Practical Maximum number of fields on a card

[Wilhelm Sanke]

On Sat, 27 Jul 2002  Richard MacLemale wrote:

> What is a reasonable maximum number of fields you should put on a
single
> card in MetaCard?  Could you, for example, have a stack with 50 cards,
and
> each card have 2,000 fields on it?  What are some (if any) of the
> disadvantages of putting 2,000 fields on a card?  If there are
problems with
> this approach I can work around it, but I'm working on a project which
would
> really benefit from having 2000 fields, grouped together with
scrollbars on
> the group.  Any input would be appreciated.

Maybe this feedback may partially help:

I experimented with larger numbers of fields anf graphics on a card to
create random but then structured color patterns. I tried cards with
750, 2700, 9600, and more than 20 000 fields or graphics.

With 2000 to 3000 fields there seem to be no problems in Metacard. It
takes about 1 1/2 seconds to navigate to a card with 2700 fields and
about 5 seconds to open the Metacard control browser showing all the
objects on that card; this is on a Windows 98 computer with 800 MHz.

In Revolution it takes about 15 seconds to show the 2700+ controls of
the same card in the Application Overview, *if* the card with the 2700
fields is the current card. If the card in question is not the current
card, it may last nearly an hour  (no joke) to display the controls, so
it is important to know that you can right-click at the card name, which
takes you to that card  (a feature I recommended some time ago and that
was indeed integrated) and then needs the above-mentioned 15 seconds.
Also, the cursor of the Application Overview does not change to
"hour-glass"during the time you have to wait.

I have no experience with text in such a large number of fields, but if
the text consists only of shorter text entries there might be no
difference in performance compared to fields with color attributes.-

With field numbers around 10 000 it takes about 35 seconds (in Metacard)
to navigate to such a card, so it would be a good idea to have an entry
card for the stack with few controls on it and then tell the user that
he has to wait for a specific time when he wishes to go to that
multinumber-fields card.

Regards,

Wilhelm