MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR MX 2004-USING DIRECTOR, Use Manual, Page: 298 / 500

298 Chapter 13: Navigation and User Interaction
Equivalent cross-platform keys
Because of inherent differences between Windows and Macintosh keyboards, keys on Windows
and Macintosh computers don’t always correspond directly.
This discrepancy can create confusion because script often uses the same term to refer to
corresponding keys on Windows and Macintosh computers, even though the key’s name differs
on the two platforms.
The following table lists script elements that refer to specific keys and the keys they represent on
each platform.
Identifying keys on different keyboards
Characters can vary on different keyboards. You can avoid possible confusion by identifying a
character by its ASCII value. For more information, see the Scripting Reference topics in the
Director Help Panel.
•
To obtain a character’s ASCII value, use the
charToNum()
method.
For example, the following statement finds the ASCII value for the letter A and displays it in
the Message window:
put charToNum("A")
-- 65
•
To find out which character corresponds to an ASCII value, use the
numToChar()
method.
For example, the following statement finds the character that corresponds to the ASCII value
65. The result is the letter A:
put numToChar(65)
-- A
About animated color cursors
Director supports animated cursors. You can use any 8-bit bitmap source in your Director cast as
an image in the cursor animation, automatically scale images, and generate masks for 16 x16 pixel
and 32 x 32 pixel cursors. (Macintosh computers don’t support 32 x 32 pixel cursors.)
An animated cursor consists of a series of bitmap cast members. Each bitmap cast member is a
frame of the cursor. You can control the rate at which Director plays the frames of an animated
cursor. Using the Cursor Properties Editor, you designate one or more bitmap cast members as
frames of a single cursor cast member.
Lingo term Windows key Macintosh key
RETURN Enter Return
commandDown Control Command
optionDown Alt Option
controlDown Control Control
ENTER Enter key on the numeric keypad
(during authoring, pressing Enter starts
playing the movie) Enter key on the numeric keypad
(during authoring, pressing Enter starts
playing the movie)
BACKSPACE Backspace Delete