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From: Ken.Knight@f421.n109.z1.fidonet.org (Ken Knight)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: Combining Stacks
Message-ID: <3026.278C494C@blkcat.fidonet.org>
Date: 10 Jan 91 00:22:16 GMT
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david@bourbon.ee.tulane.edu (David Kaufmann) asks:
>One list, for instance, is everybody; #2 is a short list for most
>frequently contacted, a third the women's auxiliary, etc.
>
>1) What's the easiest way to combine the lists, putting on some tag so
>that I can extract names as needed from group 1, 2, 3 or whatever, for
>labels?
>
>2) Is hypercard the best program to use (I don't have any others and
>this is a non-profit group I work for)?
 
You have a few options (I'm assuming from your message that lists 1,2,
and 3 are DIFFERENT stacks):
1. Write an overseer stack that will access the appropriate list as
asked for by the user. The appropriate lists are maintained in their
own stacks. The overseer would pull the information out of these lists
and display it for you to work with. You would modify those lists by
via the overseer stack. So, for example, to pull all the names out of
list 2 you might do something like:
on mouseUp
 lock screen
 set lockmessages to true
 push card
 go stack "list 2"
 repeat with i = 1 to the number of cards
   put fld "name" & return after tempStorage -- a container
   go next card
 end repeat
 pop card
 set lockmessages to false
 unlock screen
 put tempStore into card field "so-and-so" --place all the names now.
end mouseUp
 
To modify your lists using this approach you'd do something similar
except in the repeat loop you would have a lines like:
repeat with i 1 = to number of card
 put line i of tempStorage into field "name"
 go next card
end repeat
 
This method could get combersome very quickly.
 
2. Your other option is to write a script that will merge the stacks
into an archive. This wouldn't be to tough if the individual lists are
failry similar you just walk through the lists grabbing data and then
plopping it into your new stack. You'd also set some sort of tab field
that notes where each record came from. Let's say you have 2 different
stacks that contain the same basic info, but are used for 2 different
things (i.e. your list 1 and 2
 
HyperCard can do this sort of work quite effectively. Personally, I
would go with option 2 - combine the stacks into a new stack that
includes a tag field noting what list each record goes with. Then use
that new stack exclusively (addding/deleting/modifying data).
on mouseUp
 lock screen
 set lockmessages to true
 push card --save the current card of the merge stack
 go stack "list 1"
 repeat with i = 1 to number of cards
--Gather in the data now.
  put fld "name" & return after nameStorage
  put fld "address" & return after addressStorage
  put fld "doodah" & return after doodahStorage
  go next card
 end repeat
--Now do the gathering on "list 2"
 go stack "list 2"
 put the number of lines of nameStorage into list2StartsHere
 repeat with i = 1 to number of cards
--Gather in the data now.
  put fld "name" & return after nameStorage
  put fld "address" & return after addressStorage
  put fld "doodah" & return after doodahStorage
  go next card
 end repeat
 pop card
 repeat with i = 1 to the number of lines of nameStorage
  put line i of nameStorage into fld "name"
  put line i of addressStorage into fld "address"
  put line i of doodahStorage into fld "doodah"
  if i <= list2StartsHere then put "list 1" into fld "tag"
  else put "list 2" into fld "tag"
  doMenu "New Card"
 end repeat
 unlock screen
 set lockmessages to false
end repeat
 
That is a crude example of how I might merge 2 stacks with the same
structure into a third stack (already made). A better solution would
probably ask the user for the stacks to merge together for example. In
this case the "doodahStorage" can be whatever you want. I'm using
LIST2STARTSHERE to mark what entries came from list 2 and then setting
(Continued in Next Message)


--  

        Ken Knight, Ken.Knight@f421.n109.z1.fidonet.org
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