So in Pan 6 we had all sorts of options for PopUp Manu Suiper Object. I could make the button invisible but the data (title) would be visible in whatever color I wanted. How do I do this in PanX? All I can get is a white button. Just wasted over an hour trying to figure this out while converting a database. This conversion process is getting VERY tedious!
I have done this by placing an opaque white rectangle over the text part of the popup button, then putting a text display object on top of that with the data value from he popup. You can use rich text values in the text display object to change colors and fonts, etc. The pop up buttons works normally and the two objects lying on top don’t seem to intercept the mouse click.
Pan6 was very customizable, often in non-standard, for Macs back then, ways. Evolution from MacOS to current OSXs has removed support for some of them. Being a fairly non-standard app was hurting Panorama’s economic competitiveness and a lot of what was still supported therein was on support fumes, Catalina being its last straw (barring under emulation.) So one of Jim’s priorities in its complete rewrite was to stick to purely standard Mac code both for maximal current, and future, compatibility and so to not scare off new customers. Using just standard Mac code also enables future creation of an iOS version once Jim has done enough with PanX and the server version to have time for it.
Some loss of backward compatibility is inevitable, but most parts are compatible. Check out the Unimplemented Statements and Functions page of help for their part of the exceptions. There were often multiple ways of doing things in Pan6. That remains true in PanX. There are usually different ways of accomplishing workflows that no longer work the way we designed them back, or before, Pan6. Alas the creativity many employed in designing some Pan6 solutions may need to be re-employed to design their PanX replacements. Happily, as CooperT posted above, this forum can provide a lot of help and ideas when you get stuck.
Although the then non-standard graphic options of Pan6 have been transferred into now standard Mac code, losing a few things along the way, Jim has pretty much thrown in Apple’s kitchen sink of options. And you’re not required to use them just in Apple’s preferred ways. OSX’s new ability to stick code onto just about any graphic element, and combining elements, lets you do things Apple never dreamt and things not doable under Pan6 and can often approximate some of the old tricks.
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Thank you John — you saved me a lot of typing!!
Using the popupclick statement, you can quite easily turn ANY kind of object into a pop-up menu. I use this technique all the time. For example, you can make a Star polygon into a pop-up object, or an Image Display object. Or, you can make a Text Display object into a pop-up menu, which is especially handy with a Font Awesome icon.
There is actually a full example of how to do this in the documentation for the PopUp Menu object, see the section Using Any Type of Object as a Pop-up Menu on this page. It shows the exact code you’ll need. The example shown is a Text Display object, but any kind of object can be used.