emulating teapot

[wjcampbe]

Hint: click the fill button after you read the manual.

[john harding]

Well, I do know the value of reading manuals, but at this point I have some three weeks left in which, among many other tasks, to evaluate Actinic, which mostly means evaluating my own capacity to handle its complexities. The way to do that is to try doing the basics. "Getting Started" is clear, but it stops just short of telling me how to do what I shall need to do, and while I had no great trouble mastering Chinese, I do find most of the advanced manual inscrutable. I do not have high aptitude for this sort of thing. Given time I could possibly do it, but I don't have the time, so I am grateful to those of the community who are good enough to guide my faltering experimental footsteps.

What is clear so far is that if I do buy Actinic I will need to buy some training.

[wjcampbe]

Sorry John, that logic escapes me.

Time to read (at least skim) the manuals - one day.
Time to do basic code after reading - four days.
Total - five days well spent.

Time to code without reading a flipping word - infinity.

[john harding]

Just as a matter of interest, Mr. Campbell, do you know the answers to the questions I was asking?

[RuralWeb]

Why not have a single page with a fragment as jo describes and then 3 separate products in a compact layout below. That way you dont need to mess with dropdowns etc

similar to http://www.ukcheaptoners.co.uk/acata...00_Toners.html

[john harding]

Thank you, I will look into that. Actually, though, the drop-down box (if I could get it consistently to behave like teapot) is not inappropriate. Most chamber music players will just want the parts, so the default selection (parts only) will make it a one-click job for them.

[leehack]

John, if you are doing something the same as an example, yet it is not turning out the same, there must be something you are doing different, there is no other logical reason. Have you checked the layout tab on all parts of the product you are setting up, it's 99% sure to be either an oversight or a silly mistake. A template is just that - a template - it doesn't change.

[john harding]

I found it, and am now fully teapot-compliant! More to the point, I have found that I _can_ find it, and that, with a little help, I'm likely to be able to find my way through any other mazes. And that's what I needed to know.

Thanks :-)

[wjcampbe]

Just as a matter of interest, Mr. Campbell, do you know the answers to the questions I was asking?

Yep, same as anyone else who read the guides.

[john harding]

Well, that can't be totally true, since, as I thought I'd made clear, I had read Getting Started and the relevant parts of the Advanced Users Guide (also, of course Help and the quick start tutorial) and I was still having difficulty understanding where I was going wrong. There are some people who, even at the youthful age of 70, are slow to learn new skills.

Anyway, my thanks again to those who helped, and I will leave the last word to Mr. Campbell.

[RuralWeb]

Its expected that you post your solution if as you say the guides did not produce the answer - this prevents others asking the same question.

[john harding]

The problem wasn't in the guides, but in my own oversight. I went back, as Lee Hackett said, and compared every detail of the settings from product downward. Somewhere towards the top "Use parent" was not selected in a layout dialogue, which restricted the options I had further downstream.