catal6

(App, Yugoslavia)

Not really an app, it's an incremental search grid - and the grid is actually faked, with Fox's windows (in DOS!) . The incremental search is not what you see in m$'s stuff, where you start typing and then if you don't type fast enough it forgets what you typed, considers the next character the first. You search for alphabeth, make a slight delay after the third character, and you're on whatever begins with aitch. This one remembers for as long as you don't press an arrow key, or click somewhere.

The oldest versions, which were written by Sale, had used a browse window or a dropdown menu (!) to display rows to choose from. Then in 1994 I started a browse version which would have a bit of a generated code, numbered 3 and 4, which I really don't remember, they didn't last. Soon the version 5 would generate code, inserted in place where it was called plus some routines at the bottom, which would display this browse window and also include options to run code on the selected record. However, this worked by redefining every possible key, and the OnKey code is generally unstable, can execute out of order and generally is messy. Besides, it didn't pass Vanji's test of pressing a palm over the keyboard. Switched to a single keypress catching loop, and pushed this as far as version 5.93.

Then on 03-I-1995. I started version 6, which didn't use a browse, because it's an automatic window which is a bit hard to control. Instead, it used good old @x,y SAY syntax, maintained its own window, a copy of the visible set of records in an array, and a separate frameless movable window for the current row. It also generated its own code, but now I separated the generator from the runtime. It was blazingly fast, even on slow networks, and became one of the major selling points. Over time I added hooks to a certain set of keys (insert, delete, perhaps some F keys) and so this became a very usable tool which we used and sometimes even abused. Vanji's son even used it in some ways I couldn't follow.

Later in 2001 I wrote a Catal7, version which ran in as a specialized grid object, with pretty much the same functionality. I still use it, even while writing this - I insert all these name links by pressing an underscore here, which then brings up a Catal7 window with a searchable grid and an editbox on the side where I see the text related to each of the entries.

Then in 2020 I wrote a python/dabo version of it, with only some tweaks in the incremental search code (namely, removing the timeout clause from the keypress, so the search string doesn't get cleared too soon; didn't work with just these minimal changes, I had to copy all the code).

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Mentions: 25-V-1990., 05-VI-1994., 28-VI-1994., 26-VII-1994., 09-VIII-1994., 16-VIII-1994., 23-VIII-1994., 19-IX-1994., 22-IX-1994., 10-X-1994., 17-X-1994., 07-XI-1994., 30-XI-1994., 10-XII-1994., 18-XII-1994., 03-I-1995., 13-I-1995., 19-I-1995., 30-I-1995., 06-II-1995., 10-II-1995., 06-III-1995., 20-III-1995., 17-IV-1995., 04-VII-1995., 27-VII-1995., 29-VIII-1995., 24-IX-1995., 09-X-1995., 28-X-1995., 09-XI-1995., 25-II-1996., 24-XI-1996., 06-II-1997., 21-V-1999., 05-V-2004., 11-II-2014., 10-V-2019., 03-XII-2021., 24-VI-2023., Aleksandar Raskov (Sale), assets app, GenerAll, HosTract, Majkrosoft (m$), TaxiSys, upitig2.prg, Version 1.3, Vilmoš Baranji (Vanji), in serbian