Undocumented temporary zoom feature

[tad]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> *Presumably you know about the credits screen? How many of you have seen the error message "Help help I'm trapped in a stately home?"*
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I have yet to see the credits screen or that great error message. How can we view them????
Regards,,,,,Tad [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

[Sean Sedwards]

This is a mock-up of the "Help! Help! ..." message box that I posted in the previous forum - I've never seen it under real conditions. I once asked if there were any Easter eggs in Xara and apart from this message, the only other suggestion was the "About CorelXARA" box which has animated coloured lines every second time you call it from a single session. Perhaps that's what Justin is referring to.

Regards - Sean

[justin_flude]

A couple of hints and that's your lot [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

The "stately home" error message - my word, how we laughed when that popped up during an exhibition demo - only appears under very special circumstances. Which unfortunately I can't remember precisely, but it goes something like this: the program has an error message to report such as "some fonts had to be substituted", "do you want to make this the current attribute", or whatever. Simple informational messages count as "errors" in the sense I'm using the term. To report the error, it loads a dialog template from the resources (if you're not familiar with Windows programming this may all be gibberish to you), formats the specific error message into the dialog's static text control, and then displays the dialog. However, if the program should happen to run out of memory after loading the dialog template but before formatting the error message, then the dialog is displayed with the static text control's default wording, as specified in the dialog template. And that just happens to be "Help help we're trapped ..." Now, I can't remember if it's all error dialogs which potentially do this, or just some. Knowing the person who put this message in, and what he worked on, you might like to explore the dialogs associated with the galleries, especially the font and clipart galleries. And beware of the fish.

Credit screen - apologies again, I can't remember exactly how to bring this up, but it goes like this: choose File / Import to bring up the "Import File" common dialog. Holding down Control, Alt, and Shift (I think), double-click on the dialog's background (ie. "client area" to use the Windoze terminology). Cancel the dialog. Go through the cycle again. And then a third time - but this time _don't_ hold down Ctrl-Alt-Shift when double-clicking the client area. If you've done it right you should see a scrolling list of credited programmers (and others). Two problems, though, because the easter egg code hasn't been updated for a number of years: developers who only worked on the program after ~1995 aren't mentioned; the list is scrolled on "idle events" and therefore may flash past at light-speed on newer machines.

[michaelward]

I haven't ever seen this eroor in real use, but I did see it when I was investigating various exe's with a resource editor... split my sides laughing at first... then wondered if it would ever come up during use... never has... oh well

M Ward

[Sean Sedwards]

I just realised that the spacebar is smarter than I thought and the temporary zoom and push are just as smart. They work so intuitively, I hadn't noticed how they were adapting to the way I used them.

Dabbing the spacebar once will allow you to use the pointer tool in the same way that dabbing ALT-Z / X engages the zoom / push tools. Hitting them again sends you back to whatever you were using before. However, if you hold down any of these keys for more than about half a second, Xara will take you back to the previous tool as soon as you release them rather than wait for a second hit, thus saving a keystroke.

Referring to my previous posting, the order which you release the ALT and Z / X keys is probably intended to be ALT last, since this is usual and logical and there is already a means of temporarily locking the zoom / push tools, as described above.

Regards - Sean

[Michael]

Anyone had succes with Justin's decription? I've been trying every possible double-alt-shift-ctrl-right-upside-clientarea-undefined-click I can think of, but haven't seen no egg what-so-ever ...

[gerryiles]

In CX2 it is 3 ctrl-shift-double-clicks and a double click. In Webster it should be 3 ctrl-double clicks and a shift-double click.

Also you must not close the dialog between them.

Gerry