[comp.sys.mac] Hypercard, questions and answers

robb@mntgfx.MENTOR.COM (Rob Bartel) (09/21/87)

I have some (more) question and a couple of answers.  First the
questions:

1) Can someone suggest a better way of putting a string into the target field
than

  put string into field the short name of target

?  This strikes me as a kludge, but "me" and "target" dont seem to work for
me.

2) Is there a way of setting the "context" (for want of a better word) for the
naming of fields/buttons other than "go card".  I want to get the value in several
fields of a card of a different background by "send"ing a message to that card.
Unfortunately, whenever than handler references field "foo" it appears that it
looks on the card (background) that sent the message, not the one that received it.
doing something like 
   put field "foo" of card id cardId into rtn
is approximately twice as slow as a local reference, so that is why I am
interested.


Answers:

1) Is there a way to put menus up in Hypercard?  Yes, there is a set of XCMD's
and XFCN's that are available in GENIE's MAC roundtable library 15 that will
do it.  I have only barely played with them yet, but they seem reasonable.  And
the company that wrote them (whose name I have unfortunately forgotten) is
making them a gift to the community.

2) Is

   repeat with i = 1 to the number of words in field "foo"
      put word i of field "foo"
   end repeat

linear or n**2 in the number of words in the field?  The answer, which may
be known to everyone but me, is that it is awfully close to linear.  It might
not have been, you know.


-- 
Rob Bartel
...!tektronix!sequent!mntgfx!robb