Re: What are the elements listed in a dictionary?
Re: What are the elements listed in a dictionary?
- Subject: Re: What are the elements listed in a dictionary?
- From: Donald Hall <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 00:16:22 -0700
What about a physics analogy? The dictionary objects are like
molecules. The elements are like... elements. Molecules have
properties (mass, etc.), and so do their elements. So, water has a
number of properties like molecular weight, boiling point, and so on,
but it also has elements, hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen and oxygen
have their own sets of properties like atomic number.
So you could have
get atomic number of element "H" of molecule "water"
Of course, there is no set command for the properties here!
Don
At 4:00 pm -0600 21/3/03, Jeffrey Mattox wrote:
I must have dozed off during an important lesson, so I need some
remedial training. I am confused by the "elements" shown in an
AppleScript dictionary. Unlike the properties list, I've found
nothing useful about the elements list.
For example, a text field has properties such as "text color" and
"bezeled," so I know I can access and manipulate those properties of
my text fields.
A text field also has elements such as "movie view" and "progress
indicator." What does this mean, and how can I use this information?
I think of elements as things that the object _contains_ as opposed
to its properties. For example "message" might be an element of
"mailbox" -- the mailbox contains messages -- but "name" is a
property of "mailbox" that you can change, provided it's not
read-only. Meanwhile the elements that "mailbox" contains will have
their own properties, so you can
set <some property> of <some element> in <some class> to <some value>
If you look at examples in various dictionaries, you'll find that the
dinstinction will become clear. It's an important distinction and
does take a bit of grasping.
JD
--
Donald S. Hall, Ph.D.
Apps & More Software Design, Inc.
email@hidden
http://www.appsandmore.com
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