Table inspector from 4W

[-= JB =-]

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<=-