Table fields... oh boy.

[Troy Rollins]

On Aug 14, 2004, at 1:30 PM, J. Landman Gay wrote:

> I built one of these some years ago:
>
> <http://www.hyperactivesw.com/downloads/pseudtbl.mc.hqx>
>
> You'll probably want to adjust the behavior, but it might get you 
> started. The method has some limitations but can work in the right 
> circumstances.

I grabbed that demo, and I must say, it is really nice, and very 
impressive. That said, with no intent to snub the obvious expertise, it 
is hundreds of lines of custom code, which delivers a one-off solution, 
which still does not really behave like a "standard" data grid. This 
leads me only to believe that without a built-in solution, a 
generically useful and practical data grid is simply beyond our current 
capabilities.

To me, data grids are a pretty critical functionality, and one of the 
reasons I left Director behind for my "application" development. 
Director has a well-known xtra called "OSControl xtra" which provides 
cross-platform native controls - but a multi-column data grid is beyond 
its capability - even at a base, text-only, level. And, text should not 
be the extent of a data grid.

While other deficiencies I've mentioned (imaging, openGL, etc.) are 
features that would be nice to see in Rev, and I can live without or 
find suitable workarounds for until we see support for them, data 
display is not so easily remedied. It creates interface bottlenecks 
where entire multi-field cards are used instead of a single 
multi-column line in a grid. This is not a workable solution in many 
cases, since it doesn't support relational sorting, etc.

The application browser is perhaps the closest thing I have seen in 
Revolution to a working data grid. It isn't an actual OS native grid, 
but it comes pretty close - of course, it doesn't support cell editing 
but otherwise has many of the features needed, including hierarchy 
support. If the grid which is used in it were made into something that 
we as users could get under our control, with a reasonable API, it 
might suffice for the interim, but only for some projects.

In the meantime, I have an upcoming project which *requires* a fast, 
sophisticated grid (ala iTunes.) I currently don't see how Revolution 
is going to support it, and therefore I will have to resort to using 
something else - all too frequent a situation with "high level 
language" tools it seems. Development speed and no airbags for when the 
brick walls crop up. I had thought that maybe between Director and 
Revolution, I'd pretty much have all the bases covered, but this is one 
where neither Director or Revolution is the right tool. The search 
continues. <sigh>
--
Troy
RPSystems, Ltd.
http://www.rpsystems.net