Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!uunet!unisoft!hoptoad!tim From: tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard Subject: Re: Linking two or more scroll fields together Message-ID: <8715@hoptoad.uucp> Date: 16 Oct 89 01:44:43 GMT References: <772@chyde.uwasa.fi> Reply-To: tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) Organization: Eclectic Software, San Francisco Lines: 35 In article lb0q+@andrew.cmu.edu (Leslie Burkholder) writes: >A while back mi@chyde.uwasa.fi asked for a solution to the following >problem: >> I'm trying to link four scroll fields together so that they should >scroll simultanously. >There is a Multiscroll XCMD by Oscar Hills that may do what is wanted. >It is available from >Somak Software Inc >535 Encinitas Blvd #113 >Encinitas CA 92024 >USA Hmm. I've done this with scripts, and it is *slow*, even with only two fields. I'm hoping it will improve in HyperCard 2.0, which is supposed to have a lot of performance improvements. The script-based solution is way too slow to be usable. Even better than improving scrolling performance would be to make explicit commands controlling columnar output available; this is hardly too much to ask of a hypertext-like system. What I'm wondering is how this could be sped up with an XCMD, providing you're using real scrolling fields. I mean, all the XCMD can do is ask HyperCard to interpret set scroll commands, right? The interpreter is not the bottleneck, it's the speed of scrolling and screen updating. I suppose you could do some sort of awful patch-type solution that would bypass HyperCard's scroll mechanism, but it wouldn't work across versions. Either he's not using real scrolling fields, or I'm missing something. (If it turns out that HyperCard has some kind of internal delay counter that you can mess with, and it's running that slow on purpose, I will be pissed.) -- Tim Maroney, Mac Software Consultant, sun!hoptoad!tim, tim@toad.com A good flame strengthens its points; it does not stand in lieu of them.