[kernel] Text/method fields

[Erik Mueller-Harder]

Ruslan Zasukhin wrote:

>> Great!  Might I suggest a change to the VKernal documentation
>> (page 32):
>> 
>>   Method results can be of any field type except BLOB and
>>   Picture.  VText results are supported, although they may be
>>   limited by available RAM.
> 
> Although you please test this well.
> 
> I think, and do not see big reasons to use TEXT - Methods.

Well, if I want a case-insensitive search on a Text field, I don't see any other way to do it (unless I create a non-method Text field and populate it manually with lower- or upper-cased text -- but that would increase storage requirements rather dramatically, no?).

One problem I've found:

1.  Though you can make a Text/method field that is based on a
    regular Text field -- works fine (with only limited
    testing);

2.  and you can make a Text/method field that is based on
    VarChar fields (why would you want do this?  If you're
    concatenating field values.) -- works fine (with only
    limited testing);

3.  you can NOT make a Text/method field that is based on
    another Text/method field.  Result seems invariably to be
    empty.  That's too bad, because I'd wanted to concatenate
    various other results into one large Text/method field for
    indexing purposes.  Sigh....