From: Roger.W.Brown@dartmouth.edu (Roger Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Dartmouth XCMD's 4.0 available
Date: 27 Jan 93 19:26:58 GMT
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
X-Posted-From: InterNews1.0b8@newshost.dartmouth.edu

=====================================
== Announcing Dartmouth XCMD's 4.0 ==
=====================================

January 26, 1993

Dartmouth XCMD's 4.0 is a HyperCard stack containing a collection of 50
XCMD's and XFCN's developed over the years at Dartmouth College. The
previous official release of this collection was version 3.4.3. The
stack includes source code for all but one XFCN, including three
examples of external window XCMD's. Sources are in Pascal or C. 

The stack is available via ftp as a binhexed self-extracting archive:

/pub/mac/DXCMDs_4.0.sea.hqx on dartvax.dartmouth.edu.

) 1988-1993 by the Trustees of Dartmouth College.
Permission is granted for the non-commercial use and distribution of
this stack. Commercial use requires a license, as explained in the
stack.

For more information, contact: 

Roger Brown				                 Roger.Brown@Dartmouth.edu
Academic Computing
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH 03755

==========================================================
These are the XCMD's that have never been released before:
==========================================================

FileToPICTRes creates a PICT resource from a PICT or PNTG (MacPaint)
file and copies it into the current stack.  

ListDialog is an XFCN that presents a customizable modal dialog box
containing a list of items. It replaces all of the versions of
XScrollBox. The previous features of those versions are now available
using parameters. New features include the ability to size the font of
the selection list, the ability to position and size the dialog window,
and up to 4 user-definable buttons.

DelimitedChunk is an XFCN that takes a string comprised of "chunks"
delimited by an arbitrary (non-null) delimiter character and returns a
specified chunk, or counts the chunks.

RandOrder is an XFCN that returns a container with its items, lines,
words or characters reordered randomly.

DeleteRes is an XCMD that deletes a single resource from the current
stack.

PrintPictRes is an XCMD that prints a named PICT resource in the
current stack.

CompareStrings is an XFCN that performs a case-sensitive comparison of
two strings, and returns the range of characters for which the first
string does not match the second.

GetFieldText (XFCN), SetFieldText (XCMD), and DisposeFieldText (XCMD)
are used together to copy the contents of a field into another field,
keeping text styles intact.

TDWindow is an XCMD that displays literal text, text from a file, or
styled text from a HyperCard field in an external document-style
window.  

Clipboard is an XFCN to get or set the contents of the Clipboard.

ReplaceChar is an XFCN to replace all occurrences of a single character
(case-sensitive) within a text string with another character.  

BinaryFile reads and writes arbitrarily formatted binary files.

LastVisibleChar finds the last character in a field that is visible on
the screen.

EditWindow is an external window XCMD that creates windows for text
editing.

ListWindow is an external window XCMD that creates windows for the
presentation of lists.

======================================================================
These are the XCMD's that have been revised since stack version 3.4.3:
======================================================================

RInstall copies any resource contained in any currently open resource
file to a file you specify by full pathname.

ModalDialog displays a dialog box created by any resource generator or
editor, such as ResEdit.  

XScrollBox, XScrollBoxF, XScrollBox M, and XScrollBoxML have been
replaced by ListDialog.

FindInField locates a string in a given field or container and returns
position information.

Serialhandler is an XFCN that opens access to the Macintosh serial
ports.(Source code is not included.)

HC Utilities is a collection of various C functions that are useful
when creating XCMD's.

SortFieldByItem is an XFCN that alphabetically sorts the lines of any
HyperCard container using a specified item in the line as a sort key. 

Replace is an XFCN that replaces all occurrences of specified target
text with new text in a container.

MenuHandler is an XCMD that gives you the ability to add and manipulate
your own menus in a stack.

FindKeyi s an XFCN that locates a target string in a specified item of
an input field or other container.

MultiSort is an XFCN that sorts the lines of a container according to
the value of specified items in the line. It will do a multilevel sort
on several items and can sort ascending or descending by alphabetic,
numeric, time, or date order.

PopList is an XFCN that handles a pop-up menu.  Menu items may contain
Menu Manager meta-characters for disabling, checking, etc.

=====================================================================
These are the XCMD's that have not changed since stack version 3.4.3:
=====================================================================

PrintField prints the text of a field in the field's current textFont,
textSize, textStyle, textHeight, and width. 

The TextStream XCMD prints the contents of up to 16 HyperTalk
containers using your printer's built-in font. 

The FileToField XCMD copies the contents of a text file into a
HyperCard field. 

The WriteToFile XCMD writes the contents of a HyperCard container to a
text file.

The FileToClip XCMD copies the contents of a text file to the
clipboard. 

PictureShow opens a window on top of the current card and displays a
picture in it. PictureHide takes the window away.

ClipToPICT creates a PICT resource from a picture you've copied to the
clipboard and copies it to the current stack.

PICTFileToRes creates a PICT resource from a PICT file and copies it
into the current stack.  

LeafName takes a full pathname and returns the last component of it.

DeleteResFork deletes the resource fork of a stack while leaving the
data fork intact.

IsResource checks for the availability of a resource by its resource
type and name, by its resource type and ID, or by its resource type,
name, and ID. 

ResList returns information about the resources contained in a file. 

GetResources copies resources to the current stack from a file.

SizeCardWindow sets the size of the HyperCard window.

ObjectExists determines whether or not a HyperCard object exists.

Password behaves in almost the same way as the HyperTalk command "ask
password".  It differs in that it is capable of distinguishing between
upper- and lower-case characters and in that it displays bullets in the
ask dialog box instead of the actual password. 

ConvertDate performs a function identical to that of the HyperTalk
"convert" command except that it handles a much wider range of dates.

SystemFolder returns the pathname of the folder that contains the
currently active System file.

HyperFolder returns the pathname of the folder that contains the copy
of HyperCard that's currently running.

AuxActive returns true if HyperCard is running under A/UX and false if
HyperCard is running under the Macintosh OS.

WritePermission determines whether an existing file can be opened for
writing as well as reading.

SortField is an XFCN that sorts the lines of any HyperCard container.

ChooserName is an XFCN that returns the currently stored chooser name.



--------------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Brown                                roger.brown@dartmouth.edu
Software Development
Kiewit Computation Center, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH