Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!think!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decvax!decwrl!hplabs!hpcea!twakeman
From: twakeman@hpcea.CE.HP.COM (Teriann Wakeman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: tabs, for where art thou?
Message-ID: <6410008@hpcea.CE.HP.COM>
Date: 17 Feb 88 00:02:27 GMT
Organization: HP Corporate Engineering - Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 27

Help, i'm at script's end trying to figgure out how to emulate tabs
in a scrollable field. in a fixed field, you can set several small
fields side by side for nice neat columns. There are even some crafty
people out there who have figured out how to put scrolled fields side
by side and have them act like a single field. The drawback there, as far
as i understand is that it is not very fast and becomes slower as more
scrollable fields try to emulate one field with tabs.
PROBLEM:
I need a scrollable field with 5 columns. the leftmost is an alpha column
and can contain up to 32 chars plus some space to the next column. The next
is a short date, followed by two single digit columns. the lest most is a
variable length string of digits. i can more or less make due with a fixed
number of spaces between all but between the first and second columns.
I have tried using the length of the first string and adding spaces after
my string until a certian length is reached, and the offset of the first
/ in the date and adding spaces before the date. Unfortunatly, chars take
up different amounts of space. I can manually line up columns, as close as
a space bar will allow & have the length of the first column string be
anywhere from 43 to 54. URG!! Also, repeat loops where the length is compaired
to a number and a space added is -s l o w-.
if only i could get the loc of the front end of a text string, if only 
Hypercard fields had real tabs, if only someone out there had and answer
to my problem...

HELP!!!

TeriAnn Wakeman