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Issue 7.3

COLUMN

Graph Paper Maker, Part 2

Create your own customized graph paper

Issue: 7.3 (March/April 2009)
Author: Brad Rhine
Author Bio: Brad Rhine is the developer of Kodiak, a complete student information system written entirely in REALbasic. That's his day job. In his spare time, he writes shareware applications in REALbasic.
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 12,266
Starting Page Number: 52
Article Number: 7316
Resource File(s):

Download Icon 7316.zip Updated: 2009-03-02 13:37:32

Related Link(s): None

Excerpt of article text...

Last time, we began work on Graph Paper Maker, a little utility that, appropriately enough, makes graph paper. So far, the application is pretty minimal, but that's okay, because it's a good start. This time, we're going to add preset graph paper styles, as well as the ability to add your own presets.

Data Storage

The first thing we need to figure out is how to store data for our graph paper presets. The easy way out would be to hardcode some preset data into our project file, but, as is often the case, the easy way is not the best way. That would limit us to those presets, and if we ever wanted to add more or change one, we'd need to recompile. Hardly ideal.

Now, I'm a database administrator in my day job, and since most people usually reach for the tool they know how to use first, my first inclination was to use a database. However, a database is overkill for this project and will only complicate things. Besides, we already did a project using databases, and I don't want you all to think that I'm a one trick pony. I also pondered using XML, and astute readers will note that that was my intention at the close of the last column. However, I decided that for the purposes of this series, XML might be too much to get into. So I'll save XML for a future project.

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