-- card: 7135 from stack: in.0
-- bmap block id: 0
-- flags: 0000
-- background id: 3797
-- name: 


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Date: Wed, 4 Nov 87 11:06 EST
From: David Bogartz <IDDAVIDB@aahbo.com>


The scripts below show a quick and very dirty way to get HyperCard to
send a message when the user presses a key (other than return, tab,
and the arrow keys).  It doesn't work for number keys, and it probably
isn't right for some applications, but it's simple and will probably
work in many cases.

The basic idea is that there is an idle handler in the background
script that looks in the message box and grabs whatever is there.
Then, for each keystroke, it generates the event "key" with the char
that the user pressed as a parameter.

The trick is how to deal with the message box.  It looks like the
message box is hidden, but in point of fact you can't have the message
box hidden because (as far as I can tell) whenever you put something
into the message box, HyperCard shows it, even if the screen is
locked.  So I have it visible, but offscreen.  (Of course, this only
works on a small screen Mac.)

This application lets the user press the keys A through G to play the
respective notes A through G on the harpsichord keyboard.

Background script
=================

on idle
  put the message box into k
  if k is not empty then
    repeat with i = 1 to length(k)
      do "key " & quote & char i of k & quote
    end repeat
    put empty into the message box
  end if
end idle

on key c
  play "harpsichord" tempo 200 c
end key


Stack script
============

on openStack
  set the loc of msg to -473, 345
  set blindtyping to true
end openStack

============

I'd be interested in any feedback or improvements on this code that
you may have.  If you send messages directly to me, I will summarize
to the net.

David S. Bogartz
dsbogartz@amherst.bitnet



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Keydown messages