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From: sirkm@ssyx.ucsc.edu (Greg Anderson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: selecting contents of a locked field
Message-ID: <9426@saturn.ucsc.edu>
Date: 15 Oct 89 18:21:18 GMT
References: <9490@june.cs.washington.edu>
Sender: usenet@saturn.ucsc.edu
Reply-To: sirkm@ssyx.ucsc.edu (Greg Anderson)
Organization: UC Santa Cruz; Division of Social Sciences
Lines: 45

In article <9490@june.cs.washington.edu> moore@cs.washington.edu (Charles Moore) writes:
>I would like to have an index card in a stack that lists all the
>other cards in the stack by the contents of some identifying field.  I
>would like to be able to go to any listed card directly from the index
>and I would like to request the deletion of any listed card without
>leaving the index.

The HyperUnix read mail stack does something like that.  You might want
to take a look at it.  (ftp to ssyx.ucsc.edu.)

>It seems to me that the natural way to do this
>(for the user) would be to have a single click on a card name result
>in the selection of that name whereupon the user might hit the Delete
>key or click a "Delete Card" button.  To go to a listed card the user
>would double-click on the name.

In HyperUnix, a single-click goes to the entry in question; the user
must shift-click to select.  This makes the index more like a list
manager object, but perhaps the method you suggest would be more
intuitive.

The technique I used can impliment either method, however.

I do not worry about unlocking or selecting the field; I simply
placed numerous transparant buttons over the field in question.
The buttons are NOT autohilite; when they recieve a mouseDown,
they set their own hilite atribute if the shift key is down or
jump to the appropriate card if it is not.  It would be just as
easy to jump to another card if the button is already hilited, or
hilite it if it is unselected; however, you would then need a
method to unselect the buttons.  It would probably be best to
accomplish this by saving the tick count of when the mouseUp event
came in (and on which button it was recieved).  Double-clicks
(a second click on the same button close in time to the first click)
would then go to the card in question, while a single-click would
unselect the item again.

My only complaint with this method is that things get wierd if
you scroll a scrolling field behind a hilited button.  Try it
and see what happens.

  ___\    /___               Greg Anderson              ___\    /___ 
  \   \  /   /         Social Sciences Computing        \   \  /   /
   \  /\/\  /    University of California, Santa Cruz    \  /\/\  /
    \/    \/              sirkm@ssyx.ucsc.edu             \/    \/