Archive Magazine 1996/ARCHIVE_96.iso/discs/gerald/3_10/Puttock/Hints

Text File | 1990-05-08 | 4KB | 479 lines

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Dear Mr. Fitton,

        I append below a variety of hints/tips/observations/questions
about Pipedream.  I trust that not all of them have been repeated by
other readers, and hope that there is something useful.  Do keep up the
good work on Pipeline - the first part of Archive that I read!

        (1) I think the reason why it is not possible to set the
numeric format of empty slots is that Pipedream keeps no information
about empty slots.  It could not keep track of the millions of
potential slots, so it only keeps track of the filled ones.  Therefore
to pre-format a range it is necessary to fill the slots with something
first.  Ideally you want something that Pipedream treats as numeric,
but which does not show up on the screen.  The best I can come up with
is:  IF(0,0,"").  Replicate this formula into a range of slots, then
set the numeric format for that range to the desired number of decimal
places;  nothing shows on the screen, but when a number is typed into a
slot, it is displayed in the desired format.  But note that if you make
a mistake which turns a slot into a text slot, then the numeric format
for that slot is lost and will have to be set again.

        I wonder if anyone can produce a shorter formula which does the
trick (i.e. less than ten characters).

        (2) If you have made a spreadsheet which has some areas which
will not change, headings and formulae, and other areas which are used
for data entry, it is useful to set protection on the constant parts so
that they are not changed inadvertently.   Pipedream changes the
background colour of the protected slots to show that they are
protected.  But when you do this on a block of headings, say, you find
that empty slots cannot be protected.  The result is often an messy
patchwork of background colour.  It is then necessary to fill all the
empty slots with, say, a single space before protecting them.  (Note,
however, that a protected text slot will colour any number of
consecutive empty slots to its right, as far as its right margin.)

        (3) A single slot at the top left of a marked block can be
replicated into the whole block by doing replicate right, followed
replicate down.  If you define a function key as: \Brd|m\Brr|m   then
this key will replicate the top left slot into any marked block,
whether horizontal, vertical or rectangular.

        (4) The manual does not tell you, but for HLOOKUP and VLOOKUP
the items in the range must be in increasing order (moving to the right
or down respectively).  For LOOKUP they can be in any order.

        (5) The manual is wrong on page 325 where it says that in
defining function keys in a macro, you can use SF1, CF1 and ZF1 to
refer to shift/f1, ctrl/f1 and shift/ctrl/f1.  This does not work on my
version of Pipedream (3.06R); it is necessary to specify the function
keys as they appear in the dialogue window: "shift F1" "ctrl F1"
"shift-ctrl F1".

        (6) The manual does not, I think, mention the "define command"
option on the Cursor menu.  It appears to let you redefine the control
key sequence for any command.  Type the new and old sequences without
"\" (normally up to three letters) in the two boxes.

        (7) If you try to save a Pipedream file to disk and the disk is
full, then no error message is produced, but of course the file is not
saved.  This is potentially a serious fault, because you can easily
assume that all has been saved safely.  (I know; I have done just
that!)

        (8) Have you any idea why, after moving the cursor with the
mouse, I often find that the first following keystroke is ignored?

        Yours sincerely,





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Jonathan Puttock

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%CO:E,12,22%Leliestraat 5,
  2241WB, Wassenaar,
    The Netherlands.
8 May 1990










































































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