Where did I see all those properties?

I know I'm going to sound like the crazy lady at the beginning of the movie who saw the murder and the police don't believe her...

but...

Somewhere in my wanderings I think I dragged a function tile into an assignment statement or perhaps I dragged it into a method call, and I saw a huge pop-up list of object properties. These were not the properties that you see when you click on an object and then click the Properties tab. This was a huge list of properties that made me salivate. Heretofore unseen properties that I thought I should have access to, but could never find. But I was in the middle of doing something else, that wasn't what I wanted, and I figured I'd just pull it up and look it over later.

But I have no idea where it was! I thought I had found it under the "other" category of functions, but I can't find it again.

Can anybody be my Columbo/Jessica Fletcher/Sherlock Holmes and tell me where I saw this list??

Thank you so much in advance,
Maggie

Once your knight enlightens you, please share with the group.

I think a description of what sort of properties you stumbled upon would be nice instead of the ones that make you salivate...

I would be glad to help you if you give me a little more information

I would list them specifically if I could remember. It was a huge list of properties -- does that sound at all familiar? I was in the middle of something else and had dragged something over by mistake, and that's when I saw the list, but I quickly released the mouse because it was wrong, thinking I could easily get it back and look at it later. I want to say that x, y, and z coordinates were available separately, but I'm not positive about that... but it looked far more low-level than the stuff we see in properties. I think if you'd seen this list before, you'd know.

You said you pulled something over into the method...then the list opened... dosen't a list pop up every time you drag something over to the method? :P

Dear Ping,

If you're aware of a tile that you can drop into a method as an argument that causes a huge list of object properties to pop up, please let me know what tile and what method. I think that if somebody has seen a huge list of properties, they would know what I'm talking about because I've only seen this list once, and I can't find it again.

Usually what pops up is other variables that are of the proper type. For example, if I drop into an argument that's a number argument, then I'll see a list of numbers, I'll get a cascading menu for expressions (variables), or I could type in my own number. Similarly for boolean, I'll get true, false, expressions. If I drop into an argument that's an object argument, I'll see a list of objects and cascading menus that specify the entire object or sub-part.

This was a list of object properties. Have you ever seen a list of object properties pop up? That's what I'm looking for. I may be describing how it came up incorrectly, I was in a hurry and I honestly don't remember what I did now, since I couldn't reproduce it. I may not remember what properties. But I do remember that it was properties. I've never seen it since. If you've ever seen a list of object properties pop up, tell me where and I'll tell you whether that's what I saw or not.

Thanks,
Maggie

The only times I've been surprised by seeing lots of properties were when I discovered/noticed the "more..." option at the end of some methods, and that it was right-clickable, and the time I first noticed that the elements in bluish boxes could be changed once set.

Some objects have huge sub-hierarchies, and dragging to the right on some menu items will turn up quite a lot of entries. I don't know how experienced you are, but most of these require you to right-click to discover these things.

Since these menus are generated according to which objects are passed to which methods, it would be difficult to do something like search the source code to turn up this combination that you saw before, unless you can narrow it down. Maybe telling us which objects/characters were in use at the time if you remember. Then someone may be able to tell you if any have particularly large menus associated with them.

Otherwise, you saw the perfect murder: no clues left anywhere :-)

Dear hgs,

That must be it! I must have right-clicked. I'm not experienced at all, I didn't know about right-clicking. My experience is limited to the two texts I've read and the few programs I've written to get used to the environment, and I don't believe either text mentions right-clicking.

However, I tried right-clicking around on your suggestion, and I found one spot where I got a "change to" menu that only gave me two options, but it gave me the options of <<<subject's width>>> and <<<subject's depth>>>. (I was setting a number variable to armchair's height.)

Those angle brackets ring a little bell in my head.

Now I must just keep trying that until I get the huge list. I don't remember what I was working on when I got the huge list. Posting on this forum to find out if anybody knew what I'd seen was also set aside to "do later." I've generated quite a lot of Alice code, I don't think I'd like to go right-clicking on everything! But I'm going to try it every chance I get, and when I find the huge list of properties, I'll post the exact code here.

Thank you so very much for the employment of the little gray cells, "h"ercule "g s" Poirot!

Maggie

Originally Posted by hgs

The only times I've been surprised by seeing lots of properties were when I discovered/noticed the "more..." option at the end of some methods, and that it was right-clickable, ...

Just for clarification, I may be wrong, but as near as I can tell, unlike many items in Windows, there is no difference between right-clicking and left-clicking the "more..." option in Alice. Clicking the word "more..." with either the right or the left mouse button produces exactly the same result as clicking the little triangle to the right of the word "more..." with either mouse button.

Also, this is probably picking at nits, but I would tend to call the menu items (exposed by such clicking) parameters instead of properties. I view these items as hidden parameters that have default values. Clicking and exposing the various menus makes it possible for the programmer to change the default parameter values to values of the programmer's choice.

Dear Dick,

Yes, you're right, it isn't right-clicking the "more" that makes anything new come up, and you're definitely assigning arguments to parameters when you do that. Agreed.

However, sometimes if you right-click on the actual method, you get a "change to" option that allows you to pick a different method. I believe the list of properties that I saw looked something like that, but I'll be darned if I can find it again. I've been right-clicking like crazy.

And my text does mention right-clicking, but it's in the context of changing certain events to others -- just to set the record straight on my text. :-)

Maggie