Hyperbole User Manual
3.5 Button Type Precedence
Explicit buttons always take precedence over implicit buttons. Thus, if
a button selection is made which falls within both an explicit and
implicit button, only the explicit button will be selected. Explicit
button labels are not allowed to overlap; Hyperbole's behavior in such
cases is undefined.
If there is no explicit button at point during a selection request, then
each implicit button type predicate is tested in turn until one returns
non-nil or all are exhausted. Since two implicit button types may have
overlapping domains (those contexts in which their predicates are true),
only the first matching type is used. The type predicates are tested
in reverse order of definition, i.e. most recently entered
types are tested first, so that personal types defined after standard
system types take precedence. It is important to keep this order in
mind when defining new implicit button types. By making their match
predicates as specific as possible, one can minimize any overlapping of
implicit button type domains.
Once a type name is defined, its precedence relative to other types
remains the same even if you redefine the body of the type, as long as
you don't change its name. This allows incremental modifications to
types without having to worry about shifts in type precedence.
See section 10.2 Creating Types, for information on how to develop
or modify types.
