Lingo

Lingo is a scripting language developed by John Thompson for use in Macromedia Director. It has been said that HyperCard was one of the inspirations for Lingo.

Table of contents

1 Syntax 2 Usage 3 Imaging Lingo 4 External Links 4.1 Mailing Lists

Syntax

\nWhen Lingo was created, the syntax was designed to mimic spoken language, so it would be easy for beginners to get started. You could write whole sentences like:

if sprite 5 not visible then go to the frame

Although it is still possible to use the old syntax, the latest version of the language fully supports dot syntax, so that the code looks more like in standard programming languages.\nThe equivalent in new scripting style would be:

if sprite(5).visible then _movie.go(_movie.frame)

Usage

\nLingo is embedded into Macromedia Director. This way you dont need to care much about hardware or details of getting things on the screen - the program does this for you.\nBecause of the structure of Director, it kind of enforces the user to write Object oriented code. You can attach a script to each sprite (this script is then called behavoiur) to control the properties and movement of it.

Imaging Lingo

\nA very powerful part of the language is Imaging Lingo. It was introduced when Director version 8.0 arrived. It gives the user the power of image manipulation with simple commands. There are some similarities to functions of image applications (like Photoshop, what makes it easy to create visual effects.

External Links

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Useful Resources

\n*director-online.com\n*DirectorWeb\n*lingoworkshop.com - Useful open source scripts.\n*Animation Math in Lingo - Great tutorials for beginners and experts

Mailing Lists

\n*Direct-L is probably the biggest Lingo mailing list\n*Dirgames-L is a list about Lingo for games\n*Director-3D-L is a pure 3D-Lingo list\n

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\nFor the television game show of this name, see Lingo (game show).