Table inspector from 4W

[-= JB =-]

On Oct 14, 2008, at 6:48 PM, -= JB =- wrote:

>
> On Oct 14, 2008, at 6:25 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
>
>> -= JB =- wrote:
>> > I think I know what you mean by independent column alignment.
>> > Are you wanting to have each column use Left Center or RIght
>> > justification?
>>
>> Yep - probably the one feature most developers here would  
>> prioritize above all else, so central to information displays as  
>> it is.
>>
>>
>> > If so I bet that can be done pretty easy and you could have each
>> > cell or each column justified.  It would take a little bit of math
>> > to add a character in front of the item or column of items to
>> > properly align the text Left Center or Right.  Not a big deal  
>> really.
>>
>> Try it on a field with a couple hundred columns and a few thousand  
>> rows and you'll see where this goes pretty quickly.
>>
>> Dropping that much data into a Rev field as it is today is  
>> lightning fast - faster to display and much smoother to scroll  
>> than even Excel or Word.
>>
>> But if you had to walk through each item of each line to calculate  
>> the formattedWidth, and hope that you could obtain a correct  
>> formattedWidth for the preceding padding spaces needed to have it  
>> line up, with the engine as it currently is it's very slow.
>>
>> And with anything other than monospaced fonts very close to  
>> impossible to get truly good alignment.  The space character is  
>> more than one pixel wide so it requires settling for  
>> approximation, which ultimately means some items will be a pixel  
>> or two off, resulting in a ragged right edge.
>>
>> With a monospaced font it's possible to get adequate alignment,  
>> but the performance issue remains.  And with the customary  
>> application fonts on every supported platform being non- 
>> monospaced, whose users would be happy being limited to Courier or  
>> Monaco?  At a minimum, to deliver professional work we need Lucida  
>> Grande on OS X and Tregoe on Windows (though it does't matter on  
>> Linux because there is no single standard <g>).
>>
>> As much as I appreciate your ambition, I believe this is a task  
>> best suited for the engine.
>>
>> -- 
>>  Richard Gaskin
>>  Fourth World Media Corporation
>>  ___________________________________________________________
>>  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com
>
> Another way to speed it up would do not have a few thousand rows.   
> This could be
> overcome by using a database and after so many rows were scrolled  
> the database
> would get the next hundred or so, whatever works.  I am not saying  
> it is perfect but
> if that is what you need it would be better than nothing.
>
> -=>JB<=-
> _______________________________________________

If you only changed the justification for one column at a time the  
speed would
not be hampered by the number of columns since it would use the code you
provided to get one column at a time.

If you changed the justification of one item at a time your number of  
rows would
not change the speed either.

So the slow down would be how many rows of one column would justify at a
reasonable speed.  How often do you need to change the justification  
of the
whole column since it is being justified for each item according to  
the setting
for that column.  There would be some slow times but if you are not  
changing
the justification of a whole column very often you would end up with  
the look
you wanted and that look may not even need to be changed in some stacks.
Therefore you would only be changing one item at a time.

-=>JB<=-