HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
FORM MENU The name and characteristics of each form are specified on the Form Menu. As soon as the Menu specifications are entered, FORMSPEC displays a blank screen on which you design the layout of the form. This form layout phase establishes the field names and their characteristics. Based on the form layout, FORMSPEC then displays a Field Menu for each field established on the form. The Form Menu is displayed once for each form you define. When you have no more forms to define, press MAIN/RESUME to display the Main Menu in order to compile the forms file. The Form Menu is illustrated in Figure 3-19. FORMSPEC stores forms in alphabetic order. When new forms are added to the forms file, they are inserted in the USASCII collating sequence. The Globals Menu (see description later in this section) allows you to specify which form is to be executed first. This form can be referenced by the system-defined value $HEAD. If you do not specify the head form name, $HEAD defaults to the first form in the file. Adding a new form may change the value of this default.Figure 3-19. Form Menu You must specify at least a form name on the Form Menu. Default values are provided for the remaining specifications. If these defaults are not what you want, you can overwrite them with other values. If satisfied with the defaults, press ENTER to go directly to form layout. Fields Form Name Enter a name to identify the form. The name can be from 1 to 15 characters, either letters of the USASCII alphabet (A-Z), digits (0-9), or the underline (_). The first character must be alphabetic. The name can be entered using uppercase or lowercase letters, but all lowercase letters are shifted to uppercase by FORMSPEC. Thus, if you enter the name Form2, FORMSPEC changes it to FORM2. The form name must be unique within the forms file, and it cannot be one of the reserved words listed earlier in Table 3-2. Note that the form name can be changed by replacing the name in the Form Name field. If you change a form name, you should make sure that references to this form as "Next Form" in other Form Menus are also changed. Repeat Option When the forms in the forms file are displayed, a form may be repeated and appended to itself (A); it may be repeated overlaying the previous display of the same form (R); or it can be a non-repeating form that is displayed on the screen once (N). Either repeat option (A or R) causes the form to be repeated until the application changes the repeat option, or, in ENTRY, the user presses NEXT to request the next different form. Default No repeat (N). _______________________________________________________ NOTE Both Repeat Option and Next Form can be changed dynamically within the application (refer to Section 6) as well as through processing specifications (refer to Section 4). _______________________________________________________ Next Form You must enter the name of the next form to be displayed after the current form. You may also specify whether the next form is to be appended to the current form, A; and, if appended, whether the current form is to remain on the screen when the screen fills up, F. If the screen is to be cleared before the next form is displayed, leave the default value, C. Default Clear (C). Next Form Name The next form name is entered as a standard form name or you can enter one of the following system-defined values: $RETURN Display the previous (but different) form. $HEAD Display the first form (either the first in the file or as defined on the Globals menu). $END Terminate forms display with this form. $REFRESH Display current form cleared to initial values as the next form. Note that each of these values has meaning only when the forms file is executed. Any value entered for Next Form Name can be changed through the CHANGE NFORM processing specification described in Section 4. Default $HEAD Freeze/Append This option allows you to specify how Option the next form will interact with the current form. The next form can be appended to the current form, and if so, the current form can be frozen on the screen when subsequent forms are displayed. Note that this option can also be changed by the CHANGE NFORM field processing specification described in Section 4. Default Clear screen before displaying next form (C). Function Key To define or modify form level function Labels key labels, enter a Y in this box to obtain the Form Function Key Labels Menu. After function key labels have been defined, FORMSPEC will place an X in the Function Key Label field. The default function key labels can be reset by entering an N. If you specify a Y in this field, the Form Function Key Labels Menu is displayed, as shown in Figure 3-20. The data capture devices do not support function key labeling. Reproduced from This optional field is used in the (opt) creation of form families, a feature discussed earlier in this section. Comments You can enter a comment to help document the form. The comment is displayed with the source file, but is not included in the displayed form at execution time. A comment can be up to 50 characters long.
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