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From: eallen@mercury.sybase.com (Ed Allen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: Simulating arrays (Of tickboxes)
Message-ID: <12659@sybase.sybase.com>
Date: 10 May 91 05:05:08 GMT
References: <9105070137.AA07503@cs.utexas.edu>
Sender: news@Sybase.COM
Reply-To: eallen@mercury.UUCP (Ed Allen)
Organization: Sybase, Inc.
Lines: 32


One way to get such an array economically is to design a custom font
that has one character for the checked box and one for the unchecked box.
The array is a field that you fill with one of the two characters and the
field has a mouseup script that catches which character you clicked on and
sets it to the opposite character.  Your database function scripts assess
the same character in the background field on each card for each badge.
Since as far as HyperCard is concerned, you are only storing characters
in one or a few bg fields and not hundreds of card buttons per card, it is
much smaller in disk space and will perform much quicker.  You have to have
the assignment of character array elements designed into your scripts so
that you know that char 7 of line 6 of fld "badges" means "FISHING" or
whatever.

You'll need to use resedit or Fontastic + or something similar to make the
dedicated font.  A couple of caveats: large pictographic fonts will sometimes
default to geneva in low memory conditions at about the same time as you lose
the use of paint tools, and while we have been installing custom fonts in stacks
for awhile, Apple DTS says this is a no-no and will break in System 7 and could
cause potential problems with font number conflicts even without Sys 7.  Other
maladies have been warned about, but it's usually worked out okay for most
scripters to attach thaeir fonts to their stacks so far.  To be completely
safe from such problems ( but less convenient and portable) install the
custom font in your system normally or via Suitcase instead of the stack.

I have an incomplete game stack that I did with such a font to represent map
spaces and pieces, which has the scripts in it that deal with moving the
player's piece around on the map and testing to see what he lands on, never
took it any farther.  If you need such to help, I can probably dig it out and
send it to you as an example.

Ed Allen  eallen@sybase.com