[comp.sys.mac.hypercard] Tab speed in 2.0 slow, can fix?

John_Miller@mindlink.UUCP (John Miller) (02/25/91)

> I have a time card stack which I wrote for my father's business.
> It has upwards of 120 fields on each card.  I am converting it
> to HC 2.0, but tabbing between fields takes a good 3-4 seconds
> on a Mac IIx, I can't think what sort of time it would take on
> a Mac SE.  The "on closeField" scripts don't seem to seriously
> affect the speed, it seems to be more a matter of the number
> of fields.

Gee, what good timing you have.  Just this weekend, I finally
resolved a compatibility problem between the FastTab XCMD and
RasterOps video boards.  Even as we speak, FastTab 1.01 is
travelling at the speed of modulation to comp.binaries.mac.

FastTab is an XCMD that, for many stacks, will accelerate
HyperCard 2.0's tabbing speed.  Your stack would represent
an extreme case that probably would gain the most from FastTab.

At the same time, these fields probably form a grid, yes?
You might wait to keep your eyes open for an XCMD that would
display a row and column XWindow.  The only one I've seen
so far is Tabloid by Frederic Rinaldi, but, unfortunately,
I don't think it supports changing the text in a cell
after the XWindow is initialized.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
John Miller                         (604) 433-1795
Symplex Systems                     AppleLink:  (rarely)  CDA0461
Burnaby, British Columbia           Fax: (604) 430-8516
Canada                              usenet:  john_miller@mindlink.uucp

Macintosh Consulting and Software Development
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jcocon@hubcap.clemson.edu (james c oconnor) (02/25/91)

I have a time card stack which I wrote for my father's business.  It has
upwards of 120 fields on each card.  I am converting it to HC 2.0, but
tabbing between fields takes a good 3-4 seconds on a Mac IIx, I can't 
think what sort of time it would take on a Mac SE.  The "on closeField"
scripts don't seem to seriously affect the speed, it seems to be more a
matter of the number of fields.

1.  Does HC 2.02 fix this?
2.  Is there any way to help alleviate this short of deleting fields?
3.  What is the most efficient way to refer to buttons/fields?  Name,
Number, ID?

My report generating scripts run a little faster, but those only happen
once a session.  The tap key is used many hundreds of times.

Thanks,
Jim