How should snow dots refer to topsTimer vs. GetSecs

[GoogleCodeExporter]

In general, snow-dots probably wants to use GetSecs as its timer funciton.
 But sometimes it may wish to use a different timer.  How should the timer
be specified so that multiple classes can use the same, correct one?

-The timer could be a machine setting.  In this case the function handle
could be passed around during initialization, which would be fine.  But
since machine settings are organized per-class, it might be awkward to to
specify the correct timer redundantly, for multiple classes.

-The timer could be an object mode.  It would be easy for any object to
register to get updates with the correct "clockFcn", for example.  But
there are not presently defaults for object modes.  Maybe there should be?
 The default for an object mode could be a machine setting.

-The timer could be a system mode.  It would be easy to specify the default
in one place, as a machine setting.  But system modes are currently
boolean, not function handles.  Maybe they should be arbitrary values, but
I like the idea that system modes only represent abstract concepts.

I think the nicest solution would be to add default values for object modes...

This would easily generalize to other things like isVisible or waitTime...

Original issue reported on code.google.com by Benjamin.Heasly on 17 Nov 2009 at 7:40

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I defined some default object modes in dotsTheMachineSettings, including 
waitFcn and
clockFcn.  These get applied to objects when they are added to an object mode.

Original comment by Benjamin.Heasly on 21 Nov 2009 at 5:43

• Changed state: Fixed