Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!gatech!udel!princeton!phoenix!englandr
From: englandr@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Scott Englander)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: Wish list
Message-ID: <7574@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 4 Apr 89 19:26:26 GMT
References: <7526@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <10520024@hpfcdc.HP.COM>
Reply-To: englandr@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Scott Englander)
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 44

Thought of another one:

Accessing all the contents of one background field as one container,
i.e. on all cards.  I've had numerous occasions to do something like

put fielditem item_no of field "name" into cur_name

(where item_no is either a card number or id; this puts the contents of
field "name" on that card into cur_name)

or

write allfield "name" to file "namedata"

(writes records to the file, one for each card)

The problem with the way it is now is that you have to keep track of the
card IDs where particular pieces of data are stored, and then go to that
card to get the data.  This is cumbersome script-wise, and
time-consuming (unless you have a 68030).  Maybe what i really need is a
RDBMS!

****************
I'm now working on a stack that partially involves using HC as a front
end for Cricket Graph.  (or rather Cricket as a way to graph the data in
the stack, with minimal effort).  I have it make use of Macromaker to
get to CG and do the plots.  Macromaker is extremely fragile, though,
and if anything changes since you recorded the macro (like icons got
moved around on the desktop), it breaks, and you have to record the
whole thing over.  I've been able to overcome some of this by
modularizing the macros, so one calls another by keystroke, but the
result is hardly the idiot-proof product i want to leave with the user,
and is also not exportable -- macros must be recorded on the user's
machine in order to work right.

It would be great if HyperCard could serve as a _true_ front end for
applications, allowing you to send mouseups to buttons in dialogs and do
"domenu"s, etc.



-- 

                                               - Scott