Re: At Last! A Subsititute for CW_Field.

[m218003(at)modell3.dkrz.de (Martin Schultz)]

In article <MPG.129d582bb21d39a4989976@news.frii.com>,
	davidf@dfanning.com (David Fanning) writes:
> Hi Folks,
> 
> [...]

> So...
> 
>    http://www.dfanning.com/programs/coyote_field.pro
> 
> As always, I'm interested in testers and suggesters. :-)
> 
> Regards,
> 
> David

Hi David,

   taking advantage of the earth's rotation, I might be the first tester
to provide you with feedback. Nice job (as always, should I say?). One
little bug for float values though:
   Enter a number with too large an exponent, and you will be rewarded with
%Floating point ... messages

  Second: one suggestion for an additional feature: allow a default value to
be set when you return the empty field (now it returns 0. which is not always
what you want).

Third: why is this not an object? ;-) Indeed it would make sense to provide
the functionality of this thing as object, so you could for example extend
the "heart" of it (the validation routine) to allow for hex numbers or
number ranges, etc. Then again: with an object you would require two files:
   coyote_field.pro 
and coyote_ofield__define.pro
so people wouldn't be able to get it running ;-)
And this brings up the point how to best link objects and ignorant users.
Should one provide a default object in the widget function and allow for
a predefined object to be passed as a substitute? Hence,
    wID = coyote_field(...) 
would use the coyote_ofield object with the functionality as present,
whereas
    wID = coyote_field(...,object=obj_new("hex_field"))
would pass responsibilities on to this other thing.

I really wish I could spend more time with this. Right now I have to go
back and muddle around with some FORTRAN77 code that has been written at
least 10 years ago. (don't worry, we are up into the 95's here - I just
have to use this old version for now to get some results real quick ;-)

Cheerios, (I love them and haven't found them over here)
Martin

-- 
[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[
[[ Dr. Martin Schultz   Max-Planck-Institut fuer Meteorologie    [[
[[                      Bundesstr. 55, 20146 Hamburg             [[
[[                      phone: +49 40 41173-308                  [[
[[                      fax:   +49 40 41173-298                  [[
[[ martin.schultz@dkrz.de                                        [[
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