Here's one we've all faced, and I'm curious how others deal with it:
You have a field in which some of the text has a grouped text style
applied and when the user clicks it takes them to another destination
(standard hot text, as with a web browser).
What method do you prefer to maintain an association between a specific
chunk and the destination descriptor associated with clicking on it?
Here are the common solutions I've seen:
Method 1: Lookup table based on clickChunk
------------------------------------------
The clickChunk is compared to stored chunk expressions in a list;
when a match is found other data in that list record describes the
link destination.
Downside: editing text will change character offsets, making some
or all of the links invalid.
Method 2: Lookup table based on the clickText
---------------------------------------------
Like Method 1, but instead of matching chunk expressions we are
matching the literal text the user clicked on.
Downside: All clickText containing the same string will always
have the same destination; you cannot have the two occurrences of
the same word linked to two different destinations.
Method 3: Find command
----------------------
The clickText is compared to the contents of fields in a stack.
Downside: The string must exist in a field on the target card;
editing either the source link text or the destination text
will break the link.
ToolBook has probably the best solution for this: grouped text is
treated as a discrete object, in that it has its own properties and
script. Bound directly to the group, it is not reliant on position or
spelling.
Of course I'd love to see that in MC in the future, but given what we
have in MC today how do you folks prefer to handle this?
- Richard Gaskin
Fourth World
Multimedia Design and Development for Mac, Windows, UNIX, and the Web
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