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From: zben@umd5.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: hypercard thoughts
Message-ID: <2014@umd5.umd.edu>
Date: Wed, 28-Oct-87 19:25:56 EST
Article-I.D.: umd5.2014
Posted: Wed Oct 28 19:25:56 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Oct-87 11:17:53 EST
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Lines: 60

I've built a stack of the songlists of all the shows the Grateful Dead
played between 1974 and 1986.  It is just under 500K bytes and four main
areas, each with its own background.  I've had problems trying to get the
FIND command to work.  I haven't quite pinned the problem down exactly, 
but it seems that a FIND directed at a field on one background can in some
cases be satisfied with the same data occuring in another field on another
background, as long as the field numbers matched.  As a work around, I
create the same list of fields in each background, but with the unused fields
in each background set invisible.  Anybody seen anything like this?

The conflict between TOPS and Hypercard on system 4.1 seems to be solved if
you copy the INIT31 resource from a 4.1 system tools disk and paste it over
the INIT31 in the system file.  I have not yet tried replacing the system
(3.2?) on the TOPS install disk with a 4.1 system.

If you find you are covering a field with a button, to do something when the
user clicks at the field, it is probably easier to put the mouseup handler
into the field's script.  This way you can toggle the "lockText" of the
field back and forth to update it, rather than having to move and replace
the button.  The only disadvantage I've seen to this is the area doesn't
get lit-up when the option-cloverleaf keys are used to show the buttons.

I've built a button that reads and executes an arbitrary file of HyperTalk.
I build a 978K+ file on the Unix system that creates the entire stack from
scratch (and it uses only CAT and AWK!).  It takes 261 seconds to FTP the
file to the Mac (using NCSA TelNet thru a Kinetics box) and several HOURS
to complete the build.  Here is the script.  Note there is a bug in the DO
command that causes it to complain about a line with a bare comment, so
the script filters them out.

on mouseUp
  put "autoexec.bat" into fileName
  open file fileName
  repeat
    read from file fileName until return
    put it into buffer
    if buffer is empty then -- end of file
      close file fileName
      exit mouseUp
    end if
    put buffer into message
    put first word of buffer into indicate
    if indicate is "--" then
      -- comment (like this one) do nothing
    else
      do buffer
    end if
  end repeat
end mouseUp

Does anyone have a handle on a good way to search BACKWARDS, except the
obvious "go to prev card of this background, if/if/if" algorithm?  Can
anybody think of a good way to search forward for a match in any one of
a number of fields, other that "go to next card of this background, if/if"?

-- 
Copyright 1987 Ben Cranston (you may redistribute ONLY if your recipients can).
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