Using LC for Slideshow

[doveweed]

Is there any way in LC to have images automatically upscale so they fill screen at different display resolution like PowerPoint does?
Using RunRev some years ago, I created a slideshow/PowerPoint type presentation for teaching a class with forward/back buttons, a button to set background to black, and a quit button.
I set the resolution/image size for the standalone app to the resolution of the display from which my slides were being projected on a larger screen, so they would fill the screen.
But I'd rather provide user of standalone app the ability to have full screen image up to 1920x1080 regardless of display resolution.
If that's possible, how?

[richmond62]

Check out SCREENRECT in the dictionary.

This should allow your slideshow to autodetect what the screen resolution is, then the images can be resized accordingly.

[doveweed]

I found these instructions for making stack full screen, which come with warning -
http://forums.livecode.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=820
"In a time where most screens measure 17" or more, with resolutions of 1600x1200 and more, a full-screen application easily looks very awkward and unusual, while taking over someone's screen is not very polite. Please think twice before making a full-screen application."

How can I modify those instructions to create a full screen button that user could click instead of making app automatically full screen?

[richmond62]

Easy-Peasy:

Just have a button "FULLSCREEN" that when the user
clicks on it makes the thing full-screen

Play with this:

screener.livecode.zip

(148.16 KiB) Downloaded 280 times

[doveweed]

I already know to have that, but how do you do it?

[richmond62]

Download my demo stack and peep at the script

[doveweed]

The enlarged cat PIX is very pixelated, and there's no way to revert back, e.g. clicking anywhere on screen like is customary on apps, such as iTunes, etc.
And I have no idea what the Object script is all about.
I don't want just an image off of a card in the stack to enlarge, I want the whole stack layout to enlarge.

Regardless of low resolution of PIX, PowerPoint upscales images to full screen without pixelating.
That's what I'm asking if it's possible to do with LC or not.
I like being able to customize my presentation in LC in ways not available in PP.

I haven't worked with Rev/LC program in years so I've forgotten how to run it and am having to get back up to speed.
I want same set of buttons on every slide, but I'm having a hard time ungrouping them and changing one on left marked "•" so it sets full screen instead of black background.
If I remember correctly, I grouped, cut and pasted the translucent grey bottom band and buttons on each and every slide which was cumbersome and time consuming.
Would much prefer being able to create a master and apply it to multiple slides.
Is there a way to do that?

(Tried uploading my sample project, but first got error there was 2MB limit, then after reducing to 1.6MB, now I get message 256KB is limit???!
I had to delete each card individually and I have hundreds. Is there a way on Mac to select more than 1 card at a time in Project Browser in order to delete multiple cards? Holding down Shift key when selecting doesn't work.)

For some reason, there's no Object Script for my black screen button, whereas there is Object Script for my other 3 buttons - forward, back, and quit.
The script for black background is in Stack Script not Object Script for the "•" button.

Will you help me upload sample project, have a look and give me some pointers?
Is there a way to enlarge smaller resolution images so they upscale without pixelating?
And a way of creating a master layout and applying it to selected cards?

[richmond62]

PowerPoint upscales images without pixelating them because the initial images are of a far higher resolution to begin with.

When I put that demo stack together I used a high-res 1900 x 1080 image of a cat on a tree: the stack ended up as bigger than 256 kb,
so I shrunk the picture using GIMP and reimported it.

The POINT about the stack is NOT to moan about pixelated images, BUT to examine the scripts in the 2 buttons: one
scales the stack and the image to the WORKING SCREENRECT and the other one returns the stack and the picture to their original
sizes.

If PowerPoint is so marvellous then why don't you just stick with PowerPoint?

Now it is time for you to do some work and thinking: I've done enough on your behalf.

[richmond62]

"For some reason, there's no Object Script for my black screen button, whereas there is Object Script for my other 3 buttons - forward, back, and quit.
The script for black background is in Stack Script not Object Script for the "•" button."

Presumably because YOU did NOT put a script in your black button.

Livecode does not do anything by itself, any more than any other computer programming environments: if the script
is in the "wrong" place, it is there because you put it there.

If you start getting mystical about computers, and stop accepting responsibility for your own
actions your programming career will grind to a halt forthwith

[doveweed]

I'm not so silly as to mystically blame my Mac for scripting nor denying that I'm the one who put the script where it is.
I'm asking for help with the right/better way of scripting since I don't remember why I did what I did to get Rev to work the way I wanted it to at the time, and now want to learn the right/better way of having LC do the same.
I need to see examples of specific scripting with instruction where to place it, not useless generalizations.
So is it better to have Object Script on black screen button or Stack Script?
I'm also asking if something went awry in converting Rev to LC.
I'm also having problems with grouping not showing up so I can't ungroup.
I have 4 buttons each of which (if not mistaken) is grouped, then all 4 are grouped.
I can unlock group of 4, but then cannot individually move 3 of those 4, and only the black screen button selects as group that can be moved and further ungrouped.
I suppose I'll have to recreate buttons from scratch. This time I'd like to use an image, but am finding the documentation on that difficult to follow. If Rev/LC is really for the novice to learn to code, then it shouldn't take such deep digging and hair pulling to figure out how to do the simplest thing, like make a button look the way I want it to with a Photoshop image instead of settling for buttons dragged off the LC tool palette and styled from within LC program.
Also, Undo command rarely if ever works.
This is exactly why I never got farther than an initial project with Rev. I'm surprised I even got that far, and very disappointed as I invested around $100 in program.

[doveweed]

And no, that is just the point. A low resolution looks just as good on screen after Power Point upscales it as the original does. If LC is so great at app creation, then it should be able to do what PP does.
I don't need to hear in the LC forum that if PP is so great, go use it.

[richmond62]

The ONLY way a low res picture can look as good "when PowerPoint" upscales it is . . . what???

I suppose if the image were a Vector image that would work, but Powerpoint is no more
capable of upscaling a JPG or PNG image and preserving its sharpness than anything else.

I have just made a Powerpoint 'thing' using the original, low-res picture of the cat on a tree
and am uploading it here for you to play with and see what I mean.

PIXELs.ppt.zip

(226.37 KiB) Downloaded 241 times

[doveweed]

OK, so PP doesn't do that. I worked with it years ago, and the person helping me didn't know if image resolution mattered, and the images we were working with didn't seem to pixelate, if they did not much.
So then how do I take a 1920x1080 jpg, and have LC initially open them in a 1280x1024 card stack,
then have a Full Screen button that will enlarge the stack to users Full Screen, up to 1920x1080?
Do I have to have 2 sets of images, one low res and the other full res?
What script do I use for Full Screen button?
How do I script an escape from Full Screen? Since Full Screen button will still be visible, can it be scripted so that clicking again escapes Full Screen mode?

[Klaus]

Hi friends,

no idea why this is running under OFF-TOPIC, which this is definitively NOT
Will move this thread to the beginners section.


Best

Klaus

[richmond62]

The funny thing is that many of us have had the same questions which we have answered for ourselves by
direct experimentation.

Certainly, with my brain (which you make as many rude comments about as you like), direct experimentation
leads to my learning something far faster than having somebody else (who probably has a different sort of brain)
explain something to me.

A thousand years ago at the University of Durham (well, 1984) I spent a year learning how to do fancy
programming in PASCAL. I stopped going to the lectures after the first or second one as I really could not
understand what the bloke was saying; a textbook I picked up on PASCAL made no more sense; so I went down
to the underground room with 50 blind terminals and horribly greasy keyboards (think: Physics students!), and
with a bottle of detergent, a cassette recorder with an earphone (mon in those days), an exercise book, a
pencil, a thermos of coffee and nothing but bloody-minded determination I got on with things.

Now at the end of the year, my project, to build concordances of books
(something the 'clever' professor told me couldn't be done) came second out
of 100 students - so much for listening or reading what other people told me.

I do suggest, after what I have told you, that instead of replying instantly, you "play" around with
the thing (Livecode) first, you may find things begin to get easier.

ALSO: chuck your preconceptions, based on PowerPoint a few years ago, out with the bath water