Paul:

I must confess that I forgot to inquire online about that scrolling problem. So yesterday I finally posted a note with my theory about what the problem might be. Today I checked in and found the following reply from Claris Technical Support (I LOVE this America Online contraption!):

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Subj: RE: Problem with Scrolling
91-06-10 19:55:47 EDT
From: Claris 1

Dear John,

You are correct! On both sides! Not only did you find the problem but you also figured out the reason. I should find a job for you around here.

The problem you found is indeed due to the difficulties in dealing with self wrapping, non-proportional fonts in a varying field size. As a quick mention of an experiment (it really isn't a work around) is to notice how HyperCard does the page up/downs. You will notice that clicking in that region of the scroll bar always has a line flush with the top of the field. Therefore, some decision has to be made which is the last line of the field. This is done on a one pixel basis. In other words, if one pixel of a line is showing it will use the next line as the top of the paged field. Try resizing the field to match the bottom of the last line minus one pixel, do the page down and see what happens.

Either way, the engineers are aware of the situation.

Thanks John,

Brian Prentice
Claris Technical Support

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I followed Brian's suggestion, and it seems to work as far as I can tell. So give the page down scrolling a thorough test, Paul, and tell me if the problem is solved.

As for system 7, my friend Jerry was a beta tester and has been using it for months. He LOVES it. At the last Mac User Group meeting I attended we had a debate: "should you upgrade NOW to system 7 or wait?" It was a very useful and informative session.

So, should we upgrade now, or should we wait? I'm going to wait for one simple reason: memory. For years now, Apple has been telling everyone to upgrade their machines to 2 megabytes of RAM in preperation for system 7. And yes, you can JUST BARELY start up system seven with 2 megs. But if you want to actually run a program of some kind, you will probably need much more memory, AT LEAST 4 megs (5 would be better).

[Also, according to the compatibility checker supplied with system 7, some of my favorite inits and cdevs are not compatible. Can I live without my mouse odometer? Not hardly! Hmmmph!]

As it turns out, there's no particular pressure for any of us to upgrade (although it will become more appealing as time goes by) and we DO NOT all have to make the jump together.

Most of you are probably running Archipelago under HyperCard 2.0. I am currently using 2.1, but the differences between the two versions are almost undetectable. And BOTH versions will run just fine under either 6.07 or 7.0. So you eager beavers in the crowd should be able to make the jump without experiencing any Archipelago difficulties, and the rest of us can plod along with system 6 for the time being.

Incidentally, depending on available space on the transit disks, I will try to ship 2.1 (it takes up a whole disk) and/or the nifty system 7 demo stack that Apple released so you can see what all the fuss is about. Please feel free to ask more questions about system 7 and/or HyperCard.