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A textline is a specific line of text in a toolbook field. For example: textline 1 of field "x" = "hi" would set the first line of that field to the word 'hi'.


Built In SortTextLines function

Solution by Jeffrey Rhodes

Question: I'm having some problems with the sortTextLines function. I'm running ToolBook II Publisher 5.0 under Win95 with 32megs RAM and at least 25megs free on all of my disks. When I run the following code in the command window I am getting a dialog box with NO text (except for the OK button). The system gives me no error message. 

x = "C" & CRLF & "B" & CRLF & "A"
y=sortTextLines(x)
request y

Answer: I would suspect that you are not linking in the function. Somewhere (e.g., enterApplication), you need the lines: 

linkDLL "tb50dlg.dll"
 STRING sortTextlines(STRING)
end linkDLL

Counting the number of text lines the user can actually see in a field.

Figure 4 - resizing a field containing a single textline causes word wrapping (when the word wrap property of that field is set to true - which it is by default)

Normally we count the number of textlines in a Toolbook text field by using the following code: 

   textLineCount( text of field "fldName" )

Now, what happens when the width of the field is narrower than the textline width, so that one line is wrapped over several lines? How do we find out the number of visible textlines in our field that the user is perceiving ? This is a way of doing it - here it is:

Visual Textline Counting

Solution by Mike Shepherd

Question: I need a method for measuring the percent of a field scrolled. I can use the "scroll" property of the field to measure the number of lines scrolled above the top margin. However, I can't find a reliable way to measure the total lines in the field. Dividing the two would give me what I need. The "textlinecount" function only gives me the number of textlines (up to crlf) in the field.

Answer: How about locking the screen, setting the scroll to 10,000 (well above the real limit) and then reading the value of 'scroll' which will now be the last possible line you could possibly scroll to...then set the scroll back to 0 and unlock the screen.

Visual Textline Counting - Step-by-step (plus code)

Solution by Andy Bulka

To illustrate the above solution, I have written a function called textLineCountVisible. To understand how it works, do the following:

NOTE: You don’t have to put in a line with only 1 carriage return. I suggest this only so that your results match the example given here. 

to handle buttonclick
   request textlinecount(text of field "x") &crlf&\
         textLineCountVisible( field "x" )
end

You should have something like this:

Figure 5 - This single long line of text is wrapping due to the edges of the text field "x".

Even though the Toolbook function textLineCount reports 1 as the number of textlines in the field, we want to know how many lines we actually see.

I have written the following function to help us. Place it in the button’s script, or somewhere else in the object hierarchy e.g. in the page’s script, or in the book’s script - or even in your system book’s script, if you have one. 

to get textLineCountVisible fld
   -- Lock the screen so that the 
   -- text stays in place whilst we are making
   -- our calculations.
   savLock = sysLockScreen
   sysLockScreen = true
   
   -- Do the trick
   savScroll = scroll of field "x"
   scroll of field "x" = 10000
   get scroll of field "x"
   scroll of field "x" = savScroll
   
   sysLockScreen = savLock
   -- Adjust the result slightly
   return it + 1
end

Ok. That’s it. Switch to run mode and press the button. You should get the following result:

Figure 6 - there is 1 textline which wraps to make 4 ‘visual’ textlines

which means that there is 1 textline which wraps to make 4 ‘visual’ textlines. Neat eh? Now try resizing the field e.g. making it narrower - resulting in even more wrapping and thus more 'visual textlines.

Bonus
This technique will work for rich text, meaning big fonts and text effects etc don't affect the accuracy of the algorithm.

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