THE HYPERCARD CENTER

HyperTalk Reference

Note: This is a work in progress and many formatting issues have been fixed. Read more about the project on the home page.

hilite

set [the] hilite of button ¬

     to trueOrFalse

The hilite property returns or sets whether a button is highlighted (shown in inverse video).

With check boxes and radio buttons, hilite determines whether the button is selected.

If a button belongs to a family and its hilite property is set to true from a script, the hilite property of each of the other buttons in the family is set to false.

(Click Tips to see a list of synonyms you can use for hilite.)

Examples

set the hilite of bkgnd button 1 to true

set the hilite of card button id 37 to ¬

not (the hilite of card button id 37)

Demo Script

on hiliteDemo

 flashButton "bkgnd btn id 61",3

 flashButton "bkgnd btn id 57",3

 flashButton "bkgnd btn id 58",3

end hiliteDemo

on flashButton whichBtn, howManyTimes

 repeat for (howManyTimes * 2)

   set the hilite of whichBtn to not the hilite of whichBtn

 end repeat

end flashButton

Placeholders

button

HyperTalk Definition

An expression that identifies a button by name, number, or id, using one of the following forms:

[card] button id posInteger [of card]

[card] button text [of card] -- name

[card] button posInteger [of card]

ordinal [card] button [of card]

bkgnd button id posInteger [of card]

bkgnd button text [of card] -- name

bkgnd button posInteger [of card]

ordinal bkgnd button [of card]

For example:

card button id 3894

card button "Return"

card button 1

first card button

bkgnd button 2 of card 2

last bkgnd button

When used inside a button script: me

When a button receives a message: [the] target

A button can also be referred to as a part when you’re talking about its position among all buttons and fields within the same card or background.

AppleScript Definition

An expression that identifies a button by name, number, or id, using the same forms as HyperTalk except that “background” must be used in place of “bkgnd”.

trueOrFalse

Any expression that evaluates to the HyperTalk and AppleScript constants true or false.

For example:

true

false

the hilite of bg btn "Yes"

fld "Zip" contains "95014"

the short name of this stack is "Fred"

HyperTalk Reference

Version 0.8b4 (July 4, 2025)