I'm writing a dental-related app, and I need to represent all 32 teeth on
the main form - the user will tap a tooth to then do something on that
tooth, and when done, will return to the main form. But there's just no way
to put all 32 teeth in that 160 x 160 area - too crowded! But putting 16
(the upper arch) on one form and 16 (the lower arch) on another form works
really nicely, and it's no problem to swap back and forth between forms with
a button in the same location on each form. So far, so good.
The problem I'm having is in storing the data - each tooth has a fairly
complex data structure (a struct with several data elements, some of which
are other structs). Initially, gadgets seemed to be the answer - I can make
them look like I want them to look, and each one stores a pointer to data,
so storing a pointer on each one to the struct makes perfect sense. So far,
so good.
But I'm having no luck at all in dealing with the data for each tooth that
has to be available from all 3 of my forms - the two main forms (upper arch
and lower arch), and the 3rd form where all the display and editing is done
for all the data on a single tooth. (Tap the tooth on one of the main forms,
go to a data edit form for that tooth - when done, save all the editing and
return to the main form - very simple, possibly even "Zen" <g>.) I think
there might be a very common way to deal with gadget data that has to be
accessible from multiple forms, but I haven't stumbled accross it yet.
Maybe my approach of using the gadgets to store the data is all wrong -
maybe I need to be reading from and writing to a database every time I need
to do anything with the data, because a database would be accessible to me
at any time during my app, right? I could still use the gadets to represent
the teeth, because I can change their appearance to represent the status of
each tooth (data entered or updated, tooth missing, adult vs. child tooth,
etc.). And each time I display the gadgets (switching from upper arch form
to lower arch form, and switching back and forth between the arch view and
the single tooth view), I just read the pertinent data from the database to
display the tooth appropriately.
I guess I have to use a database anyway, to get the data back and forth
between the Palm and the desktop, so maybe I'm just as well off using the
database all the time...
Any advice at this point would be greatly appreciated. I feel like Edison
when he told the report that he's not discouraged - he now knows over a
thousand materials that *won't* work for a light bulb filament! I now know a
*bunch* of ways that I *can't* design my app!
Thanks,
Brian Smith
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