Scrollable cards?

[Sarah Reichelt]

Hi Dave,

I haven't tried this in Rev but I did a similar thing in HyperCard. There is
probably an easier way to do this in Rev and I think your scrolling group
sounds like a good method, but here is what I learnt along the way:

First find out (by trial & error) how many pixels fit on a page. I ended up
with a stack size of 480 x 680 which fit comfortably on an A4 page. This
meant that once we all upgraded from 640 x 480 monitors, the scrolling
routines weren't necessary any more, but you may want more pixels or better
resolution.

Then I used the following scripts:

-- The one sets the size of the window to fit in the screen,
-- allowing for the menubar
-- and hides the scroll window that HC automatically pops up
-- if the card is bigger than the window
on openStack
  put item 4 of the screenRect into maxHeight
  set the height of the card window to maxHeight - 48
  set the left of the card window to 8
  hide window "Scroll"
end openStack

-- This one checks where the mouse is. If it is at the bottom of the
-- "page", the window scrolls to the top and if the mouse is above,
-- it scrolls down to the bottom.
-- There is a 50 pixel buffer to stop constant flickering up & down
on idle
  hide window "Scroll" -- just in case it re-appears
  if item 2 of the mouseLoc > (the height of the card window - 50) then
    set the scroll of the card window to the bottomRight of the card window
  else if item 2 of the mouseLoc < (680 - the height of the card window +
50) then
    set the scroll of the card window to 0,0
  end if
end idle

I know that the use of idle is not recommended in Rev but these are
HyperCard scripts so there was no alternative.

When the page was ready, I hid a few unwanted buttons and used "Print Card"
to get the whole thing on a single page. It worked really well. The card did
not have to be completely visible in the window for it all to print.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

Cheers,
Sarah


> Hi. I would like to implement a word-processing-like interface for one of my
> stacks. Since a printable page is bigger than most monitors, I have been
> looking for a way to scroll an entire card or at least give the illusion of
> doing so to mimic the standard word processing interface. Simply putting the
> text in a scrollable field is not an option because the documents have a
> header and pages are divided into two columns (the text must be stored in
> multiple fields). Moveover, when the user is done editing the document, he
> should be able to print it. The two options I have considered are: (1)
> Putting the fields into a scrollable group. This seems as though it should
> work well except when printing. Is there a way to print the entire area of a
> scrollable group in one shot, as opposed to just the currently visible area?
> I also considered (2) Scripting a scroll bar to control the location of all
> fields in the card to give the illusion of a scrolling document. When
> printing, the scrollbar could be hidden and the card size could be expanded
> to contain all the fields (expanded to the former "scrollable" area), and
> the entire document would then in theory be printed. My questions are: 1) Is
> there a way to make method (1) work with printing, as I think this would be
> bar far the easier route to take, and if not 2) Does method (2) sound like a
> viable alternative? Anybody have a better idea? Thanks in advance for any
> help.
> 
> Dave
> 
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