>1) I have a need to develop an application that could store potentially
>thousands of rows of data, but want to store the data on the user's local
>hard drive without a large DMBS system. Are there any extensions
>available for MetaCard that serves such a purpose? Preferrably a single
>additional library that is as equally portable as MetaCard (maybe MetaKit
>http://www.equi4.com/metakit/ and MetaCard could be integrated...). I
>understand MetaCard's database is only recommended for up to 1000 rows.
Another solution is to use custom properties to store data. If stored in
an external stack, these can be written to and read from easily, and you
can use array notation to access them providing some really efficient
solutions.
For example, you can have custom props named:
user[bob]
user[steve]
And if your script has a variable tUserName which contains one of these,
your script can access the appropriate property with:
get the user[tUserName] of this stack
or
set the user[tUserName] of this stack to tMyData
>2) In my application I would like to use a Table/Grid, Tree and split-pane
>objects in the interface. I realize MetaCard doesn't provide native
>support for these, but is there MetaTalk code available that uses the
>existing widgets and builds compound-widgets to arrive at a Table/Grid,
>Tree and Split-pane widgets? In Tcl/Tk there are widgets developed in
>Pure Tcl/Tk that use the existing widgets in Tk in such a way (tree, split
>pane, even spin buttons).
I believe Tuviah Snyder or one of the others proficient MetaTalkers here
posted a list table widget - try mctools.com, and if that's not correct
I'm sure one of them will post the proper URL.
>3. Is it possible to develop an application in MetaCard that functions as
>a simple Web Server?
Yes - this is covered (however sparsely) in the MetaCard FAQ at
<http://www.metacard.com>
Many ISPs do not allow custom executables on their servers, but if you're
managing your own you should have quite a good time.
And did you say fast? Check out these results comparing MetaCard against
other xTalk dialects on a Mac (the testing apps and more data will be
posted to fourthworld.com in the coming weeks). I was originaly just
testing thhe difference between two ways of calling other handlers from
scripts, but when I compared this to other apps I was very pleasantly
surprised by the results:
TEST: A simple handler performing a trivial task is called 50,000 times
on a PowerBook G3 266. In the message path test (Script 1) the message
passes along the natural hierarchy, from the field object to the card
script. In the explicit "send" test (Script 2) the message is called
from the field script to the card script using the "send" command.
MetaCard HyperCard SuperCard
-------- --------- ---------
MESSAGE PATH 23 ticks 181 ticks 311 ticks
SEND COMMAND 30 ticks 887 ticks 1131 ticks
- Richard Gaskin
Fourth World
Multimedia Design and Development for Mac, Windows, UNIX, and the Web
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