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From: taylorj@yvax.byu.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: New feature for 2.1 wanted
Message-ID: <1649taylorj@yvax.byu.edu>
Date: 10 Oct 90 05:59:06 GMT
Lines: 36

In <10614@goofy.Apple.COM>, maller@applelink@apple.com (Steve Maller) writes:

>In article <21064@well.sf.ca.us> via@well.sf.ca.us (Tony Cecala) writes:
>> I agree completely that row/column functionality should be added
>> to HyperCard fields.
>
>This is a highly-requested feature, but one that would be much trickier
>than you think from HyperTalk's point of view. Everything inside of
>HyperCard can be referred to as plain text (fields, properties, variables,
>chunks, etc...). If you implement a spreadsheet-type field, how will you
>refer to parts of it? In a way that is smooth from one variable type to
>another.

Just to get the ball rolling, here are my thoughts...

To add a spreadsheet or array capability to HyperCard you simply need to
define two new delimiters.  One for rows and one for columns.  You could
then refer to "column X of row Y" or "cell X of row Y".  It seems like the
logical delimiter for cells would be the tab key.  HyperCard would have to stop
throwing away tabs, but it could just ignore them when they occur anywhere but
in a field with the "showCells" property set to true.  The delimiter for rows
could just be the return character (and "line" could be used instead of "row"),
but you would then be limited to a single line of text per cell.  Using
a separate delimiter for rows would make things work more like the tables
in MS Word 4.0.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to think of a good
delimiter for rows.  Maybe the option-Return character?

Perhaps I just haven't thought it out thoroughly enough, but I see no major
obstacles to this scheme.  Maybe if Steve could share the objections
produced by the HyperCard team when they discussed this, those of us on the net
might come up with some interesting solutions.


Jim Taylor
Microcomputer Support for Curriculum   |
Brigham Young University               |   Bitnet: taylorj@byuvax.bitnet
101 HRCB, Provo, UT  84602             |   Internet: taylorj@yvax.byu.edu