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L' Effet Pommier 3
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L'Effet Pommier - Volume 03.iso
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Utils□□□ Divers 2
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Puppet
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1995-10-30
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Puppet
by Mike Clifton
clifton@cse.ucsc.edu
http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/~clifton
Using Puppet:
Puppet is just a "toy" program, so don't expect it to do much. Just play
around with it and have a couple minutes of free fun.
Puppet allows you to control a "skin" object by moving an underlying "skeleton".
When running puppet, choose New to open a new puppet window. In this window,
drag around the red points on the skeleton to move it around. You can even
set up a simple animation. Set up the skeleton in three positions: start,
middle, and end using the radio buttons at the bottom of the window. Press the
green arrow button to run the animation.
Puppet comes with other skeletons and skins you can try out. Any skeleton
can be used with any skin, but you'll find that the ones with similar names
work best together. Press the skeleton button to choose a new skeleton or the
skin button to choose a new skin.
Technical details:
Puppet is a little toy program I'm using to test out a new event handling
and user interface library. The main goal of the library is to allow a
program to perform multiple functions at once (updating windows, running
an animation loop, handling user interaction, etc.). Compared to the computer,
the user is really slow when doing such things as pressing buttons, or working
with modal dialogs. Why should the computer not do anything useful during these
times? The library used in Puppet provides a standardized way for a program
to make use of this time. This is done by handling events and controls without
"help" from the Mac. Unfotunately, the main menu bar, window dragging, and open/
save dialogs are still the built-in Mac versions, so they lock up the computer,
wasting valuable time. As for other controls, try running an animation loop and
hold down a button in the window - the Mac won't lock up. You can even run an
animation in one window and drag around a figure in another window at the same
time.
Just for fun, Puppet's interface looks different from Apple's guidelines, but this
isn't a requirement of the user interface library - it could make itself look more
boring if it wanted to.