🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <361@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> g451252772ea@deneb.ucdavis.edu (0040;0000006299;0;327;142;) writes:
>   Can searches, possible successive, return graphic objects which are
>superimposed onto one card graphically, as FileVision (tm) does?  My 1st
>reading of Goodman suggests not, sigh.  The application here happens to be
>snake-telemetry data: we'd like to enter tracks into cards by days, say, and
>then search for and have superimposed the tracks for an entire week.
...
>   Thanks,
>   Ron Goldthwaite / Psychology and Animal Behavior, UC Davis

Well, I haven't hacked Hypercard as much as I would like to, but it seems
that what you're looking for could basically be described like this:

1) Search for a card with the track picture for a certain day.
2) Lasso that track picture.
3) Copy it to the clipboard.
4) Switch back to the card with the composite.
5) Paste the track picture onto the composite card.
6) Do it again, and again, until done.

All of this can easily be done in HyperCard; Goodman should explain how
to do it.  I'm not fluent enough to write a script for it off the top of my
head, but I'm sure other posters probably will.
There are a couple of things that are unclear to me, though:

o There is (I believe) a way to select something with the rectangle, then
  lasso the enclosed object (option-rectangle-select or command-rectangle-
  select or something like that).  There should be a way to get the same
  effect within HyperTalk.  That makes life a lot easier, because you just
  draw a selection rectangle around the track picture, then give the command
  that lassos the selected object; when you paste the picture onto the
  composite card, there will be no extra whitespace.  Can any other HC hacker
  help with this?

o You might want to make sure that your tracks are small enough that when
  they all get pasted together, end-to-end, they don't wander right off the
  card.  Hypercard will not let you drag something outside of a card; your
  composite might be very scrunched because of this.

o It's not clear to me how you can make sure that the pasted track will wind
  up at the end of the previous track.  It might be easy; just have a field
  storing the position of the end of the previous track, then paste the new
  track there.  (You'd also have to have a field on the track's card for the
  length of the track, so you can set the end-of-track position on the com-
  posite card properly after pasting in the new track.)

Anyway, this posting is far too entirely long by half.  Hope I helped some.
Robert Jellinghaus             | "Check out Mr. Businessman, uh-oh...
jellinghaus@yale.edu.UUCP      |     He got some Wild Wild Life"
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