text color script

[FMoyer at aol.com]

I want the user to be able to change at will the color of text in the fields 
of a stack I am designing. To do this, I've made a group that contains three 
buttons: a black button, a red button and a blue button. If the user presses 
one of the colored buttons while text is selected, that selectedtext becomes 
red or blue or black. And if the user clicks in a field, what he types next 
will automatically be the color of the button that is hilited. 
    The script works -- it is below. But it seems to be a clumsy solution. 
Basically, each time the user types in a field, my script changes that 
character to the correct color. I am worried that it might be creating some 
junk in the fields that is messing up the stack. The stack has been acting 
strangely (i.e., crashing.) Could you look at the script below and tell me if 
there is not a better simpler way to accomplish my task? Thanks.

Incidentally, I'm using Mac OS 9.2.2 and MC2.5.

Fred Moyer 

Explanation: The group of buttons is called "textColorButtons" -- in it are 3 
radio buttons - their names are "black", "red", "blue."

**The script for group "textColorButtons"
on mouseUp
  global globalselectedchunk,selectedColorButton
  if word 4 of GlobalSelectedchunk + 1 <> word 2 of GlobalSelectedchunk and 
GlobalSelectedchunk is not empty then
    --- This is to change the color of text that is highlighted
    do "set the textcolor of " & globalselectedchunk & " to " & (the short 
name of the target)
    set the hilite of btn id selectedColorButton to true
    do "select " & globalselectedchunk
  else
    set the hilite of btn (the short name of the target) to true
    if GlobalSelectedchunk is not empty then
      do "select " & globalselectedchunk
    end if
  end if
end mouseUp

on mouseenter
  global globalselectedchunk,selectedColorButton
  put the selectedchunk into GlobalSelectedchunk
  put the hilitedbuttonId of group "textColorButtons" into selectedColorButton
end mouseenter

**The script for the group that contains the fields:
on keydown what
  if the selectedtext is not empty then pass keydown
  put the selectedchunk into sc
  put what after char (word 4 of sc) of fld (last word of sc)
  set the textcolor of char (word 4 of sc) + 1 of fld (last word of sc) to 
(the hilitedbuttonName of group  "textcolorbuttons")
  select char (word 4 of sc) + 2 to (word 4 of sc) + 1 of fld (last word of 
sc)
end keydown