March 11, 1999

Dear OKScript User,

The OKScript Status Report is sent to OKScript licensees, 
developers and friends when significant updates have been
made to the program. To be removed from the distribution 
list please reply to this message and indicate that desire.

One significant enhancement and a number of minor fixes and 
tweeks occured during this period. An extended discussion
of the new DO directive capabilities are included in item 1.

If these issues affect your scripts you can download the 
latest revision from http://home1.gte.net/yweare. Your 
existing license will automatically be active on the new 
software if you install it to the same directory, 
otherwise you will have to re-enter the registration data 
(or copy the okscript.ini file from the folder where your 
licensed program was installed.) The current build is dated 
March 9, 1999. Click Help | About to determine the date of 
your copy of OKScript.

This list is presented in approximate order of importance.
See the latest help file to learn more about new or
modified capabilities.

1. The DO directive, which was originally intended to 
   provide scheduled script activation, was extended to 
   also include scripting for generic menu and button
   clicks. This feature is useful when a script repeats
   the same instructions in a group of BUTTON or MENU 
   handlers. This redundancy can often be consolodated 
   into one DO handler. Several predefined macros that 
   access the activating button's or menu's properties
   (including button color, menu checked status and control 
   name, window and keystring fields) have been implemented 
   to expand the utility of this feature. 

   Here is an example of how this feature might be used with 
   the OKWin client for OKbridge. Say that you want to build 
   an alert panel that sends messages to both opponents and the 
   spectators, but do not want the messages to be issued through 
   the bidding box's edit control, that is, you want to make
   a bid then punch an OKScript button to issue the alert
   (after the bidding box has disappeared.) In the past BUTTON
   declarations that would do this would look like:

     BUTTON capp2D red OKbridge =majors{enter}
     PUT {%}majors{enter}

   With the new DO features you could reduce this to:

     BUTTON capp2d red x majors

   (note that the target window field will be ignored and
   can be set to anything - x is a nice short placeholder)
   and include this handler in your script to perform the
   details for *all* of your BUTTONs. (Note that I added
   a lot of explanitory annotation that you can freely 
   remove, reducing this script down to eight lines.)

     - This is a handler that is activated by a left button
     - click prior to the button's main handler. You can
     - create one for right clicks and menu clicks as well.
     - Although somewhat less useful, such handlers which
     - activate AFTER the main button handler is completed
     - are also possible.
     DO BEFORE left
       - Only perform these functions for buttons that are RED.
       - This allows your panel the flexibility to have buttons
       - that perform differently and are not burdoned by this
       - DO script.
       IF nocase %-mycolor% EQ red
         - Activate the target window.
         WINDOW OKbridge
         - Send the alert to LHO and RHO. The predefined
         - -mykeys macro picks up the BUTTON's keystring field.
         PUT =%-mykeys%{enter}
         - Send the same string to the spectators.
         PUT {%}%-mykeys%{enter}
         - Disable the window and keystring fields of the 
         - associated BUTTON directive so that it doesn't
         - try to replicate this functionality.
         MODE OFF windowfield
         MODE OFF keyfield
         - End the IF statement.
         FI

2. The inability to include more than one menu separator
   was fixed. The following code now performs as expected:
     MENU abc|def|-
     MENU abc|def|ghi
     MENU abc|def|-

3. A bug that caused an error when a window was specified
   in a BUTTON directive that included a width specification
   was fixed.

4. The PRAGMA HELPOFF, which removes the help menu from
   a panel (to save space), was added.
    
5. The option to pause while sending keystrokes after an
   {enter} is encountered was expanded to also pause after
   the last character in a script line (BUTTON, MENU, RIGHT
   or PUT.)

6. Some recent releases of the program would produce a
   panel with replicated buttons if Ctrl-R was struck 
   while a panel was active. This has been fixed.

7. Fixed the title bar anomolies that occasionally occured
   when performing a CloseAll or SaveAs.

Your ideas and problem reports *are* appreciated. You can
email them to me (yweare@gte.net) or post them to the
message board that I have set up at my web site. Thank you
for using OKScript.

Michael Mardesich
okb://mikezzz
yweare@gte.net
http://home1.gte.net/yweare