table calculations

[Graham]

On Thu, 5 Jun 2003 01:14:45 -0700 (PDT)Jan Schenkel <janschenkel at yahoo.com> 
wrote



>Hi Graham,
>
>As Yves already suggestted, you can use a field per
>column, and that ought to suffice for most purposes,
>as you can then align per column, etc.
>And grouping them and adding some setProp and getProp
>handlers to the group script can get you surprisingly
>far.
>
>But when I think table, I go so far as to want a cell
>to be a control in itself. I want multiple,
>non-contiguous selections. I want to set alignment and
>do my own formatting for the whole table, for a row, a
>column, an individual cell. I want messages and
>properties, fetch entire rows or columns of data and
>stuff other bits into them.
>That's a pretty long and demanding list, isn't it? A
>true table control is a lot more than a beefed-up
>field -- no matter how good a job they have done, they
>can't cater for all of our needs.
>
>And if you look at it, they've provided us with quite
>a few things : auto-formatting of cells, hooking
>tables up to queries, tracking cell selection with
>automatic appearance of a field for data entry.
>This is not peanuts, given that they had to start with
>a field that could display a grid, and only since the
>latest MetaCard upgrade (or the one before, not sure)
>would clip the text if that grid is shown. (*)
>
>Is it all we would ever want and dream of? No... [more interesting stuff]

Jan, it's crystal clear to me that you understand what **is** on offer in 
RunRev tables about 100 times more clearly than I do. I realise that 
autoformatting of cells is offered in some form, but I can't work out the 
consequences of errors (how does my script know the user has put in a 
random text instead of a date, for example?). And in what sense are tables 
hooked up to queries - indeed, what is a query in this context?

What beats me is how you reached your level of understanding from the 
existing documentation. I feel dumb. I will go back to experimentation, but 
it seems long and slow to me.

Just tell me there is a great little essay on how tables work, and I've 
missed it. I'd be really happy.

Cheers

Graham


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Graham Samuel / The Living Fossil Co. / UK & France