-- card: 20728 from stack: in.1 Help
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-- name: CHAINS AND CHAININGÊ


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CHAINS AND CHAINING

Perhaps the most powerful feature of SmartSides is its ability to create and execute chains of events without requiring the user to write any programs or scripts, simply by pointing and clicking. For each event you might wish to include in your chain, there will be a button or field on your slide. When creating a chain, you simply click on these buttons and/or fields to include their activities in the chain. 

Eight special buttons which SmartSlides provides make it possible to include a few special effects in chains. These buttons appear are shown at the left on this card, and appear along the left margin of your SmartSlides screen whenever you are chaining. They are hidden from view during presentations, but this does not disable them; they will still function normally. These buttons are discussed on the next eight cards of this Help stack.
The first button or field you click while defining a chain can be thought of as the chain's initiator. Once a chain is defined, clicking on its initiator will start the chain of events running automatically. For the buttons and fields you create using SmartSlides' commands, the effect they contribute to a chain will depend on their type. That effect is explained in the discussion of the menu command used to create that type of field or button.

Chains do not connect with one another. For example suppose you define a chain that starts when a Hiliter button is clicked, and then start to define another chain which will start when a Mask button is clicked. You can include the Hiliter button in the new chain without fear that clicking on the Mask button will set off the Hiliter button's chain too. When a button or field appears in the middle of a chain, it behaves as if it has no chains of its own. This prevents you from inadvertently creating chains which would loop forever, or which would have unintended side effects. 

There is still one way in which you could create an infinite loop: you could define chains for each of two slides, so that each chain was initiated automatically when its slide opened, and each chain ended with a link to the other card. Similar loops are possible with larger numbers of slides in the loop. This can actually be useful for self-running demonstrations in which each card links to the next and the last links to the first again.

To get rid of a chain you no longer want, invoke the BEGIN CHAIN… command, click the button or field whose chain you wish to delete, and invoke the END CHAIN command immediately. The original chain will now be replaced by a trivial chain that activates only the chain's initiator, i.e. only the button or field you click on. Similar principles apply to chains attached to a phase in the life of a shrinker button or a stepper button.