The Animation Xcmd,  by Brian Gillespie
   This stack contains an Xcmd designed to allow the user to play
colorful 320 mode and 640 mode animations quickly in Hypercard using simple
english scripting commands. This stack will install the xcmd easily for
you, so please keep a backup of this stack.

  The xcmd is the Animate xcmd. It will display the animation, continously
looping, until the mouse is clicked, returning the screen to it's original look.
The Open-apple and Option keys will change the speed of the animation as it
plays.  This revision also incorporates support for a parameter that will specify
the number of loops to animate the file. To use, the simplest syntax would be:

 animate "AnimName"

   AnimName is the valid filename for the animation that you wish to play, and it
must reside in the folder you launched the stack from. 
   To animate more than once, merely script:

animate "Animname","5"

And the xcmd will loop the animation 5 times, then quit.  Allowable values are
1-9.  For continous looping (actually, 255 times) just write a script like this:

animate "Animname","0"

The "0" being a zero character, in quotes.  With either of these parameters, you
can still exit prematurely with a mouse click.
 
Essentially, Hypercard sees a word in a script it doesn't understand, such as
Animate, and then transfers control to an xcmd with that name if it is installed.
 Browse your Hypercard manuals for other syntax that can evaluate to a string of
characters which is a valid animation filename, such as:

   Animate field "AnimName"

   Hypercard would evaluate this as telling the xcmd to animate a file, the
name of which would be in a field named AnimName.  You could easily have scripts
that would change the contents of that field to any of dozens of different
filenames. Variables can also contain filenames, and you can specify full
pathnames to a file, such as:  /gs/hypercard/animations/movie.file.

    The Xcmds now check for available memory, and gracefully quit if there is
insufficient memory. Other bugs have been fixed, such as passing a non-existent
file, invalid pathname strings, and checking if the file is a $C2, or paintworks
animation file.  This version also fixes a bug with random colored dots visible
in some animations. The current prefix must point to where the stack was launched
from, and any animations called must be in the same prefix.  This is not really
a problem, because you can script something like: Anim "9/stacks/tesla.sho"
and it will easily find the file "Tesla.sho" and animate it.  Just tell the 
enduser to install to his "Stacks" directory.  If you have SuperdataPath from
Quality Computers, just set the default data prefix to the "Stacks" directory.
If, however, you use Kangaroo, you should also install SuperdataPath or make
certain that you use the "9/Stacks/etc." syntax.

    The Anim, or looping xcmd is version 1.4.