Limit on pixles in a group [ was: Re: Max number of columns in a datagrid?]

[Alex Tweedly]

On 25/11/2018 23:04, Richard Gaskin via use-livecode wrote:
>
> This limitation may have been eliminated, or close to eliminated, with 
> the field object.  And now that fields have column-independent 
> alignment, it's rare that there's ever a need to replace that one 
> object with a thousand-object DataGrid for simple list views.
>
> The DataGrid is bound to a limitation within LC for group contents: 
> the formattedWidth and formattedHeight of a group cannot exceed 32765 
> px. Attempting to go beyond that flips the signed bit internally and 
> objects will be rendered incorrectly.
>
> I suppose it might be nice to see that extended, but in practice do we 
> really need it?  How big should a group meaningfully be?
>
> 32,765 px is about 30 feet in size.  That's a lot to ask a user to 
> scroll through, not to mention being a lot to ask LC to buffer so it 
> can handle the scroll efficiently.
Hmmmm - 32765 pixels at 227 dpi is "only" about 12 feet :-)
Still too much - except ....

While it might be too much for horizontal scrolling, it's not so clear 
for vertical scrolling.  Twelve feet is about 13 pages vertically of 
A4/letter paper; so if I had a document that (for its own reasons) was 
in continuous format rather than paginated, I might well want to have it 
all in a single group. I probably wouldn't want to scroll through it - 
but I might want to have some method of (say) going directy to a 
specified chapter or verse - and then see it in its continuous context.

And if we were to consider non-European languages, maybe that would 
apply horizontally as well ??

Alex.