How do I simply turn off the mouse pointer?

[Rick Dean]

I am VERY new to Director... and do not understand Lingo... but surely there
is a simple way to turn off a mouse pointer during playback of a projector.
Can someone 'point' me in the right direction? I did notice that there is a
cursor command under Lingo... I tried it as:

cursor 200

Using this under behavior at the beginning of a movie as a global setting
and all I got was a syntax error. I just have a quick project to finish and
this is the only snafu I've run into so far. Please advise!!
Thanks.

[David Stiller]

If you want to turn off the cursor for the whole movie, you've got to
put that cursor 200 command into an "on startMovie" handler. In fact,
practically all the commands you'll find in the Lingo Dictionary have to be
put into handlers. What's a handler?
It starts out with "on" and ends in "end" ... imagine it as a sandwich,
one that you fill with all the things you'd like to do. The "on startMovie"
handler is one of the many given Lingo handlers. You can also create
handlers on your own, when you're more comfortable. But for now,

on startMovie
cursor 200
end

will do what you need. Put that in a Movie script (not a Behavior or Parent
script ... Behaviors are for attaching to particular frames or sprites --
you want this for affect the whole movie). Just create the script then look
at its properties; you can select from there what sort of script it is.
You don't have to put the script anywhere in the Score ... it'll work
simply by virtue of its being in the Cast, and being an "on startMovie"
handler.

More resources:
* check out the back of your Lingo Dictionary: it has commands
sorted by category
* venture over to
http://www.herts.ac.uk/lis/mmedia/directortutorial/2index.html ... it's for
Director 6, but much still valid, and if you scroll past the beginner's
section, there's plenty of good tutorial for Lingo.

Regards,

David
sti...@quip.net