Hi Y'all,

I have only used records once in FB, and now I think I need to use a 
record structure in one of my programs. Rather than blunder through a 
couple of dozen types, I would like to ask for a little help in setting 
up some basic structure.

The program deals with X,Y coordinates which form drawn or cut shapes. 
The individual entities may be lines or polygons or single points which 
are the centre of markings. Each of these entities belongs a group of 
entities which form 'panels' or shapes.

Currently, these are all stored in Index$ arrays sequentially and output 
as an ascii file.

I now have the reqirement to edit these shapes... display them 
graphically and move bits around on screen, and I get the feeling the 
INdex$ arrays have come to the end of their usefulness.

The record structure might look something like this...

DIM RECORD object
  DIM Objrect;0,tt,ll,bb,rr               'rectangle of object
	 DIM	32 PanelName$                       'name of panel or shape it 
belongs to   
  DIM PanelNumber%                        'number of panel or shape it 
belongs to
  DIM NumberofEdges%                      'Number of edges
  DIM EdgeNum%                            'Number of this edge
  DIM selected                            'is is selected or not?
  DIM type                                '_Cut, _Draw, _Env, _Mark, etc.
  DIM Coordinates&(from one to thousands)
  DIM fColor.RGBcolor                     'RGB color of obj. fields: 
red,green,blue
DIM END RECORD .object

There may be dozens of these

DIM RECORD Coordinate
  DIM type                                '_Corner, _Bezier, _arc etc
  DIM Points                              'Your actual X,Y bit
DIM END RECORD .coordinate

And each object could have thousands of coordinates.

Is it possible to include an array within a record structure?

Is it possible to do this, and XREF@ both the object as a whole and the 
corrdinates individually?

I have looked at various record structures in the FB manuals and in Frank 
T's book, and Frank seems to suggest arrays of more than 256 elements can 
behave unpredictably. I don't need this and am currently more than 
adequately confused about the XREF biz.

Any help gratefully appreciated.

JC


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John Clark                    
Aeronaut Automation
30 Kennedy Place Bayview 2104 Australia
Phone:   61 2 99 97 28 42              Fax: 61 2 99 79 56 15
email:   ArtVandals@...
Visit the web site at <http://cygnus.uwa.edu.au/~peterh/>
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