Re: Display array highlist

In article <1992Dec15.145006.8036@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> aburt@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu (Andrew Burt) writes: > [his homespun solution is a lot more work than...] something like > > OPEN WINDOW foo AT 5,5 WITH 10 ROWS, 60 COLUMNS > ... > REPORT TO WINDOW foo > >"report to window" should automatically allow scrolling, like display array. How would you want this window defined? Just a bare window, or would you require a form in it? (Your mention of DISPLAY ARRAY suggests a form.) So what is the relationship between the number of lines per "page" and the dimensions of the screen array? One big problem you are overlooking is that some reports are asynchronous -- all the rows you OUTPUT just go in a temp table and nothing actually comes out until FINISH REPORT is executed. Which means that the window you would name in [START] REPORT TO would have to still exist at FINISH REPORT time. There is no way that 4GL can ensure that. Not a show-stopper, but it would mean a possibly obscure error message on FINISH REPORT (window not available). In fact this would be a general problem; the program could always CLOSE WINDOW foo in between any two OUTPUT TO REPORT lines, and in fact the program could CLOSE the window and then reOPEN the window with different dimensions -- or DISPLAY a different FORM -- between two outputs! So basically the report-display logic would have to track what could be a very dynamic, moving target for line width and page length. That isn't a problem for your specific application I'm sure, but it illustrates the kind of problems that would have to be dealt with for a general implementation. Dave Cortesi cortesi@informix.com