Lingo in a Nutshell

Lingo Script Types

Where should Lingo scripts be placed? The answer depends on the event you wish to trap (respond to) and when you want to trap it.

No Scripts Required

Macromedia advertises Director 6’s Behaviors as “scriptless authoring.” You can use Behaviors without understanding the specifics of what they do, but they are still scripts, even if someone else wrote them. At a minimum, you must understand how to attach scripts in the Score and how Director processes events. Behaviors are score scripts, but configurable Behaviors are very different from the simple score scripts you may have used in Director 5. Refer to Chapter 12.

In some cases, Director handles the desired task without scripting. The Tempo channel can be used to wait a specific length of time, to wait for a mouse click or key press, or to wait for a sound or video to play. Editable text fields handle keyboard input automatically when the editable of member or editable of sprite property is set. Refer to Chapter 10 in this book and Chapter 12, Text and Fields, in Director in a Nutshell for details.

A Dizzying Array of Scripts

Director’s terminology is very confusing regarding the various types of scripts. Although the scriptType of member property returns only three different values (#movie, #score, and #parent) there are actually six types of scripts. (Movie scripts, parent scripts, three subspecies of score scripts (frame scripts, score scripts, and Behaviors), plus cast scripts, which don’t have their own scriptType ...