Printing Functions

Apple's Player normally does not enable the "Print Stack..." and "Print Field..." menu commands of the "File" menu. Apple left it up to authors of HyperCard stacks to enable these functions on a case-by-case basis in their individual stacks.

If the author of a stack enabled one or both of these functions, then their implementation of stack and/or field printing will take precedence over the HSP implementation described below.

(However, if an author deliberately made sure that "Print Stack..." and/or "Print Field..." were disabled or, if enabled, would not work, or if you simply want to use HSP's implementation of these functions, you can override the stack author's implementation as described below under "Overriding a stack's implementation of Print Stack or  Print Field.")

HSP is set up to automatically enable the "Print Stack..." and "Print Field..." menu commands, even if a stack author did not do so. HSP's implementation of "Print Stack..." and "Print Field..." are as follows:

Print Stack

Selecting "Print Stack..." from the "File" menu allows you to print all the cards in the stack you are "playing" with HSP, or just cards that you choose. Selecting "Print Stack..." brings up the following dialog box:

This figure shows an example of a stack having five cards. The scrolling field in the dialog shows the number of each card in the stack (which will vary from that shown in the figure, depending upon the stack you are in), and the name of each card. If the card does not have a name, its "id" is listed instead.

You can print all the cards in the stack by clicking the All button. Unless the cards are very large, they will be printed two to a page of 8-1/2 x 11 paper.

If you just want to print some of the cards, click on the lines in the scrolling field to select them, using the Shift key or the Command key, as described below. Printing selected cards only prints one card per page.

Use the Shift key to make a continuous selection. Click on the first card you want, then hold down the Shift key and click on the last card you want. All the cards from the first to the last that you want will be selected. Then click the Selected button to print those cards.

Use the Command key (the one with the  on it) to make a discontinuous selection. Hold down the Command key and click on the individual cards that you want. Then click the Selected button to print those cards.

Print Field

HSP allows you to print the contents of every card and background field on a card, or copy the contents of the fields to the clipboard for pasting into another application, such as a word processor.

This function works much like the "Print Stack..." function. Selecting "Print Field..." from the "File" menu brings up the following dialog:

(This example shows what you would see if you used "Print Field..." while in HSP 2.3v2).

Hidden fields are shown in brackets.

Click Print All to print the contents of every field (both card and background) on the current card. Each field will be printed on a new page.

To print just an individual field, click on its name to select it, and click Print Selected. To print multiple fields, use Shift-selecting to make a continuous selection, or use Command-selecting to make discontinuous selections (as described above for Print Stack), and click Print Selected.

With printing, both "all" and "selected", all the formatting of the field contents is maintained.

Instead of printing the contents of the fields, HSP allows you to copy selected fields to the Mac clipboard. You can then paste the field contents into a word processor document, or anywhere that you can paste text. Copying, however, loses all text formatting (e.g., fonts, underlining, bold, etc.).

The pasted text identifies each field by its name or id. If a field has no contents, all you will paste is its name or id.

Overriding a stack's implementation of Print Stack or Print Field

If for some reason the "Print Stack..." or "Print Field..." menu commands of a stack are disabled, use the following trick to enable those commands. Hold the Control key down and type a tilde (~). You will get a dialog which asks "What can I do for you?" Type "enableprinting" (one word without the quotes), and click "OK." Both the "Print Stack..." and "Print Field..." menu commands will now be enabled.

If for some reason "Print Stack..." or "Print Field..." menu commands are enabled but don't work, or you simply want to use HSP's implementation rather than the stack author's, do the following. Hold the Control key down and type a tilde (~). You will get a dialog which asks "What can I do for you?" Type "printstack"  to print the stack, or "printfields" to print the fields (both are one word without the quotes), and click "OK." You will get HSP's stack printing dialog or the field printing dialog, and you can proceed as described above.