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This month's installment of Mr. Wizard is part of my effort to delve into our accumulated archives. Since the picture card feature was added in volume 5, we have created a total of 31 wackly little pictures to accompany our textual musings. A stroll through this Archipelago photo album will only take you thirty seconds and may bring back some pleasant memories.
WHAT IT DOES
The Archipelago Art stack is a collection of all the pictures included in voice cards from volumes 5 to 26 (with a hidden button that can import pictures from future volumes as well). The stack itself is quite simple.
Each card is only slightly bigger than the size of a picture. At the bottom of each card are 5 buttons: a movie button, next and previous arrow buttons, a jump to source card button, and the standard Mr. Wizard home button (which returns to this card).
You will want to begin by pressing the movie button in the lower left-hand corner. This will activate a simple slide show in which each picture is displayed for one second. With this button you can stroll thorugh the entire collection in less than a minute.
You can step through the collection card by card using the arrow buttons. If you wish to view the original voice card source of a given picture, simply push the card ID button at the center bottom of the screen. This button will take you directly to the source card (if you have that voice volume on your hard disk or on an inserted diskette). To return to the art stack, simply hold down the option key and press the bent return arrow in the lower right corner of every voice card.
This premier version of the art stack contains all the pictures included in volumes 5 to 26. If you'd like to maintain your collection by adding pictures from future volumes, simply click on the large movie projector on the first card and enter the beginning and ending voice volumes you wish to import from. This hidden button will automatically scan the specified range of volumes and add any pictures it finds to the end of the art stack.
HOW IT WORKS
This is one of the simplest Mr. Wizard stacks ever made - it took under an hour to construct. The scripts of the arrows, source card, and slide show buttons are trivial. The only significant script is the import handler located in the first card script.
This routine is straightforward. Once a range is entered the script enters a double repeat loop to scan every card of every volume in the range. If the script finds a picture (by checking if a certain button is hilited) it copies the picture, returns to the end of the art stack, creates a new card, pastes the picture, and nudges it into place. The loops continue until all cards have been scanned. It's not very speedy, but you only have to run it once.
I hope you enjoy these odd little pictures. Voice card pictures are certainly an arcane art form but I find them charming (which may be because I made most of them). Perhaps this collection will encourage more of you to add pictures to your cards. Enjoy!
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