TERMINAL COMMUNICATION AREA

MPE file number used to identify the terminal.

Terminal control options:

Normally, there is no time limit for VREADFIELDS, whether the intrinsic is terminated by ENTER or a function key. Timeouts can be enabled in applications by setting bit 10 of the termoptions item of the comarea to 1, and specifying a timeout interval in the usertime item of the comarea. When a timeout is enabled, if ENTER or a function key is not pressed within the number of seconds specified in comarea position 58, the cstatus of 160 will be returned to the comarea. At this point, control will then be passed to the statement following the VREADFIELDS call in the application.

For example, in COBOL:

INITIALIZE-COMAREA
    MOVE ZERO TO COM-OPTIONS.
    ADD 32 TO COM-OPTIONS.
    MOVE 60 TO COM-USERTIME.

if included in the initialization section of the application will indicate that all calls to VREADFIELDS should timeout after 60 seconds. Note that an ADD instruction was used to turn on the timeout feature. All changes to the termoptions item following VOPENTERM should be careful to set only single bits, as VPLUS uses bits 0-7. A MOVE instruction will destroy the configuration of these bits.

When VREADFIELDS is terminated by a function key, VPLUS does not transmit any data entered on the screen to the user buffer. If the programmer wishes for data to be transmitted to the data buffer when a function key is pressed, the AUTOREAD feature should be enabled. The following COBOL example shows how to enable the autoread feature, and transfer data to the buffer when the function key f4 is pressed:

CALL "VREADFIELDS" USING COMAREA.
IF COM-LASTKEY = 4 THEN
      ADD 2 TO COM-OPTIONS
      CALL "VREADFIELDS" USING COMAREA
      SUBTRACT 2 FROM COM-OPTIONS.

Note that two VREADFIELDS calls are necessary to complete the process. The first VREADFIELDS detects that a function key was pressed, the second call actually transmits the data to the data buffer. The second call to VREADFIELDS does not wait for the user to press enter, but rather sends an "ESC d" to the terminal to simulate an automatic enter. As noted above in the description of user timeouts, the COBOL SUBTRACT and ADD statements should always be used when setting bits in the termoptions item of the comarea.

The mode message is displayed on terminals not automatically configured by VPLUS. The mode message for VOPENTERM is BLOCK MODE/PAGE IS SET; for VCLOSETERM it is REMEMBER TO UNLATCH THE BLOCK MODE KEY.

If enabled, the value in this word is used as the number of seconds to wait for the ENTER or function key to be pressed. The maximum timeout value is 3 2,7 6 7 seconds (9.1 hours).

VPLUS identifier for the HP terminal model being used, as shown earlier in Table G-1 “Terminals Supported by VPLUS” in the column labeled ID.