image_inherit_order(3)

💅 image_inherit_order — the Arcan Lua API glow-up 🎀

okay bestie, settle in, because this one is a tiny function with a big main-character energy moment ✨ It lives in the Arcan Lua API and its whole job is: it changes the specific object order value so it gets expressed as relative to its parent 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

image_inherit_order — changes the specific object order value to be expressed as relative to its parent. like, the order doesn't have to stand alone anymore, it can be a nepo baby of its parent's order 😌 periodt

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

nil
image_inherit_order( vid, bool_state )

(it returns nil, no cap — the return value is literally nothing, it's giving "i did my job, don't ask me for a receipt" 💀)

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so normally, order is expressed as an independent property — it's its own girl, it stands alone, it doesn't answer to anybody 👑

but for some applications, like, say, user-interfaces, it might be more useful and more intuitive to express it relative to a linked object 💖 that way you cut down on the amount of tracking and reordering calls you need to reorder an anchor point that's used for something like a window 🪟✨ like, instead of chasing order values around every time the parent moves, the kid just knows where it belongs. lowkey iconic behaviour ngl.

By default, order inheritance is disabled 🙈 but you can explicitly enable it by calling this function. it's opt-in, bestie, she's not gonna do it unless you ask 🎀

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💜 NOTES 💜

1. for long hierarchies, this can be an expensive operation 😭 because changes to order imply a detach/attach operation, and it's implemented recursively. so like, deep trees = deep recursion = she's doing work. be mindful, fr fr ⭐

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🌈 EXAMPLE 🌈

function image_inherit_order0()
      a = fill_surface(32, 32, 255, 0, 0);
      b = fill_surface(16, 16, 0, 255, 0);
      order_image(a, 2);
      order_image(b, 1);
      image_inherit_order(b, true);
      link_image(b, a);
      show_image({a, b});
end

so a is a 32×32 red surface and b is a 16×16 green surface 🍓 a gets order 2, b gets order 1, then we turn on inheritance for b (image_inherit_order(b, true)), link b to a, and show them both. cute, clean, slay 💅

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💀 MISUSE 💀

function image_inherit_order0()
      a = fill_surface(32, 32, 255, 0, 0);
      order_image(BADID);
end

👀 BADID is not a thing, bestie. please don't.

function image_inherit_order1()
      a = fill_surface(32, 32, 255, 0, 0);
      order_image(a, "not a number");
end

🙈 "not a number" is a string. it is, in fact, not a number. the name was a warning and we ignored it 😭

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that's the whole page, bestie — short, sweet, and fully unbothered 🌸

sign-off time 🎀 this lil' page comes from image, dated October 2026, and its manual section is image_inherit_order(3) — screenshot it, memorise it, live by it 👑💖