Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!husc6!kolodny@husc4.UUCP
From: kolodny@husc4.UUCP (Jonathan Kolodny)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: What should I do about visual effects on MAC II's
Message-ID: <2408@husc6.harvard.edu>
Date: 9 Aug 89 20:44:26 GMT
References: <116@citycs.UUCP>
Sender: news@husc6.harvard.edu
Reply-To: kolodny@husc4.UUCP
Lines: 36

From article <116@citycs.UUCP>, by luke@cs.city.ac.uk (Luke Whitaker):
> Thanks for the feedback about setting the userlevel. I still haven't decided
> what I should do but at least now I've got some more ideas to go on!
> 
> Another thing I would like to get straight is the problem with visual effects
> that don't work on the MAC II. (I'm talking about "visual effect dissolve"
> etc). I don't have access to one so I can't test this out but I believe its 
> got something to do with the depth of the bit-image, or maybe wether colour is
> on or not ?
> 
> Specifically what I need to know is: Can I set the graphics mode of the MAC II
> from hypercard so that the visual effects WILL work, and if so how. Do I need
> an XCMD or can it be done by HyperTalk ? I've never seen this mentioned in any
> of my HyperTalk books so I assume it will require an XCMD. A simple
> alternative might be to detect that the stack was running on a MACII and tell
> the user what to do to get the visual effects working.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Mail me and I will summarise,
> 
I was having the same problem on my IIcx with a monochrome monitor, so I
went to the Apple booth at MacWorld Industry Day today, and I asked their
Hypercard representative about it.  He explained that, because 8-bit
graphics are too slow to handle visual effects, the only way for Hypercard
to handle visual effects on a gray-scale or color monitor is to restart the
the machine and reset the color to 2-bit (i.e. black and white).  I haven't
been home yet to try this out, but it sounds perfectly plausible.  Now I
can only wonder why this "fact" wasn't made clear either in the Hypercard
User's manual or any of the Hypercard/Hypertext programming books I have
seen...

Hope this helps,

Jonathan Kolodny
Programmer/Software Developer
Harvard Computer Services