Lingo in a Nutshell covers the abstract aspects of Lingo that exist apart from its control over media elements, the Cast, and the Score. This book covers the spectrum from Lingo basics to advanced scripting with Lists, Behaviors, and Xtras. It is divided into five major sections.
- Part I
Chapter 1, defines the Lingo language and its syntax including handlers, variables, and Lingo control structures. Refer also to Chapter 1, How Director Thinks in Director in a Nutshell.
Chapter 2, explains where, when, and how to use various types of scripts to detect user and system events. It covers the new event and message passing in Director 6, including details on trapping events with Behaviors.
Chapter 3, helps you plan your Lingo and covers the Debugger, Message window, and Lingo error messages. See also Appendix E.
Chapter 4, is designed for experienced programmers and compares Lingo’s syntax, commands, and structure to those of other languages. Refer also to the downloadable Chapter 20, Lingo for C Programmers.
- Part II
Chapter 5, covers Lingo data types, implicit and explicit type conversion and coercion, type checking, logical expressions, comparison operators, and string operators.
Chapter 6, is a life-saving chapter covering the commands for linear lists, property lists, points, and rectangles in well-organized tables. It contains numerous examples including randomized and non-repeating lists.
Chapter 7, covers string expressions, concatenation, parsing, and manipulation, and chunk expressions (characters, words, items, lines, and fields). See also Chapter 12, Text and Fields, in Director in a Nutshell.
Chapter 8, covers arithmetic operators, math functions, exponentiation, geometry and trig functions, rounding and truncation, and random numbers.
- Part III
Chapter 9, covers responding to mouse clicks and cursor movement, including how to make buttons with rollover and highlight states.
Chapter 10, covers responding to keyboard input and trapping various key combinations (including modifier keys, function keys, arrow keys, and the numeric keypad).
Chapter 11, covers timers, time-outs, dates, times, and unit conversion.
- Part IV
Chapter 12, helps you make the most of Behaviors and other object-oriented scripting techniques.
Chapter 13, covers using Xtras and XObjects to extend Lingo’s scripting language. See also Chapter 10, Using Xtras, in Director in a Nutshell.
Chapter 14, covers the FileIO Xtra for reading and writing files from within Director. It also covers commands that work with external Director-related files and non-Director documents and applications.
Chapter 15, covers using the MUI Xtra to create basic Alert dialogs. Refer also to the downloadable Chapter 21, Custom MUI Dialogs, which provides painstaking detail on creating custom dialogs with the MUI Xtra.
- Part V
Chapter 16, lists all the Lingo commands that accept or return numeric codes, symbols, or strings that indicate particular values, including transitions, ink effects, palettes, cursors, and window types.
Chapter 17, covers Lingo commands that are undocumented or misdocumented or behave differently in Director 6 than in prior versions of Director.
Chapter 18, is a complete list of every command, function, symbol, and string recognized by Lingo, including a syntax example.
Chapter 19, explains the inner workings of the hidden Symbol Table and symbols in general. Refer also to the downloadable Chapter 22, Symbol Table Archaeology, for additional details.
- Part VI
Glossary
The economics of print publishing precluded me from including everything in this book. The good news is that the material (plus many more examples) is available online in PDF (Acrobat) format (see http://www.zeusprod.com/nutshell).
- Online Bonus Chapters:
Chapter 20, Lingo for C Programmers, is designed for experienced programmers and compares Lingo’s syntax, commands, and structure to C. It picks up where Chapter 4, leaves off.
Chapter 21, Custom MUI Dialogs, covers the excruciating details of using the MUI Xtra to create custom dialog boxes. It expands on Chapter 15, which covers only the MUI Xtra’s
Alert()method.Chapter 22, Symbol Table Archaeology, covers the history and hidden secrets of the Lingo Symbol Table and complements Chapter 19.
The companion volume, Director in a Nutshell, covers content development and delivery in Director. It also covers media and user interface elements and the Lingo to control them. Refer to the Preface in Director in a Nutshell for details.
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