Help with creating a "spreadsheet"

[LAu@pgate.darpa.mil]

---------------------- Replied Message Body ----------------------
Date: 1-10-92  2:18pm 
From: {berger@soe.berkeley.edu}:ddn:darpa
  To: lisp:mis:darpa
Subj: Help with creating a "spreadsheet"
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> I am about to create an application (an intelligent tutoring system) 
> using MCL that will need a "spreadsheet" as a tool.  Has anyone out there 
> created a "Spreadsheet" - or a table with individual "active" cells, 
> selectable rows/columns?  I am not too concerned about the internal 
> issues (i.e. computation, calculation between rows & columns, ...).  I am 
> more interested in ideas on how to create and manage the window.  It may 
> be
> possible to start with the table/sequence dialogue type (this would be
> nice because I would not have to worry about scrolling, redisplay, 
> etc...), but adding columns and rows may be cumbersome with this MCL 
> dialoge type.  So I am leaning towards creating the whole thing from 
> scratch.

Daniel,
I've been creating a spreadsheet-like application using a function which
generates rows and columns of static text items.  This allows me to support
a mixture of column and row widths,  as well dragging over the cells.  It's
very flexible.  For editing,  I create an editable text on the fly over
the static text whenever the static text is double-clicked.  The only
disadvantage seems to be the large number of cells I create.  For a slow
Mac with a two page screen,  this will update much more slowly than the
table/sequence dialogs.

Lawrence Au
DARPA