Pi:
> I’m not sure this is what Curry was thinking of. What do you think
> he was eluding to. We’ve ‘known’ this for years now apparently.
I love the humor so far - well done, kind of like a skit/spoof of Fake
News flailing under the weight of Accurate Facts yet insistently
demanding more, LOL, if that was your intent. OK, I'll join in the fun
and play straight man in the act to ham it up and help give cooped up
people at home a much-needed laugh, and educational to boot. Our own
little Punch and Judy show. Just this one more email though; I've been
sick for weeks and need to catch up on work, so extra typing has to be
very limited.
Generally known (your claim, not mine): List members quickly provided
starter code for not 1 but 2 separate approaches. I'd say the existence
of tabstops and clickH/mouseH is fairly well-known. Just a matter of
actually applying what is known - that's a key skill and we've just seen
a real live demo of several people doing exactly that. Good job, all!
Long time: Check. Tabstops and mouseH have been there since LC/RR 1.0,
if the dictionary can be trusted for once. That's quite a while. I
myself published an optimized column function back in 2011 or 2012 with
SpreadLib (and my critics keep reminding me that was a long time ago;
they can't have it both ways) so I assume I'd probably been using
rougher column code for several years before that. And I assume other
people did too.
(But I admit, on a geological time scale that's just the blink of an
eye. And in the course of human civilization, I don't have any handy
evidence that people in ancient Catal Huyuk or Jericho were using
similar methods. However even animals have an innate sense of comparing
larger and smaller amounts, and early civilizations solved highly
complex problems, so I wouldn't underestimate them; I think the average
scholar back then was very smart, and placing a given value into a
series of values should be doable IMHO. But to stick to proven facts,
it's indeed a "long" time in LiveCode terms, the capability was
available for almost as long as LC/RR itself. But not in geological
terms or "God's time" and the life of our universe; I'm afraid the Fake
News might have me over a barrel on possible meanings of the word long.) :-)
Providing people have some background on field props, this is no trouble
at all! I don't believe all learning should be by rote, AKA either
someone has seen the explicit code and heard a spiel, or else he/she is
completely helpless and innocent of the entire concept. For LC tutoring
I would place a "which column" coding challenge exercise as: Beginner
skill level for known provided equal-width tabstops, Intermediate for
rough handling all field tabstops, and Advanced for a cleaner/shorter
optimized and polished solution and/or handling paragraph-level
settings. Never claimed it was a one-liner (typical fake news "flailing"
with hyperbole, common media tactic) but as demo'd here it's not hard to
make your own function, for those not function-averse or
performance-averse. But yes the field is underappreciated and much
sexier than the gossip and hearsay crowd gives it credit for. So it's
great that we are increasing awareness and understanding and driving a
stake into the heart of some misconceptions!
That concludes my brief battle to fortify field users against Fake
News...for this round, but the war for hearts and minds never ends in
our 24/7 media cycle! So I'll fly away back to my sickbed lair to
recuperate (but not lick my wounds or touch my face) until the next time
Forces of Misinformation and Mayhem rise once more from the gutters and
perch on the gorgoyles to threaten the code-izens of our fair virtual
metropolis. Carry on!
Best wishes,
Curry Kenworthy
Custom Software Development
"Better Methods, Better Results"
LiveCode Training and Consulting
http://livecodeconsulting.com/
_______________________________________________
use-livecode mailing list
use-livecode@lists.runrev.com
Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription
preferences:
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
