Post by Munro in General Decker Question and Answer Thread

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I'm making a prototype, where I set a button's text based off a string attribute.

This works until I open the button's prototype, whereupon that attribute gets reset and the button's text resets to the prototype's default is. I don't observe this behavior for example when using field.text as the string persists between opening's of the prototype.

I'm reading through the documentation but missing what the determining factor in whether a property gets reset between prototype openings.

I can use a hidden field, but that complicates things as the button will still get reset when opening the prototype so needs a restore call etc.

Deck with an example of the behavior: https://munro.itch.io/decker-question

Internet Janitor12 days ago(+1)

From the reference manual's description of the Prototype Interface,

when a definition is updated, the name, pos, show, locked, animated, volatile, font, pattern, and script attributes of Contraptions will be preserved, as well the value, scroll, row, col, and image content of the widgets they contain (as applicable) if they have been modified from their original values in the prototype, but everything else will be regenerated from the definition. The state of contraptions is kept, and the behavior and appearance is changed.

Any other state that you wish to survive prototype modification should be stashed in internal widgets; I recommend refreshing these settings (alongside applying settings from the enclosing contraption instance like .font and .locked, where appropriate) in the view[] event handler in the prototype script.

Munro11 days ago(+1)

Ah, so because button's text is not the value it doesn't get kept, however a field's text is a value so field text does get kept? Thanks for clarification and the snippet!

Internet Janitor11 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

Just to be clear, a field's .value attribute, which is represented as a rich text table, is the complete, underlying contents stored in the field. Fields have .text, .images, and .data attributes which can be read and written, but all three are alternate views/subsets of the same contents (as a plain-text string, as a list of inline images, and as encoded/decoded LOVE data, respectively), as scripting conveniences.

Buttons have a .value attribute as well, but it represents the boolean (1/0) value of checkboxes, and has no relationship to the .text attribute of the button, which controls the button's label.

Sliders have a .value attribute which corresponds to their numerical value, and Grids have a .value attribute which corresponds to the table data they contain.