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Undocumented Bug Fixes and Features
The following are a list of known bug fixes and feature enhancements that never made their way into the distributed documentation for Revolution.

Although dozens of bugs are fixed between versions, the list below is intended to show the more important bug fixes and feature enhancements that have come to our attention.

Note: Since Revolution uses MetaCard as its engine, you may want to check the MetaCard Undocumented Bug Fixes and Features below. To check to see what version of the MetaCard engine is used in running your copy of Revolution, open the Message Box, and type put the version.

Undocumented Features — Revolution 2.x
Databases
revExecuteWithQuery This handler (part of the revDatabase frontscript) provides the ability to directly execute SQL commands using the query connection defined in Rev's Database Query Builder.

The first parameter is the name of an existing query that connects to the database you want to execute the SQL query on, and the second param is the actual query. Note that it doesn't modify the saved query in the first param, it just borrows the connection info.

Here's an example:

revExecuteWithQuery "Foobar","INSERT INTO Users VALUES(2003,'Andre Garzia')"
Posted 8/7/2003 by Jan Schenkel to the Use-Revolution List   (See the complete post/thread)
Stack Modes
mode 14 Apparently stacks that are minimized to the Dock in OS X have a mode of 14. Although you wouldn't use that to determine if a stack is minimized (you'd check the iconic of the stack in question), it is an interesting bit of information. :-)

Posted 7/30/2003 by Ron Barber to the Improve Revolution List

Icons
Icon ID 24 This is the icon used by Revolution (and the MC engine) that is displayed whenever a drag operation takes place. Assumably, you can set the icon in a standalone to have a custom drag cursor. From Kevin:
"It is ID 24. We set a different one on Mac/Windows, but it is always that ID."
Posted 4/10/2003 by Kevin Miller to the Improve-Revolution List

Undocumented Bug Fixes — Revolution 2.x
Migration
cRevGeneral stack property It turns out that the cRevGeneral custom stack property causes CPU usage to go way up in stacks migrated from 1.1.1 to 2.0. The solution is to delete the cRevGeneral custom property in 1.1.1, save the stack, then open it in 2.0 (which BTW, does not have this property).

Posted 5/31/2003 by Dave McKee to the Use-Revolution List   (See the complete post/thread)


Undocumented Features — Revolution 1.1.1
Printing
revPrintText This command has an undocumented fourth parameter, that lets you specify a reference to a field you want to use as the “base” field for its font attributes. For example, you can use the line:
revPrintText myText,myHeader,myFooter,the long ID of field "My Text"
Posted 8/25/2002 by Jeanne A. E. DeVoto to the Use-Revolution List   (See the complete post/thread)

MetaCard Undocumented Features
The following are a list of known bug fixes and feature enhancements that never made their way into the distributed documentation for MetaCard.

Although dozens of bugs are fixed between versions, the list below is intended to show the more important bug fixes and feature enhancements that have come to our attention.


Undocumented Features — MC 2.5
Debugging
executionContexts This function allows you to get a return-delimited list of objects that are currently executing (along with their handlers); basically it is what is returned when you choose "Execution Contexts" from the Debug menu.

Here's an example:

put executionContexts()
Posted 5/31/2003 by Scott Raney to the Use-Revolution List   (See the complete post/thread)

Undocumented Bug Fixes — MC 2.5
Interface
Window resizing in Mac OS 10.2.x The window resizing algorithms used by MetaCard 2.4.x were based on certain libraries in the Mac OS that changed between OS 10.1.5 and 10.2.x. For this reason, resizing a window caused MetaCard to resize it to the wrong dimensions, usually much larger than anticipated. Once it had done this, however, resizing of the same window works properly until the window is closed and reopened. This was fixed in MetaCard 2.5.

Undocumented Bug Fixes — MC 2.4.2
File Manipulation
filename The fileName property was fixed in 2.4.2 when saving files over a network. Before MC 2.4.2, if you saved a stack over a network path, MetaCard only put one "/" in front of the filename:
/PC2/C/windows/desktop/file.txt
Windows needs a "//" to recognize it as a network path i.e.
//PC2/C/windows/desktop/file.txt
This was fixed in 2.4.2.

Undocumented Bug Fixes — MC 2.4.3
File Manipulation
ask/answer file The ask file and answer file commands now properly support the with option to specify a default file path for the dialog box when it is displayed. This used to work only on some platforms, but now works on all platforms.
Graphics/Images
imageData The imageData when retrieved now comes back in a standard ORGB order on all platforms (before it would be ORGB on Mac, but BGRO in Windows). See Tip imag003: Understanding ImageData, MaskData and AlphaData for updated information.
rotate, angle Build 4 Only. The ability to rotate images using either the rotate command or setting the angleproperty was discovered to be unbearably slow (30 secs+) in Build 4 of the Mac OS X version of MC (released 9/15/02). The reason for this was that there was some debug code that was left in on the OS X build and so a new build was released with the debug code removed. This new build (released 9/29/02) was also called Build 4, so the only way to know the difference is to check the date of the MacOSX.sit file you are using to install your Mac OS X version of MC.

Undocumented Features — MC 2.4.3
Stacks
the <property> of stack <number> You can refer to substacks by number, as well as by name. For example, if you open MetaCard and execute
put the short name of stack 1
from the Message Box, it will put "Message Box".

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