. You say this is happening in a
barebones movie? Is flash linked or internal?

~Mathew



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mendelsohn,
Michael
Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 10:27 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:  Flash globals inside Director -- revisited


Hi all...

Charlie Fiskeaux had a post on 5.20 that I'm trying to figure out...and
failing at.  


First frame of the flash movie has the following code that creates two
variables... _global gData = new Object(); gData.pTest = "hello"; gTest
= "Massachusetts";


I run the movie and do all the combinations that were done in the
original post...

put sprite(1).getVariable("gTest")
--""
put sprite(1).getVariable("gTest", true)
--""
put sprite(1).getVariable("gTest", false)
--
put sprite(1).getVariable("_level0.gTest")
--""
put sprite(1).getVariable("_level0.gTest", true)
--""
put sprite(1).getVariable("_level0.gTest", false)
--
put sprite(1).getVariable("_global.gTest")
--""
put sprite(1).getVariable("_global.gTest", true)
--""
put sprite(1).getVariable("_global.gTest", false)
--

As this won't work, it's probably futile to toy with the gData.pTest
object yet.

put sprite(1).getVariable("_global.gData.pTest")
put sprite(1).getVariable("_gloabl.gData.pTest", true)

...all nothing returned.

Anyone have any thoughts on getting global values out of a flash sprite?

Thanks,
Michael M.

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Opinions on MAX conference?

[Mathew Ray]

Hi all,

Just curious what people think about the Macromedia Users Conferences
(Called MAX this year)... Anybody been to one? I may have an opportunity
to go, but I was curious of a few things. Like, did you got anything out
of the conference/was it a worthwhile experience, were the seminars
informative and offer good insights on alternative design/coding
techniques? If it was useful, what were the best parts of it? Likewise,
I would be interested to see if anyone thought it was a waste of
time/money, and if so, what were the biggest gripes you had. I
appreciate any opinions...

Thanks,
~Mathew



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RE: Trigger FlashMX function from DMX.

[Mathew Ray]

Hi Kristian,

Have you tried this:

root = sprite(x).getVariable("_root",false)
root.getStringFromDMX("myString")

root.myArray[11] = "this is a test";

Since root is an actual REFERENCE to the root timeline, you can access
most of the stuff on the timeline just like you would in Actionscript.
Keep in mind that arrays in lingo begin with index 1, while actionscript
arrays' indexes start with 0.

HTH,
~Mathew



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kristian
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 4:07 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE:  Trigger FlashMX function from DMX.


Thanks a lot Mathew, works amazingly well!

While writing I might as well see if anyone has got an answer to this:

put sprite(1).getVariable("mainHeader",false)[11]

sprite(1) contains a flash object, the flash object contains an array
called
mainHeader...

using the above code works fine for referencing the 12th object in that
array from DMX...

The Question: Is there a way as simple as the above to use the
setVariable
on an Array directly from lingo? (thanks to Mathew that can be resolved
with
a new flash function... but WHY doesn't it work??)

/Kristian again...



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RE: Trigger FlashMX function from DMX.

[Mathew Ray]

Behold... FLASH OBJECTS!

root = sprite(x).getVariable("_root",false)
root.getStringFromDMX("myString")

False allows getVariable() to return a reference to the root timeline.
Then you can call functions on it.

HTH,
~Mathew



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kristian
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2003 5:45 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:  Trigger FlashMX function from DMX.


Hi all,

just wondering if anyone has worked with triggering/calling flash
functions,
using lingo, from DMX? The flash function I'm trying to reach is inside
a
sprite that is a Flash object. What I want to do is (in pseudo)
something
like:

sprite(x).callFlashFunction("getStringFromDMX()", "myString")

It has to be functions and not just setting and getting variables.

Great list and thanks in advance.

/Kristian



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RE: animating scaling of sprites

[Mathew Ray]

Wow... Haven't thought about double-buffering in a while :0)

I have seen the same "stair-step" pattern myself, particularly when
flipping through a series of bitmaps in an un-moving member. It happens
on some video cards, not on others. Hence, I have blamed it on the
implementation of the video driver.

However, is this what you are talking about Court? From your initial
posting, I got the feeling that your issue was with the perceived motion
of the image itself, be it a bitmap or a solid block of color. First of
all, is my perception correct? If so, are you doing any fancy easing
with the animation? From what I have seen, sometimes interpolating an
image only using whole pixel values can produce chunky results,
especially if you are trying to finesse it. If I am wrong, just ignore
all this spewing of ???

Thanks,
~Mathew



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kerry Thompson
Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2003 5:09 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE:  animating scaling of sprites


> In my opinion this effect is due to the frequency difference 
> of the animation and the graphics adaptor.
> 
> Director or Flash could be running let's say at 13 fps, 
> whereas the graphics adaptor would run at 60 fps for example.

Interesting theory, but I don't think it holds up in reality.

The graphics adaptor will draw the screen at whatever refresh rate you
set--we can use 60 Hz as a base rate.

When it draws, it draws whatever is in the video card's current page
memory. Director fills its part of that memory with whatever is on the
stage (in a projector). Actually, it instructs Windows to display
something, and Windows tells the video card driver what to draw, and the
video card driver zaps the stuff into the video card's RAM.

If Director is running at, say, 20 fps, it fills its part of the video
ram 20 times per second. That process, though, takes microseconds, and
it's unlikely to be interrupted part of the way through, simply because
it's so fast. Also, most video cards have a paging system where it draws
a page in a part of the ram that's not currently being displayed, then,
when it's finished, it displays that page. It knows when a page is being
updated, and it won't flip pages until the page is finished updating.

Even if the video card did an update while Director was in the process
of drawing a frame, the "stair step" would only be visible briefly, for
1/60th of a second until the next video refresh.

So, there is another reason for the stair step effect. Not sure what it
is, but I'm pretty sure of what it isn't.

Cordially,

Kerry Thompson



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RE: Anyone know a good Flash list? - like lingo-L! and a Flash question...

[Mathew Ray]

I second Kerry's suggestion...Flashcoders is a good place if you are
having a really weird issue, cause chances are someone else there has
seen it too. Its also a great place to keep up with the most advanced
stuff going on. Flashnewbie is a great resource as well, and there is
generally some good discussion going on there.

Scite|Flash is a favorite among hardcore coders, along with a few others
(easily found by searching flashcoders), but I tend to use Dreamweaver,
since I have it and I can do HTML,JS,PHP,and AS all in the same place...
But it has its issues as well, namely its slooow.

Check out the "for( $iterator in $object )" style of looping. Just make
sure your $iterator is the right kind of object, which you can check
with typeOf(). It will loop through all the instances inside another
instance. You can't go wrong with Moock's ASDGMX either: Lts of
great stuff in there that's saved hours, with a killer flash
reference...IMO better than Macromedia's.

HTH,
~Mathew


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kerry Thompson
Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2003 9:53 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE:  Anyone know a good Flash list? - like lingo-L!
and a Flash question...


> 1) Do you happen to know a good list with Action-script programmers?
> Preferably exactly like lingo-L but for AS... (I've tried the 
> Flash-Kit ones)

I like Flash-Newbie. http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/

FlashCoders is there too, but it's really for advanced programmers, and
it's really high-traffic. I'm an intermediate Flash user, and I find a
lot of good info on the Newbie list. There's always been somebody who
can answer my questions.

> 2) What external script editor do you use for AS and Mac-OS X?

BBEdit. I also use the internal Flash editor for small stuff.

> 3) Is there a way to search through every object on stage, or (even
> better) the whole movie, for setting a few properties? - Pretty much 
> like you would in Lingo, looping through all the members or 
> sprites. (I want to set all the text to "selectable" on a site with
about 
> 200 Flash movies.)

Ouch. Not that I know of. If there's a way, somebody on Flash-Newbie
will know. In my experience, though, that question would likely be
ignored on FlashCoders.

Cordially,

Kerry Thompson



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RE: animating scaling of sprites

[Mathew Ray]

Try searching the archives for subpixel animationit can help even
out jaggyness caused by being forced to move a pixel at a time. Also,
what kind of machine are you running on (platform/processor/ram/director
ver.)?

~mathew

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of court batson
Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2003 4:08 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:  animating scaling of sprites


Hey all,

I'm planning on doing zooms and pans in director or flash with 1024 x 
768 images for a screen saver, but are running into problems. Director 
and Flash are both doing extremely strange things when animating the 
scaling of an image at all for a zoom effect. Panning is a little 
better, but getting smooth motion seems impossible. I'm getting 
stair-stepped motion instead of a steady transition.

My tests were done with score/timeline animations. I'm hoping Lingo or 
Actionscript has a better results. I was expecting to get something 
closer to video. Is this a pipe dream? Are there any ways around this?

thanks,
Court 



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RE: Re: Save as binary file

[Mathew Ray]

Wow, that's a neat one! I wonder what other nifty things you can do by
hijacking the JavaConvert xtra? Hmmm

~Mathew

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of elewis
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 6:11 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Re:  Save as binary file


There is another way?!
I've dug this up from my box of goodies. Straight cut/paste from
somewhere!
e.



Originally posted by jeepee:
ok this is what I found and indeed it is easy!! 

well here's the trickfor all you who can use this also

>

This is an easy, yet powerful one:

Have you ever wondered how the JavaConvert Xtra could be used in your
own Director movies? How about exporting JPEGs for free – no need
for an Xtra besides the Macromedian ones...

Be sure you have these Xtras installed / in the Xtras folder near your
projector:

JavaConvert, Mix Services, BMP Import Export, JPEG Export

I tested one-by-one, so even if it's not obvious what BMP Import Export
is doing, it's necessary (all tests on MacOS, BTW). Also, don't include
your movie in a projector, leave it external, and name it "as usual"
aName.dir or aName.dcr also on the Mac.

And put this script into your movie:

on convertToJPEG mymember,myfilepath, myquality
myinst = new(xtra "JavaConvert")
set the itemdelimiter = "."
myinst.ExportMedia(item 1 of the movie, mymember, ¬
myfilepath, 1, myquality, mymember.castlibnum)
-- put the result -- will be 
myinst = 0
end

and call it like this: converttojpeg(member "hans",
"aDisk:aFolder:aFile.jpg", 75)

That's it! JPEG Export on your own... Large castmembers may take a
moment or two to export.

BTW: most likely these Xtras are not Shockwave-safe.



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RE: delete the last RETURN in a list

[Mathew Ray]

Is there some reason you are putting it into a member? You shouldn’t
need to using Martin's approach...

~Mathew



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tony Åström
Sent: Monday, August 18, 2003 10:56 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re:  delete the last RETURN in a list


I put gSoundList into a member and used:
delete the last char of member("videoTitle")
Otherwise it deleted the ] char.

Thank you all!
Tony


måndagen den 18 augusti 2003 kl 15.51 skrev Martin Pallett:

> Oops, a bit hasty on the reply button there
>
> try this
>
> delete the last char of gSoundList
>
> Next time I'll try to read the question more carefully before replying
>
> Martin Pallett
>
> At 14:50 18/08/2003 +0200, you wrote:
>> Hi List,
>>
>> I getNthFileNameinFolder into a gSoundList an put RETURN after every 
>> filename then
>> on mouseUp
>>   nLine = the mouseLine
>>   if nLine > 0 then
>> sprite(me.spriteNum).member.line[nLine].hilite()gSoundList[nLine]
>>   end if
>> end
>>
>> When I click below the last filename in the scrollable field I get 
>> the error "Index out of range!" I can understand that.
>> How can I delete the RETURN after the last filename in the
gSoundList?
>>
>> TIA
>> Tony
>>
>> [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest mode, go 
>> to http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi  To post messages to the list,

>> email [EMAIL PROTECTED]  (Problems, email 
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is for learning and helping with 
>> programming Lingo.  Thanks!]
>
> Spike
> Rowe House
> Emson Close
> Saffron Walden
> UK  CB10 1HL
> +44 (0) 1799 529 100



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RE: Projector vs. external cast - BUT MIAW...

[Mathew Ray]

Ok, I see what you are saying. You need to capture the 'closeWindow'
event, so to speak and use that to 'forget' the instance of the MIAW.
Unfortunately, short of making your OWN toolbar and buttons, I don't
know a way of getting this exact functionality.

I believe having the window 'forget' itself is what causes Director to
reference a chunk of memory that has already been cleared, so that is
why something not connected to the MIAW needs to get rid of it...someone
let me know if I am misinformed.

Kristian, how many MIAW's do you open at once? Keep in mind you can make
one window, "popup" for example, and have lots of different content
inside that one container. Is it necessary to forget it every time, or
can you get away with just changing the content and size?

Here's a little brainstorm: Maybe you can have a routine that adds a
window to an "openedWindow" list and periodically checks to see which
ones are still open. If not, forget themlike a MIAW garbage
collection system. It wouldn't need to operate if nothing was in the
list, which could make it a bit more efficient.

This may help get around the lack of a 'closeWindow' event and shouldn't
be TOO much work with a few timeouts and a function or two.

~Mathew



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kristian
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2003 2:16 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE:  Projector vs. external cast - BUT MIAW...


Further down...

> > I am not calling it since the documentation stated that it is
> > a system handler and gets executed when I close a window 
> > using the window's close box. Any suggestions?
> 
> Indeed. You need to explicitly forget the MIAW.
> 
> It's a bit more involved than it appears. You can't have the 
> MIAW forget itself, and you can't tell the stage to forget 
> the MIAW. Both are calls the MIAW makes, and a call must 
> return. When it tries to return, though, the MIAW is gone. 
> *Kablooie* is the technical term for what happens next.
> 
> One method a lot of people use is to have a global in the 
> stage movie, something like this.
> 
> global gCloseMiaw
> 
> on prepareMovie
>   gCloseMIAW = FALSE
>   yada yada
> End
> 
> Then in a periodical, like a frame handler:
> 
> global gCloseMiaw
> 
> on exitFrame
>   if gCloseMiaw = TRUE then
>  close gMQTWin
>  forget gMQTWin
>  gCloseMiaw  = FALSE
>   end if
> end
> 
> Then your MIAW would cause itself to be closed with something 
> like this:
> 
> tell the stage
>   gCloseMiaw = TRUE
> end tell

OK, I can follow this... But the tell the stage handler has to be in a
preiodical or?? What I need is to capture the close event that gets
triggered when the user uses the close box in the title bar... Possible?

Would of cause be glad to do it your way but not sure I can figure that
out
quite yet without som explanation on how you call the handlers... I
assume
they are in the stage movie?

Thanks a bunch
/Kristian

> I actually use a little different method so I'm not stuck 
> with a frame handler. Here's the way I do it:
> 
> global gMIAWTimeOut
> 
> on CloseModalDLOG gOkPressed
>   if not voidP(window gMQTWin) then
> -- always assign a timeout to a variable
> -- or you'll get a memory leak
> gMIAWTimeOut = timeOut(gMiawName).new(50, #mForgetWindow, VOID)
>   end if
> end
> 
> on mForgetWindow 
>   lWindowName = gMIAWTimeOut .name
>   if not voidP(window lWindowName) then
> window(lWindowName).forget()
> gMiawName = VOID
>   end if
>   gMIAWTimeOut .target = VOID
>   gMIAWTimeOut .forget()
>   gMIAWTimeOut = VOID 
> end
> 
> Hope that helps.
> 
> Cordially,
> 
> Kerry Thompson
> 
> [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest 
> mode, go to http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi  To post 
> messages to the list, email [EMAIL PROTECTED]  (Problems, 
> email [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is for learning and 
> helping with programming Lingo.  Thanks!]
> 



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RE: Flash in Director - sound problem

[Mathew Ray]

Hi James,

No solutions here... We tried many different things and eventually had
to rely on Director playing ALL audio. Same situation here as well, hard
to repro. More often on a slow cd or older dvd drive, which makes me
think it has something to do with preloading or streaming the audio into
the flash xtra. Tried preloading in Dir and Flash with no success. Can
you submit to the list the things you noticed that seem to make the
issue worse, and I will add to it. Hopefully this way we can start to
get to the root of the problem, cause right now audio in flash is just
too risky for us.

Thanks,
~Mathew



> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of 
> James Tarling
> Sent: Friday, August 22, 2003 12:55 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject:  Flash in Director - sound problem
> 
> 
> Hello,
> 
> We are experiencing intermittent problems with sound in Flash 
> files hosted
> in Director.
> It's very difficult to reproduce, but it seems to happen when 
> we are doing a
> loadMovie request within Flash. What happens is that the 
> Flash sound begins
> to stutter, and subsequent sounds and Flash video will not 
> play, in any
> Flash sprite. The Director app needs to be restarted before 
> any sound or
> video can be played. I've only managed to reproduce this 
> error when running
> off a CD, and only, say, 1 out of 10 attempts at the most, 
> and only on some
> hardware.
> We have managed to reduce the problem by (a) increasing the 
> bufferSize of
> the Flash members and (b) avoiding Flash sounds attached from 
> the library
> (and asking Director to puppetsound cast members instead), 
> but the problem
> is still occurring and it's very user-unfriendly when it does.
> 
> This is a problem that has been discussed (but not solved) on 
> the this list
> and the macromedia newsgroups
> 
http://mail4.fcgnetworks.net/archives/lingo-l/2003-April/010032.html
http://mail4.fcgnetworks.net/archives/lingo-l/2003-April/010098.html
http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?selm=bckk9f%24hrd%241%40forums.macrome
dia.
com

and I was really just posting in the hope that someone had come up with
a
solution. The main problem for me at the moment is that I can't really
begin
the process of troubleshooting until I can reproduce the error.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

James



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RE: Flash in Director - sound problem

[Mathew Ray]

James,

I don't know why I just thought of this, but are your SWFs compressed? I
know there is some documented weirdness with flash preloading compressed
swf files - the bytesTotal is that of the uncompressed file, not of how
big it is on disc. I noticed the issue happens usually some time during
preloading and will continue to happen for every flash asset that uses
sound. I wonder if it is tripping up the xtra enough to screw up the
sound code, specifically the part that handles the streaming. Maybe
worth testing to see if uncompressed swfs have the same issue.

My opinion is that anything that would break the flash player that bad
is definitely a bug, and should be theoretically impossible for a coder
to do, but as the old Director addage goes "If you can work around the
problem..." :0)

The big problem is that you can never be TOTALLY sure its fixed, because
it is so hard to reproduce. That's why I just had to ditch the concept
completely, cause I had to be sure. Let me know though if that seems to
help. I would test it with the project we found the issue on, but there
were 150 or so swfs I would need to export to have a true test :0( We
also haven't been able to put together a SIMPLE test case that clearly
shows the problem for Macromedia. It only seems to show itself on the
biggest most complicated things. By chance are your swfs running a lot
of code?

Also, our problem was most easily reproduced by putting the project on
disc and running from an older. slower dvd drive, and occurred randomly
from a few minutes into the project to over 10 minutes into the project.
If this problem could be fixed, maybe I could reaffirm my faith in the
flashMX xtra...

Thanks,
~Mathew


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mathew Ray
> Sent: Friday, August 22, 2003 1:26 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE:  Flash in Director - sound problem
> 
> 
> Hi James,
> 
> No solutions here... We tried many different things and eventually had
> to rely on Director playing ALL audio. Same situation here as 
> well, hard
> to repro. More often on a slow cd or older dvd drive, which makes me
> think it has something to do with preloading or streaming the 
> audio into
> the flash xtra. Tried preloading in Dir and Flash with no success. Can
> you submit to the list the things you noticed that seem to make the
> issue worse, and I will add to it. Hopefully this way we can start to
> get to the root of the problem, cause right now audio in flash is just
> too risky for us.
> 
> Thanks,
> ~Mathew
> 
> 
> 
> > -Original Message-
> > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of 
> > James Tarling
> > Sent: Friday, August 22, 2003 12:55 PM
> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Subject:  Flash in Director - sound problem
> > 
> > 
> > Hello,
> > 
> > We are experiencing intermittent problems with sound in Flash 
> > files hosted
> > in Director.
> > It's very difficult to reproduce, but it seems to happen when 
> > we are doing a
> > loadMovie request within Flash. What happens is that the 
> > Flash sound begins
> > to stutter, and subsequent sounds and Flash video will not 
> > play, in any
> > Flash sprite. The Director app needs to be restarted before 
> > any sound or
> > video can be played. I've only managed to reproduce this 
> > error when running
> > off a CD, and only, say, 1 out of 10 attempts at the most, 
> > and only on some
> > hardware.
> > We have managed to reduce the problem by (a) increasing the 
> > bufferSize of
> > the Flash members and (b) avoiding Flash sounds attached from 
> > the library
> > (and asking Director to puppetsound cast members instead), 
> > but the problem
> > is still occurring and it's very user-unfriendly when it does.
> > 
> > This is a problem that has been discussed (but not solved) on 
> > the this list
> > and the macromedia newsgroups
> > 
> http://mail4.fcgnetworks.net/archives/lingo-l/2003-April/010032.html
> http://mail4.fcgnetworks.net/archives/lingo-l/2003-April/010098.html
> http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?selm=bckk9f%24hrd%241%40foru
ms.macrome
dia.
com

and I was really just posting in the hope that someone had come up with
a
solution. The main problem for me at the moment is that I can't really
begin
the process of troubleshooting until I can reproduce the error.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

James



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RE: BaFileList() and .sort

[Mathew Ray]

If you can't pad the numbers, I think what you need is a natural
sort...kinda the way php does it:
http://us4.php.net/manual/en/function.natsort.php

Kerry's option may also work well, and faster than an implementation of
how php does it...especially if you have to code such a thing in lingo.
Lingo does a pretty good job messing around with bits of text.

~Mathew


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of g schafer
> Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2003 10:53 AM
> To: Lingo
> Subject:  BaFileList() and .sort
> 
> 
> So I'm using baFileList with a list of files as such:
> 
> slide1.jpg, slide2.jpg, slide3.jpg..slide10.jpg, slide11.jpg
> 
> When I do a sort on this list I always get
> slide1.jpg, slide10.jpg, slide11.jpg, slide2.jpg
> 
> I thought sorting it would flip it all in order?
> 
> Any ideas?
> 
> My first thought is going 1 --> x and creating a new list 
> with each entry
> being made at it's numberbut that seems like a crazy workaround.
> 
> I can't renumber the files ie 001...



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RE: BaFileList() and .sort

[Mathew Ray]

That's what I would have suggested, unfortunately he can't renumber the
files.

Which brings up another question: Anybody have good efficient lingo
utilities for doing different types of sorting? Uhoh, I feel the a
flashback coming on...DFS, BFS, red-black BSTs, bubblesorts, mergesorts,
oh my! Maybe I should pull out my old notes. They are in a box somewhere
:0)


~Mathew


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of 
> Slava Paperno
> Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2003 11:25 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re:  BaFileList() and .sort
> 
> 
> They *are* in order, alphanetically speaking. If you want 
> file2 to come 
> right after file1, use leading zeroes when naming them, 
> file01, file02, 
> etc. If you have more than 99 files, use two leading zeroes.
> 
> S.
> 
> At 10:53 AM 8/26/03 -0400, you wrote:
> >So I'm using baFileList with a list of files as such:
> >
> >slide1.jpg, slide2.jpg, slide3.jpg..slide10.jpg, slide11.jpg
> >
> >When I do a sort on this list I always get
> >slide1.jpg, slide10.jpg, slide11.jpg, slide2.jpg
> >
> >I thought sorting it would flip it all in order?
> >
> >Any ideas?
> >
> >My first thought is going 1 --> x and creating a new list 
> with each entry
> >being made at it's numberbut that seems like a crazy workaround.
> >
> >I can't renumber the files ie 001...



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RE: Bloody stupid HP drivers

[Mathew Ray]

Are you printing from director, or just general printing in other apps?

~Mathew


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of 
> Kerry Thompson
> Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2003 11:46 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject:  Bloody stupid HP drivers
> 
> 
> I thought for a while that Director MX on Windows was just buggy. It
> crashes an awful lot, especially when doing a "go to movie." You know,
> one of those "Fatal Error. Director will close now" things.
> 
> It's not Director. It's those bloody stupid buggy HP printer drivers.
> Every time I print something, Director starts crashing. I reboot, and
> everything is fine. Until I print again.
> 
> This is XP Pro, the closest Microsoft has come to a stable OS yet.
> 
> Curse HP. Why do they make such great hardware and such lousy 
> software?
> 
> No real point to this. Just a rant. And a heads-up.
> 
> Cordially,
> 
> Kerry Thompson



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RE: Bloody stupid HP drivers

[Mathew Ray]

Yech! That's real bad...should probably be on UpdateStage's quirk list,
especially if others can confirm.

~Mathew



> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of 
> Kerry Thompson
> Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2003 12:14 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE:  Bloody stupid HP drivers
> 
> 
> > Are you printing from director, or just general printing in 
> > other apps?
> 
> I'm printing from other apps. Standard stuff like e-mails, Word docs,
> PDFs. Occasionally I'll print from Director, but not 
> often--usually just
> a script or two. I haven't been using PrintOMatic.
> 
> It's the HP drivers. They're notorious for their bad interaction with
> Director. Probably other apps, too--it's just that I use Director so
> much.
> 
> Cordially,
> 
> Kerry Thompson



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RE: BaFileList() and .sort

[Mathew Ray]

Sweet! Thanks Mark...Cool to see someone has done research with sorting
algorithms in lingo.

Something I tried once that wasn't too bad was using an intermediary
property list that was sorted by property. By walking down a list of
proplists (aka records), I would copy the info to be sorted from one
list into the property of the sorted 'lookup' list and put the id of the
'record' into the value of the lookup's property. True, I had to walk
through the whole list 2 times max (1-walk through and build sorted
lookup, 2-walk through lookup and build the final sorted), but the speed
was crazy fast...A list of thousands of records could be sorted almost
instantaneously. Primarily it was used for a proprietary database, but
now with Valentina supporting most sql and being faster than light
itself, its not of much use anymore...Which is probably a good thing: I
didn't want to have to port SQL to lingo anyway :0)

I'll have to dig up the code somewhere, it's a little bulky but it works
well. Unfortunately, it would only help with 'natural' sorting if some
sort of processing was done as the sorting properties were added to the
lookup...Which may incur a performance penalty if analyzing strings on a
character level. But it may work nonetheless for smaller lists (under
1000).

~Mathew


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark A. Boyd
> Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2003 1:35 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE:  BaFileList() and .sort
> 
> 
> At 08:41 2003-08-26, Mathew Ray wrote:
> 
> >Which brings up another question: Anybody have good efficient lingo
> >utilities for doing different types of sorting? Uhoh, I feel the a
> >flashback coming on...DFS, BFS, red-black BSTs, bubblesorts, 
> mergesorts,
> >oh my! Maybe I should pull out my old notes. They are in a 
> box somewhere
> 
> The only one that pops into my mind is David Mennenoh's found here:
> http://www.crackconspiracy.com/%7Edavem/dave/davedir2.htm
> 
> I really haven't read through that page, but on another page, 
> davedir.htm, 
> he says "You'll find code for the infamous Bubble Sort, 
> Insertion Sort, 
> Shell Sort, and Quick Sort along with a couple more little 
> things if you 
> download the Director cast."
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Mark A. Boyd
> Keep-On-Learnin' :)



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RE: scaling down image objects in real time

[Mathew Ray]

Hi Luiz,

Create a blank bitmap member in your cast.

Use copypixels to copy from the image of one member into a smaller rect
of the blank bitmap's image.


Untested Email lingo:
--grab image of source
sourceImg = sourceMember.image 

--grab rect of source
sourceRect = sourceMember.rect 

--determine your target size
destRect = sourceMember.rect / 2 

--copy the pixels to the target image
targetMember.image.copyPixels(sourceImg, destRect, sourceMember.rect)


WARNING!! ASCII DIAGRAM:

Original member's image ==> New member's image
--
-- 
--
--

 
 
 


Image is a property of bitmap members that contains the image data for
that member. Copypixels only works on these images. This is the first
step into what is called Imaging Lingo...its one of the things that
makes director really cool. If you want more info on the topic see
copypixels in the lingo dictionary, James Newton's great book, or on
director-online.com.

HTH,
~Mathew


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of 
> Luiz Gustavo Castelan Póvoas
> Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2003 3:50 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject:  scaling down image objects in real time
> 
> 
> How can I scale a big image object into a smaller one to save 
> memory using
> lingo in real time?
> 
> is there a (free) xtra that does that?
> 
> I want to make a thumbnail of the selected picture in real time.. the
> original picture is in a embedded movie.
> 
> 
> Luiz 



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RE: playing wmv files

[Mathew Ray]

I think Tab mentioned at one point that Penworks did one as well. May
want to check the archives or the table of products at updatestage.com

~Mathew




> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of 
> Valentin Schmidt
> Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2003 10:44 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re:  playing wmv files
> 
> 
> hi anand,
> 
> you could check MediaPlayer Xtra from
> http://www.starsoftmultimedia.com/
> you might also try to use the WindowsMediaPlayer directly as 
> ActiveX-Control
> without an xtra.
> 
> regards,
> valentin
> 
> 
> 
> Anand Ravi wrote:
> > Hi List,
> >
> > I need to play a number wmv files (audio and video) as part 
> of the CD
> > content. This I have successfully done. I have experimented 
> with 2 xtras but
> > both have their own problems.
> >
> > 1. xMedia xtra from dvelectric - I am unable to set the 
> video position using
> > lingo. The moment I set the video position, the entire 
> video freezes.
> >
> > 2. Streaming Media Xtra from Tabuleiro - This xtra seems to 
> be good except
> > that the audio breaks.
> >
> > Any thoughts will be highly appreciated.
> >
> > Thanks and Regards,
> > Anand Ravi
> >
> >
> >
> > [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest 
> mode, go to
> > http://www.penworks.com/lingo-l.cgi  To post messages to 
> the list, email
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED]  (Problems, email 
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]). Lingo-L is
> > for learning and helping with programming Lingo.  Thanks!]
> 
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> 



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RE: cpu usage

[Mathew Ray]

There was just a lengthy discussion of this very topic on Direct-L.
Rather than me rehashing all the details, See the thread titled "CPU
usage on OSX":
http://listserv.uark.edu/archives/direct-l.html

HTH,
~Mathew


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tony Åström
> Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2003 5:22 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject:  cpu usage
> 
> 
> Hi List, this is really crazy.
> 
> Why are Director 8.0 always doing something?
> Even if I made a small movie with one frame (on exitFrame-go 
> the-frame-end) the cpu usage is up to 100%.
> Ive also tried:
> on prepareMovie
>the idleHandlerPeriod = 4
> end
> 
> but changing the idleHandlerPeriod doesnt appear any difference. Ive 
> read all about it on Macromedias site but havent
> find any solutions for this hysterics usage in Windows 98.
> Are there any?
> 
> TIA
> Tony
> 
> [To remove yourself from this list, or to change to digest 
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> 



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RE: blinking QTVR

[Mathew Ray]

Maybe something else is fighting with the QT to be Direct To Stage. Do
you have any other sprites that could be DTS in addition to the DTS one?

~Mathew

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of 
> Luiz Gustavo Castelan Póvoas
> Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2003 5:03 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject:  blinking QTVR
> 
> 
> I have a QTVR sprite that doesn't quit blinking (its 
> visibility) when its
> being used by the user (tilted, zoomed, pan, etc/...)
> it doesn't happen when it is NOT set as a direct to stage sprite..
> 
> what could my movie be doing that causes that strange behavior???
> 
> 
> Luiz
> 
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> helping with programming Lingo.  Thanks!]
> 



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RE: blinking QTVR

[Mathew Ray]

Basically what I was saying before was that you can only render one
thing Direct To Stage at a time reliably. I have had problems with flash
or video members all being DTS at the same time. Definitely 2 videos
can't be DTS at the same time and overlap each other. But it appears
that this is not the case.

Have you tried playing it in a new movie with nothing else in it? If it
works fine by itself in a barebones movie, then there must be something
else interacting with it. You say all other sprites are bitmaps... So I
guess this rules out any text members being on stage at the same time,
yes?

~Mathew



> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of 
> Luiz Gustavo Castelan Póvoas
> Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2003 6:18 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re:  blinking QTVR
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >Maybe something else is fighting with the QT to be Direct To 
> Stage. Do
> >you have any other sprites that could be DTS in addition to 
> the DTS one?
> 
> ~Mathew
> 
> I didn't understand what you asking me, but:
> - all the other sprites are BITMAPS
> - there is a lot of prepareframe handlers on other sprites
> - some of the other sprites are generated thorougt imagin lingo
> 
> this is the one things that I know that can be causing the problem...
> 
> Luiz



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RE: Flash text box link not triggering Director behavior

[Mathew Ray]

Hmm, odd...I know I have done this before. Does your linkFromFlash
handler have a me reference? Also, back at the beginning of the thread,
you mentioned that linkFromFlash was on a frame script...I think event:
in a flash member sends messages to the sprite that your particular
flash movie lives in. At least that was the only way I ever used it. May
be worth a try to see if it works

--behavior script on flash sprite
on linkFromFlash me theURL
  --do stuff
end

HTH,
~Mathew


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of 
> Mendelsohn, Michael
> Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2003 9:55 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE:  Flash text box link not triggering 
> Director behavior
> 
> 
> Thanks, Mark.  You wrote a very impressive article.  I skimmed it but
> I'll try to read it more carefully when it's revised.  Let us 
> all know!
> 
> 
> I hate to say it, but I'm still super-stumped.  I've tried every
> conceivable combination of asfunction, event, getURL, etc. 
> entered into
> the hyperlink field for a link in a text box, but it just 
> isn't passing
> on to Director.  My latest miss is:
> asfunction:getURL("event: linkFromFlash(\"" + 
> "http://www.boston.com"; +
> "\"");
> 
> The behavior attached to 
> the Flash sprite has a handler called
> linkFromFlash which should open a browser window.  It sort of 
> seems that
> escaped characters choke it for some reason.  Is there anyone 
> out there
> reading this who has had this issue?
> 
> Thanks,
> Michael M.
> 
> 
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> 



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RE: Director MX - 2004

[Mathew Ray]

Hi Dan,

Not to spread rumors, but several from Macromedia have stated that they
are 'heads down' on the next version. I have also heard from some others
that a new fmx2k4 xtra won't be available until the release (don't know
how reliable this info is, but that's what they did last time). The big
question is schedule... I personally doubt it will be less than a year
away, but that is uninformed conjecture. I just hope director has a
project panel like flash does now with integration into source control
and repository software :0)

~Mathew



> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dan Sheridan
> Sent: Friday, September 12, 2003 10:15 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject:  Director MX - 2004
> 
> 
> Hi list, 
> 
> Few questions, 
> 
> Does anyone know if Macromedia will be updating Director MX - 
> to the new
> 2004 product line? And does Director MX now require a new 
> Flash Asset Xtra
> to use Flash 2004 swfs etc?
> 
> We are going to upgrade to Director MX as soon as OSX 10.3 
> comes out, but I
> might hold off if a new version will be released.
> 
> Cheers, 
> 
> Dan ;)



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RE: sql db dipping

[Mathew Ray]

AFAIK, SQL is not a db unless you are talking about Microsoft SQL
Server... SQL is a scripting language used to gather info from the
databases. Valentina only talks to valentina databases, the same is true
with arca... The file that is on the local network, what format is it
in? Comma separated, MS access, filemaker? Also, can you go through an
import process, or will the db need to be used 'on the fly.' This will
probably help determine which xtra to use...

HTH,
~Mathew



> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of grimmwerks
> Sent: Friday, September 12, 2003 11:28 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject:  sql db dipping
> 
> 
> So what has everyone used to read sql data into director? Luckily in 
> this case it's a file on a local network being read by one 
> application 
> rather than supporting a consumer application over the web, so i'm 
> thinking the new Arca might be fine, but in the chance that 
> it could go 
> consumer downloads I'm checking up on updatestage as to what other 
> xtras do sql...and I'm sort of confused by the descriptions - ie 
> Valentia - does it talk directly to a sql db?



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RE: sql db dipping

[Mathew Ray]

Yeah, IMO, Flash would be easier, since lots of stuff has already been
designed to to ~exactly~ what you mentioned: reading RSS feeds. Sorry I
don't have any examples offhand, but I am sure you can find some looking
at flashcoders or just by looking at some of those peoples' blogs.

You could also have director do the xml parsing if you feel like it :0)

~Mathew


> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of grimmwerks
> Sent: Friday, September 12, 2003 12:24 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re:  sql db dipping
> 
> 
> 
> On Friday, September 12, 2003, at 11:49  AM, Mathew Ray wrote:
> 
> > AFAIK, SQL is not a db unless you are talking about Microsoft SQL
> > Server...
> 
> I understand what you're saying; I think in this case it IS Microsoft 
> SQL.
> 
> > SQL is a scripting language used to gather info from the
> > databases. Valentina only talks to valentina databases, the same is 
> > true
> > with arca... The file that is on the local network, what 
> format is it
> > in? Comma separated, MS access, filemaker? Also, can you go 
> through an
> > import process, or will the db need to be used 'on the 
> fly.' This will
> > probably help determine which xtra to use...
> >
> I'm in the process of finding out the format, but here's the big 
> problem, and why I might have to veer to a 'true' sql SERVER 
> situation 
> rather than reading in a flat file.
> It's got to happen on the fly, but the db has to be polled with a 
> timeout object for changes; the db is being fed from an rss feed, and 
> I'm to update changes within the db.
> 
> My first thought was the translating of the rss feed into a 
> sql db kind 
> of helped me, but there's part of me that thinks perhaps I 
> should just 
> parse the rss feed - like use a flash object xml socket or 
> something...but that would make my job a bit harder as the feed is a 
> bit of a mess.



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Re: Imaging Lingo and lines

[Mathew Ray]

Total shot in the dark:
Can you draw a vector, mess with that, and take an image of it, rather 
than directly drawing lines into an image using the imaging tools? Never 
done this...just hypothesizing...

~Mathew

Martin Pallett wrote:

Hi,

I have made a graphing application using Imaging Lingo that displays a 
dataset consisting of two pieces of data (2 lines), that can be 
overlaid by another set of similar data (2 more lines). The two 
datasets draw in different colours so they can be differentiated quite 
easily. The original idea within each dataset (2 lines of the same 
colour) was to do one as a dashed line. Unfortunately, Imaging lingo 
only provides us with one linetype - solid. My next thought was to use 
two different line thicknesses. This doesn't work very well for a 
number of reasons - the endpoints which meet perfectly at 1 pxl 
thickness do not meet at linesize > 1, and any segments drawn close to 
horizontal, become 1 pxl thick.

So..

has anyone come up with a way of drawing dashed lines between two 
arbitrary points, or has anyone solved the problems of using linesize 
values > 1 and creating a contiguous, consistent thickness line?

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

cheers,

Martin Pallett

Spike
Rowe House
Emson Close
Saffron Walden
UK  CB10 1HL
+44 (0) 1799 529 100




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Re: Hidden files

[Mathew Ray]

I thought there was some issue with some fast start stubs if these files 
were in the xtras folder instead of next to the projector...

I know the technote says you can put them in both places:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/director/ts/documents/d8_fast-start_stub_proj.htm
But I have the shadow of a memory in the back of my brain that hesitated 
to do that at one point...is it just paranoia, or was there a valid 
reason for that at some point?

~mathew

Frank Di Luzio wrote:
- Original Message -
From: "Mendelsohn, Michael" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On the root directory of my CD-ROMs, I typically have the projector and
next to it the autorun.inf and some dll's, etc.  Does it matter if (on
Windows machines) these files sitting next to the exe are given the
attribute of hidden?


If by dll's you mean proj.dll, iml32.dll etc. then you can place these in
the xtras folder instead of next to the projector.exe.
Frank

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Re: OT:OpenOffice (was Flash in DirMX)

[Mathew Ray]

OpenOffice is really cool, especially the latest versions. Stability 
seems to be good, but interpreting Word documents can be dodgy still and 
 still don't look identical to the same doc in Word itself. My only 
hope is that the filters to read other filetypes are improved by the 
time the Release version comes out. Its really cool though - the native 
filetype is actually a zipped xml file!

~Mathew

Stephen Ingrum wrote:
"aleatory"
I thought it was a French word until I babelfished it.


OpenOffice
Anyone else use OpenOffice? I really like the concept of it, but I haven't
heard much from people who would actually use it the way I might use it.
Sorry for the serious OT- ignore it if you've got anything remotely
important to do.
Stephen

- Original Message - 
From: "Colin Holgate" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2003 10:59 AM
Subject: Re:  Flash in DirMX



Someone understand my english and have a solution?(PC, DIrector MX,
PPT converted with
OpenOffice 1.1)


That's amazing, I had to look up the word "aleatory". What a good word!

Is your Flash sprite direct to stage or not?

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--
Thanks,
Mathew
..
Mathew J. Ray
Interactive Developer
IQ Television Group
tel: 404.255.3550
fax: 770.956.8014
..


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Re: Timeout object question

[Mathew Ray]

Sorry for the late reply, catching up on a bit of old mail...

I believe I have used something written by Kerry that allowed callbacks 
or parameters for timeouts...a sort of timeout wrapper class that worked 
rather well as I recall...might be worth a dig in the archives, cause 
unfortunately I can't find the link right now

Google to the rescue:
http://maclux-rz.uibk.ac.at/maillists/direct-l/msg03740.shtml
Is that kind of what you mean?

~Mathew



Alex da Franca wrote:

At 12:53 Uhr -0300 19.10.2003, Agustín María Rodríguez wrote:

grimmwerks wrote:

 on test me, what
put "this is:" && this
End


I guess you meant:

 on test me, what
put "this is:" && WHAT
End


if only he had found something like:

pBlinker = timeout("blinker").new(1000, #test, me)
pBlinker.userdata.setaprop(#parameter, "Every data type I want as 
parameter for timeout objects")

 on test me, what
put "this is:" && WHAT.userdata
End
-- [#parameter:"Every data type I want as parameter for timeout objects"]

does this sound like something for the wishlist ?
;-)


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Re: Timeout object question

[Mathew Ray]

Hi Séb,

Neat little script there... Its cleaner than the other example I found, 
but it looks like the possible parameters are hardcoded and limited to 3:

on mTimeOut(me, aTimeOut) -
  -- Called by the timeOut object ancestor at regular intervals
  --
  -- ACTION: calls the target object with the chosen parameter
  ---
  call(timeoutHandler, target, pParameter, pParam2, pParam3)
end -- mTimeOut
...is that the adaptation you spoke of?

I guess the only options to make the call function totally dynamic is to 
dynamically build the call function string and use do (icky), or always 
pass a parameter that is a property list and just always deal with 
parameters that way.

SPEAKING of which. Why does director need to separate parameters at all 
if it has this nifty property list container that can make sifting 
through them easier? I mean, I know it is a common construct in almost 
all languages, and it DOES make a function a lot more readable if it 
isn't commented properly. But I would imagine properly commenting a 
function and using one proplist can make this sort of dynamic calling a 
ton easier. Of course, until you get into strict typing like new AS2 and 
other languages, then it becomes a little more tricky.

~Mathew

Sébastien Portebois wrote:
Hi

I'm sorry I've missed this thread (indeed I miss a lots of things right 
now, swamped in damn work), anyway, here comes a parent script to wrap 
timeout objects and do a nice cleaning. The original script is from 
Jakob Hede Madsen, then modified by James Newton, then adapted to fit my 
needs.

The nice thing of these wrappers is that their properties have the same 
names than timeout objects properties, so you can still do 
oTimeOut.target = ... , or oTimeout.period = ...

Below you'll found a very little script to make things even simpler

Hope this helps
séb


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Re: Oops

[Mathew Ray]

Hi Rodrigo,

For moving a character around in a tile-based environment, search for 
resources on pathfinding or a* searches. There are many theoretical 
approaches for what the cs people call search trees or shortest-path 
algorithms, but a* is guaranteed to find a solution with the drawback 
that it takes longer than more approximation-based approaches. I know I 
did a bunch of research on this a couple years ago and ended up using 
the resources at gamasutra.com quite extensively, although now you may 
be able to find more director examples. I know grant skinner has some 
good actionscript code at gskinner.com, but it isn't completely accurate 
but the tradeoff is that it is very fast...may be easy enough to adapt 
to lingo. On the other hand, lingo may be fast enough to pull off a* 
without any issues - smaller 'rooms' will help. The smaller the number 
of tiles to search, the faster the path can be computed. Blocked terrain 
can be achieved by marking various instances of tiles as impassable, or 
having a very high movement cost, therefore coercing your avatar to walk 
around it.

~Mathew

Rodrigo Peres wrote:
Hi list,

Does anyone com point me in a direction, docs, tutorial anything that can
help to build interactions like this. With interactions I mean the ability
to control your avatar and don't cross walls, chairs etc.
www.habbohotel.com



Thank's

Rodrigo

--
Rodrigo Peres
www.rodrigoperes.com.br
escritório/office: +55(11) 3781.7017
celular/mobile: +55(11) 9108.6169
--
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--
Thanks,
Mathew
..
Mathew J. Ray
Interactive Developer
IQ Television Group
tel: 404.255.3550
fax: 770.956.8014
..


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Re: Flash text / text object question

[Mathew Ray]

grimmwerks wrote:

Just wanted to point out
_global.fModule = new Object();
fModule.movieTime = mov_timer;

fModule.movieTitle = mov_title;

fModule.movieDuration = mov_duration;

fModule.setMovieTime = function(theText){fModule.movieTime.text = theText;}

Pmod = sprite(1).getVariable("fModule", false)

pMod.setMovietime("whatever")

Does work.

It's definitely the way director and flash sees things differently. It'd be
nice if that wasn't true.
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Hi grimm,

Have you tried making it _level0.fModule rather than _global?
Flash's implementation of _global is rather different than 
Director's...at least in terms of communicating between them.

Also, you can let the flash text field reference a variable name - 
rather than trying to target myTextField.text, try setting myTextVar 
that is associated with the dynamic text field...

Functions are also a great way to go. I've had success With Mark 
Jonkman's stuff in the past, may want to dig up some of the scrips on 
the archives of direct-l and this list too.

--
Thanks,
Mathew
..
Mathew J. Ray
Interactive Developer
IQ Television Group
tel: 404.255.3550
fax: 770.956.8014
..


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Re: searching text inside an swf within director

[Mathew Ray]

biju george wrote:
Hi,

I have an swf file with 11,758 frames. Its actually an
e-book. I want to add a search facility in director in
the form of a full text search like the one in google
etc. Such that the use can key in any word and see the
pages containg that word in a scroll box. Once a
highlighted word is clicked, it should fetch to the
frame in flash containing that word.
Should I use V12 database xtra's full text search or
any other better approach?...Any help will be much
appreciated.
Biju.

__
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
http://photos.yahoo.com/
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I did something similar several years ago with far less data... 'bout 
4000 company data records for a kiosk... but I know it is possible. What 
I did was build my own indexing functionality. You determine what makes 
up a word that you want to search on (excluding a, the, and, or, etc.) 
and you loop through all the words, putting each unique word into a 
proplist that contains the word and all the places that word was found. 
This index can then be exported to a text file if you want, or you could 
just add it to a database using valentina or v12. Sounds like it may 
take some flash<=>director communication though, and building the index 
may take a while since text parsing in AS isn't nearly as fast as in 
director, from what I have found. You may want to write a function that 
just pulls all the text data into director a page at a time and index it 
that way.

When I did my own indexing system I tried to save money (since I had the 
time) and write my own database complete with queries and such. Needless 
to say that is not necessary and ends up being much slower than many 
xtra solutionsbut for my needs it worked... plus it is a beautiful 
thing when your whole database is loaded into memory and full-text 
keyword searches are instantaneous :0)

Don't know much about V12 so I will defer to people who have experience 
with that product, but I know Valentina could work, perhaps look into 
the Arca database xtra from tabuleiro as well...looks like a really nice 
and usable solution created especially for Director users. If you do use 
an xtra, be sure to brush up on some sql, it can make your life a lot 
easier doing this kind of thing!

~Mathew



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Re: Check Internet connection

[Mathew Ray]

Zav, are you on this list???

If so, that's your que... :0)

If not... oh well.

Teo, try checking the archives of this list and Direct-L. The topic has 
been elaborated upon quite a bit with some good, workable solutions.

~Mathew



Teo Petralia wrote:
Hi!
I'm sure this topic has been discussed before, but still I didn't find 
anything working. The last attempt I have done is to follow the 
guideline of the textnote in the Macromedia site but it's seems not 
working.

Is there around a script able to check for Internet connection?

Thanks

Teo
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Re: Truth or fiction

[Mathew Ray]

Not to mention illegal in some states that have laws against spam... I 
think that was another good reason for hesitation. You may want to look 
into it if your competitor is misusing customer data against the 
customers' will. :0)

~Mathew

Troy Rollins wrote:
On Tuesday, January 6, 2004, at 05:40 PM, Matt Wells wrote:

I did not say my software would grab any email addresses nor would I
attempt to invade anyone's privacy. The reason I'm looking to find out
how this is done is because a competitor's software claims this and I
would like to find out the definite truth behind this. It surprises me
that you would make these claims so easily against me when you have no
idea what I'm trying to do or where my intentions lie. It saddens me
that someone that is so prominent in this list is so quick to throw down
false accusations and would take the time to look on my website to do
so.


You *did* appear rather adamant about finding out specifically *how*, 
while several people assured you of it quite surely being possible. I 
imagine Kerry has experienced spam (or dinner-time telemarketing) from 
your industry, as have we all. Those two things together *do* sound like 
they add up to a new "creative" marketing "concept." I don't know that 
he was making any claims as much as pointing out a "coincidence." 
(Someone in a well known spamming industry being adamant about getting 
the specific technique to create a spamming engine.)

I'd add my confirmation that without a doubt it is possible, I haven't 
done it, as it would be unethical, but I do know how. There is nothing 
hard about it, and your competition probably has a reasonable success 
rate with achieving that goal on the poor unwary consumer who has 
autorun enabled.

--
Troy
RPSystems, Ltd.
http://www.rpsystems.net


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Re: Director MX 2004 Questions - day 2

[Mathew Ray]

Hi Tom,

Dunno if you can speak any more about this, but are flash members loaded 
into the 'commonPlayer' able to share any of their scope, such as 
_global? I ask because it could be advantageous if all the flash 
elements loaded into the player were aware of each other and could react 
to messages from one another without having to be all in the same 
swf...Basically more like the actual flash player does now.

Thanks,
~Mathew
Thomas Higgins wrote:

Oh, Flash member grouping eh? Honestly, this one is still in the lab with
the engineers working hard. The technique I showed at MAX last November was
this:
memberRef.commonPlayer = #someSymbol

All members whose commonPlayer property had the same symbol value were
loaded into and played by a single instance of the Flash Asset Xtra. As I'm

typing this I'm quite hesitant on saying more as we're still shaking out
some of the code. There are problems with the shared memory space that may
be problematic for code-heavy projects, so our engineers are busily working
away on this one. I'm in the 90+% zone for saying this _will_ be in, but
it's not a guaranteed item for sure (and I'm likely to be scolded for saying
this much anyway given that it's not a 100% certain deal AFAIK, oh well,
them's the breaks!).
Ok, so that's playing catch-up for yesterday's emails before I left, I'm now
off to respond to all the others that have collected since then.
Cheers,
Tom Higgins
Product Specialist - Director Team
Macromedia
Announcing Director MX 2004, de lekkerste!
http://www.macromedia.com/software/director


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Director MX 2004 - Internet Aware Apps

[Mathew Ray]

Tom (and others),

I am curious if the new version of Director has any improvements for 
internet aware applications. For instance, a better way to see if a user 
is connected to the web that is more consistent,perhaps being notified 
when the connection status changes. I saw that you can now post and 
receive data from web actions, which I would guess is similar to Flash's 
sendAndLoad() concept...any other juicy tidbits in this area?

--
Thanks,
~Mathew
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Re: Director MX 2004 - Internet Aware Apps

[Mathew Ray]

Thanks for the reply John.

I currently have a solution that works ok right now, but I still keep 
hoping for a more integrated solution as web-enabled apps become more 
prominant. With the myriad of different proxy/firewall settings and 
such, and with the intracacies of various platforms, I can see how a 
'silver-bullet' solution may not be forthcoming anytime soon. Just 
thought I'd check :0)

~Mathew



John Dowdell wrote:
At 8:06 AM 1/9/4, Mathew Ray wrote:

I am curious if the new version of Director has any improvements for
internet aware applications. For instance, a better way to see if a user
is connected to the web that is more consistent,perhaps being notified
when the connection status changes.


Auto-detection of connection is still a hard problem. The team for
Macromedia Central did another round of research in this area and still
couldn't find a universal handling.
Most techniques I've seen depend on pinging a remote server and testing for
a result, but some systems are set up so that any request will try to
initiate a connection... others hang for awhile... testing current
connectivity is easy in some environments, but counterproductive in
others... still a hard problem to solve, sorry.
jd





John Dowdell, Macromedia Developer Support, San Francisco
(Best to reply on-list, to avoid my mighty spam filters!)
Technotes: http://www.macromedia.com/support/search/
Column: http://www.macromedia.com/desdev/jd_forum/
Technical daily diary: http://www.macromedia.com/go/blog_j


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Re: Residual Flash Graphics in DirMX Windows

[Mathew Ray]

Hi Trevor,

Try using the stagecolor = the stagecolor where you are updating the 
stage. Qlso try putting something in the same sprite channel as the 
flash to help flush it out - like a blank bitmap or something. I 
witnessed the same thing last year and these tweaks seemed to help.

~Mathew

Trevor J. Lotz wrote:
I'm having an issue with a project I'm working on, and I'm hoping 
someone either has a solution, or some information to help me figure 
this out.  I'm creating a CD-ROM that has some QuickTime video, software 
demonstrations as .swf files, and some links out to HTML pages directly 
on the CD.  The problem I am having is this.

When I run the program, both in authoring and runtime modes, if I view a 
software demo, come back to the demos menu, then click to go to a 
different marker with the HTML links, open Internet Explorer, then close 
IE to come back to the Director movie, the last graphic viewed of the 
Flash movie is placed over the entire stage, with the menu buttons on 
top.  It's like it's not refreshing the screen, but it already did, when 
loading a new menu.  Very strange.

I've tried several possible things, and the only thing I can come up 
with that has really changed since the last version of this disc that we 
did, is the upgrade from Director 8.5 to MX.  This only happens on 
Windows, and again, it happens in both authoring and runtime environments.

I've tried to force updateStage in several places, I've changed the 
method of opening the HTML files from DirectOS to gotoNetPage, etc.  But 
I can't seem to see it make any difference.  I'm stumped.  Any 
suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Trevor J. Lotz ~ Penna Powers Brian Haynes
e] [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~ p] 801.487.4800
Advertising • Design • Interactive • Public Relations


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Re: Residual Flash Graphics in DirMX Windows

[Mathew Ray]

yes...what warren said :0)

That is, unless you have another reason for doing the updatestage.

~Mathew

Warren Ockrassa wrote:
On Jan 15, 2004, at 11:15 PM, macmec wrote:

Mathew, when you say to set the stagecolor where I am updating the 
stage, are you suggesting that I do that in addition to the 
updateStage command, or instead?


Instead of, not in addition to.


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Re: Flash problem in director - DUMB!

[Mathew Ray]

I've had issues with frame 1 in the past, I try to leave it empty... can 
you test it with a a frame of stuff - a shape or something - before and 
after the flash sprite? If there is something else in the channel that 
takes up the same space as the sprite, then it could help clear out that 
channel.

~Mathew

grimmwerks wrote:
This is driving me crazy.

Flash sprite in channel 1 in frame 1.

On a submit button from the flash it calls a movie handler ("login") which
goes the frame +1
There's ALWAYS a ghost image of the flash sprite even though it doesn't
exist when the jump happens.
I've tried updatestage.
I've tried the stagecolor = the stagecolor
I've tried setting the sprite's visible to false
Still there.


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Re: AW: Flash problem in director - DUMB!

[Mathew Ray]

I've seen this before, so I can verify on XP in DirMX... I also have had 
times when Director itself crashes and burns if I have the 
scriptInstanceList of a sprite all opened up and I stop and restart the 
movie and go back to the same location. So I stopped doing that... had 
to delete any references to the scriptInstanceList, then the problem 
went away.

~Mathew

grimmwerks wrote:
I've also found a very interesting bug in director, took a screenshot in
fact. Different problem:
Sprite 10 has a behavior on it. Normal little bevhavior, no dynamic shite. I
have the property inspector open with sprite 10 selected. Movie is running.
The property inspector shows the behavior running. But the object inspector
for sprite(10) shows no scriptinstancelist. Hum...


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Re: Math.ceil()...lingo style

[Mathew Ray]

Hmm, I seem to remember adding (or subtracting) .5 and using integer to 
round it off, I remember correctly

Floor:
integer(4.25 - .5) = 4
integer(4.75 - .5) = 4
Ceil:
integer(4.25 + .5) = 5
integer(4.75 + .5) = 5
~Mathew

Mendelsohn, Michael wrote:
Hi all...

I want to automatically convert a float to the next highest integer.
Flash has the Math.ceil() method, so what's the most efficient way to do
this in Lingo?
I appreciate any responses, and have a superb day.

Thanks,
Michael M.


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Re: Math.ceil()...lingo style

[Mathew Ray]

I am guessing these approaches would be orders of magnatude faster than 
the simpler approaches?

~Mathew

Frank Di Luzio wrote:
- Original Message - 
From: "Daniel Nelson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2004 4:38 PM
Subject: Re:  Math.ceil()...lingo style



There was a discussion about this (or perhaps it was floor) on Direct-l 
last year or the year before.  Someone posted a very fast, elegant 
solution using bitXor,


I archieved that one,

From Robert Tweed
--
on floor( x )
  intX = bitOr( x, 0 )
  if( x = intX ) then return intX
  else if( x > 0 ) then return intX
  else return intX - 1
end
on ceil( x )
  intX = bitOr( x, 0 )
  if( x = intX ) then return intX
  else if( x > 0 ) then return intX + 1
  else return intX
end
on roundUp( x )
  intX = bitOr( x, 0 )
  if( x = intX ) then return intX
  else if( x > 0 ) then return intX + 1
  else return intX - 1
end
on truncate( x )
  return bitOr( x, 0 )
end

Frank


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Re: Math.ceil()...lingo style

[Mathew Ray]

Nice... Never thought of that... spending too much time with the 
databases... only integers I ever use anymore are unsigned :0)

It's kinda one of those things that I hoped would have been added after 
a while... Simple math commands like ceil() and floor() have to be used 
in the 3d side of things, and it's easy enough to create them  (as other 
list members have shown), so why not add it to the language? Oh 
well...maybe the version after next ;0)

~Mathew

Luke wrote:
I am guessing these approaches would be orders of magnatude faster than
the simpler approaches?


Not sure, but they work better (as well as looking a lot more geek-chic :)

(try flooring a negative integer with the simpler approaches - the wrong
answer - assuming you want to floor towards 0 - is returned)
Luke


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Re: vList xtra

[Mathew Ray]

Or use its encryption features, which can be very handy in the case of 
external files as well...

As far as internal lists are concerned, it would be interesting to 
compare lingo lists, pregex lists, and vList lists and functions against 
 each other to see if there are any performance gains... Anyone do this 
already?

~Mathew

Troy Rollins wrote:
On Tuesday, January 27, 2004, at 04:41 AM, Luke wrote:

I'm a big-fan of vList (I think vList members should become a standard
generic 'data' type cast member for Director).


If it was, how would you use it differently, or do you already use it 
now in that way? (Notwithstanding the cool pregEx techniques you 
described.)

What I'm trying to determine is since I have to do some rework on my 
project to integrate vList anyway, is there any advantage to taking it 
deeper and modifying some of my other lists in the project to be using 
vList - even though I don't really need those lists as external files. 
This project makes extensive use of lists, including many member.media 
instances.

Using vList for external files is a no-brainer, that's why you buy it. I 
honestly had no idea it was a cast member xtra until I started working 
with it, and then it made me begin to wonder where its place was... as a 
file format, or as a general list tool in addition. Some of its built-in 
methods would seem oriented to the latter.

As an example, using propSave xtra, you use Director internal lists, and 
then call propSave to save the Director list to a file. vList however, 
has methods to allow it to actually BE the internal list if desired, as 
well as the ability to behave as a substitute cast file as grimm mentioned.

--
Troy
RPSystems, Ltd.
http://www.rpsystems.net


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Re: Controlling flash with lingo.

[Mathew Ray]

Hmm, neither one of those links seem to work for me... keep getting 
macromedia's 404 page... I assume one of them is Mark Jonkman's article?

~Mathew

Mendelsohn, Michael wrote:
Comprehend this article, and you'll be a pro.
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/director/articles/flash_in_director.
html
- MM

And then there's this one too:
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/director/articles/flashobjscript.htm
l


Can someone please guide me to a website or explain how to control
flash inside director. What I am trying to do is make links to certain
frames in flash. Can this be done - or is there a nother approach,
that's more effective?


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Re: Controlling flash with lingo.

[Mathew Ray]

Oops... Usually thunderbird is good about not breaking links... I've 
gotten spoiled since moving from Outlook :0)

Need to get some coffee...I'm running late on the first cup.

~Mathew

Steve Rachels wrote:
Don't forget the  tag at the end of the link.

- Original Message - 
From: "Mathew Ray" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2004 6:58 AM
Subject: Re:  Controlling flash with lingo.



Hmm, neither one of those links seem to work for me... keep getting
macromedia's 404 page... I assume one of them is Mark Jonkman's article?
~Mathew

Mendelsohn, Michael wrote:

Comprehend this article, and you'll be a pro.
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/director/articles/flash_in_director.
html
- MM

And then there's this one too:
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/director/articles/flashobjscript.htm
l



Can someone please guide me to a website or explain how to control
flash inside director. What I am trying to do is make links to certain
frames in flash. Can this be done - or is there a nother approach,
that's more effective?


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Re: Controlling flash with lingo.

[Mathew Ray]

Definitely helps, but Tbird doesn't like the spaces though...

Not that it really matters if the one reading the email ~pays attention~ :0)

~Mathew

Warren Ockrassa wrote:
On Jan 29, 2004, at 7:46 AM, Mendelsohn, Michael wrote:

Comprehend this article, and you'll be a pro.


Works better in angle brackets for email that wraps at 72 chars:





-- WthmO 


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Re: Lingo External Data

[Mathew Ray]

flash in director is also an option if you are more comfortable with 
actionscript.

~Mathew

Daniel Nelson wrote:
Hi There,

Look into the XMLParser Xtra and the FileIO Xtra or getNetText(), 
depending on whether the file is local or online.

Regards,

Daniel

On Jan 29, 2004, at 12:45 PM, Louis-Pierre Morin wrote:

Hi,

I would like to know how I can take data from a xml formatted document
(updated every 5 sec.) or a text file and use that data to update some
text fields in my director project. I am really lost...
thanks

_

Louis-Pierre Morin

Nouveaux Médias

Studios Peak

[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Tél. : 514.948.0011

Fax.: 514.948.6611

Cell.: 514.815.4889


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Re: Lingo External Data

[Mathew Ray]

...too bad normal people can't use it yet :0)
Anyone heard of a possible ship date yet?
~Mathew

Warren Ockrassa wrote:
On Jan 29, 2004, at 3:55 PM, Mathew Ray wrote:

flash in director is also an option if you are more comfortable with 
actionscript.


Director MX 2004 is an option too, since it uses JS syntax.

:D

-- WthmO


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Re: Lingo External Data

[Mathew Ray]

Warren Ockrassa wrote:
On Jan 29, 2004, at 4:40 PM, Mathew Ray wrote:

...too bad normal people can't use it yet :0)


Are you suggesting something about my normalcy?

Cause that news is about as fresh as the outcome of the Battle of Hastings.

;)
Na, not at a :0) I am just one of the underpriviliged who 
haven't been able to play with it yet... Wait, you mean William of 
Normandy WON?!?!


Anyone heard of a possible ship date yet?


I seem to recall hearing either late Jan, or maybe it was late Feb. (Of 
2004.)
Good thing, I was hoping they wouldn't pull a 'windows 95' on us...

~Mathew

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Re: looking to speed up the search process in seudo db with what I have

[Mathew Ray]

Did this one about 3-4 yrs ago... it wasn't terribly pretty, but it 
worked and was hella fast. If you need complicated search terms or 
related tables, then go with the SQL-based xtras.

Otherwise what I did was build an index of the 'text members' in 
authoring mode and pull the index in at runtime on the projector. Took a 
few seconds to put 3,000 - 5,000 items in there, but the fulltext search 
went oh so quickly. Nearly instantaneous. My biggest pain was building 
the scrolling datagrid that the results were placed in, with 
column-based sorting.

The short of it - this is definitely possible, but be prepared to live 
in List-City for a while :0)

~Mathew

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hello guru’s

I am new on posting although I have follow the list for more than a year, so excuse me 
for wrong doings in the list protocols, plus my orthodox programming manners and 
technique plus my foreign English.
My problem; I made out of 400 “text cast members”(with a property list in each of them) a kind of database. For searches of items in this “text cast 
members”, I used “if member.xx.text contains….” and it all worked find with the exception that it took around 30 seconds to do the searches into the 
400 “text cast members” (each having a property list of around 20 items), one to twenty times depending of the number of items I was searching for. Once created a 
results list out of the search in the “text cast members”, I eliminated the “text cast members” found repeated, for the creation of a final list with 
the items I was looking for.
An example of a list in a “text cast member” is:
[#a1:2,#a2:2,#a3:2,#a4:2,#a5:2,#a6:2,#a7:2,#a8:2,#a9:2,#a10:2,#a11:2,#a12:2,#a13:2]
code that works;

on mouseUp
  
  cursor 4
  searchResults = []
  member("searchResults").text = ""
  
  searchString = member("searchListings").text
  searchList = value(searchString)
  
  sr = 0
  
  repeat with i= 1 to searchList.count
y = y + 1
x = 0

repeat with counter = 1 to 400
  x = x + 1
  xx = "ima" & x
  xxx = searchList.getPropAt(y) & ": 1"
  if member(xx).text contains xxx then
add searchResults, x
--put searchResults into member("searchResults")
  end if
end repeat
  end repeat
  
  member("finalResults").text = ""
  finalList = []
  
  repeat with i = 1 to searchResults.count
r = getAt(searchResults,i)
if not getOne(finalList,r) then
  add finalList, r
end if
  end repeat
  
  --  put finalList into member("finalResults")
  put finalList.count into member("numOfImg")
  
  go to frame 506
  
end mouseUp



To try to speed things up, I begin making a list of property list of the 400 cast members on “enterFrame” at the search page so that when the search is done it all happens without having to search in “text cast members” but it all happens inside variable lists in the processor..I don’t know if it makes so to fasten the search, but a problem appeared anyway because when it tries to get the first property list in the list of property list using “xdbs=getAt(dbilist,x) it gives me error in xdbs. In the debugger it seems as it had problems with the brackets of list

Code that doesn’t work;

on startMovie
 
  dbilist = []
  
  
  repeat with counter = 1 to 400
x = x + 1
dbl = "dbl" & x 
dbl = [:]
xx = "ima" & x
xxx = member(xx).text
dbl = value(xxx)
add dbilist, dbl
  end repeat
  
end

on mouseUp
  
  searchResults = []
  member("searchResults").text = ""
  
  searchString = member("searchListings").text
  searchList = value(searchString)
  
  sr = 0
  
  repeat with i= 1 to searchList.count
y = y + 1
x = 0
xdbs = [:]

repeat with counter = 1 to 400
  x = x + 1
  xdbs = getAt(dbilist.x)
  xxx = searchList.getPropAt(y) & ": 1"
  if xdbs contains xxx then
add searchResults, x
put searchResults into member("searchResults")
--put searchResults into member("searchResults")
  end if
end repeat
  end repeat
  
  
  member("finalResults").text = ""
  finalList = []
  
  repeat with i = 1 to searchResults.count
r = getAt(searchResults,i)
if not getOne(finalList,r) then
  add finalList, r
end if
  end repeat
  
--  put finalList into member("finalResults")
  put finalList.count into member("numOfImg")
  
  go to frame 506
  
end mouseUp

I imagine using a database extra would be a solution, but the info in the text cast members came like that and I can’t use an extra extra. I just looking to speed up the process with what I have.


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