Re: applescript-users digest, Vol 2 #1092 - 6 msgs
Re: applescript-users digest, Vol 2 #1092 - 6 msgs
- Subject: Re: applescript-users digest, Vol 2 #1092 - 6 msgs
- From: has <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 13:42:44 +0100
Bob Kalbaugh wrote:
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I lost a handful just working on this :-)
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I know I'm late to this, but please, read on.
Poor Bob: another addition to the Bald Men's Club. Perhaps we could arrange
a bulk purchase of hats?
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Given your example:
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set anyList to {"aaa", "bbb", "ccc", "ddd", "eee", "fff", "ggg", "hhh"}
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and your need of returning items -down- the columns:
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> but should return
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> "aaa ddd ggg
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> bbb eee hhh
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> ccc fff"
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I found the puzzle to be quite perplexing because it creates a restriction
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to the amount of columns! For example, what if you wanted a 5 column table?
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aaa ccc eee ggg hhh
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bbb ddd fff
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what if 6 ?
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aaa ccc eee fff ggg hhh
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bbb ddd
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See, it doesn't give you what you wanted.
Actually, I believe the above _is_ what was wanted, and is indeed what
Nigel came up with. (Because the example anyList is quite short you're
ending up with some 1-row columns - I expect the final list will be much
larger so this won't be obvious.)
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The MOST columns you can have provided your example would be 4.
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aaa ccc eee ggg
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bbb ddd fff hhh
This is what my version did: filled up as many columns to the same height
as it could. Based on Jason's original request and examples it wasn't an
unreasonable assumption (it wasn't obvious that the padding had to be on
the bottom row). Not the desired solution as things turned out; fortunately
Nigel guessed better and got it in one.
Anyway, once Jason described what the script was for it did make sense to
fill all the columns and pad along the bottom row. Being a multi-column
list of client names, it's intended to be read downwards (I expect there's
quite a large gap between each tab in the page layout so that the columns
look obvious). For appearance's sake, however, all columns need to be
filled and they should all be as equal in length as possible (ach, but
that's designers for you...).
Dirt easy to do in Quark using a multi-column text box, so I expect the
job's being done in Pagemaker or worse, where mucking about with tabbed
layouts is par for the course.
Happily for all concerned, it's the sport, not the winning, that we enjoy
the most.:)
has
p.s.
>
-- MIND THE WRAP!!
I've been humming and hawing over an idea here (which got I from a simple
script I did a while back for encoding clipboard text as html): Write a
plain vanilla script that can 'encode' scripts whilst pasting them into
email, ie:
Copy the selected text.
Replace mime characters (which the list eats) with their key-combos, eg
[opt-L].
Replace every tab in a line indent with 3 spaces (some email clients
<cough>mine</cough> have huge tabs that makes indented lines hard to read).
Wrap long lines to 70 chars, preceding any wrapped bits with [no-return].
Chuck the results onto the clipboard ready to paste.
Worth the effort?