Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!caen.engin.umich.edu!camber
From: camber@caen.engin.umich.edu (Gregory Peters)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: "Real" hypertext?
Summary: Almost possible
Keywords: hypertext
Message-ID: <441a3cdf.5e37@dl5e37.engin.umich.edu>
Date: 28 Jun 89 15:26:00 GMT
References: <9158@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <19941@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: camber@caen.engin.umich.edu (Gregory Peters)
Organization: caen
Lines: 41

In article <19941@cup.portal.com> Andre_Louis_Marquis@cup.portal.com writes:
>Has anyone thought about adding what, for the lack of a better phrase, I will c
>"real hypertext." to Hypercard or SuperCard.  By hypertext, I mean the ability
>to link a span of text in a field to a command.
>
>In Hyper/SuperCard, you can create a text field and put transparent buttons ove
>the text field so when the user click on a word, a command is executed.
>Unfortunately, if the text is edited, all the buttons have to be moved.  It's a
>real mess if the field can scroll.
>
>As far as I know, it is impossible to catch all the editing events that affect 
>field (character insertion, cuts, pastes, etc.) or find the bounding box of a
>span of text, so hypertext can not be implemented by clever scripting.
>
>Does anyone have any illuminating thoughts?

You can get "real" hypertext of a sort with the new "selected"
expressions.

1.  Lock the text on the field in question.

2.  Put the following in the script for the field:

on mouseUp
   lock screen
   set the locktext of me to false
   click at the clickloc
   click at the clickloc
   get the selectedtext
   set the locktext of me to true
   unlock screen

   -- Do whatever you want with the obtained text from here
   -- You may even want to pass it to the card or background
   -- if you have several fields which may reference the same
   -- word.

end mouseup

Good Luck!
             Greg Peters (camber@caen.engin.umich.edu)