Re: Puzzling forms

On 16 Apr 98 09:38:41 GMT, jll@olivia.nst.dk (Jorgen Lehmann) wrote: > >Hi Peter, > >Thanks for your answer, which does confuse me a bit however: > >>Yes, I have done this sort of thing. Basically, you use the BEFORE ROW >>clause of the INPUT ARRAY statement to call the routine that displays >>the field_3 and field_4. It needs to know the program array index of the >>current row, which can be had from function ARR_CURR(). It then does a >>DISPLAY from the appropriate record of the program array. > >Somewhere I get the feeling, that I've been reading the manual, like the >devil reads the bible, as I'm using DISPLAY ARRAY, to show the collected >information (using a cursor) - This statement don't seem to like the >BEFORE ROW, so I'm a bit stuck here... When do I use the INPUT ARRAY, >instead of, or after the DISPLAY ARRAY statement ?? You hardly ever use the display array statement. We use the input array statement for virtually all purposes. I know some people use display array, but I simply hate it when all my users can do is hit the up/down arrow/page keys a zillion times and press escape to select something. There are several better ways. The minimum for a selection list is to see a "cursor" accross the entire list. That's easy to do by individual displays with normal and reverse video inside an input array statement. Just experiment a little on how to do it and your users will be much happier (they can actually see the cursor at least). The next easy thing to do is to display a sequence of letters from A and up to the left of the list that can be used for selection. This sequence should *not* scroll with the list of course as that would limit it to 26 or so items. >>INPUT ARRAYS that are too wide for the screen must be one of the biggest >>bugbears of 4GL programs. A fix for this (sideways scrolling, perhaps?) >>must be at or near the top of most folk's wish list. *Not* mine. To see things users would have to scroll a lot in many cases. That's one of the worst "feature" of some GUI designs. In many cases simply useless crap for data entry users. The ability to spread a sinle "row" across many lines on the screen have been one of 4GL's great features not available in most GUI design tools until quite reasently. I do grant you however that there are some cases where horizontal scrolling could be usefull, it just is very far from the top of my list. >Well, I certainly would have been pleased to see an example or explanation >in the manuals. Would have made life a bit easier, as I'm stuck with a >record layout of 2*30 char's description plus pricing, unit, stocknumber >etc etc.. ;-( There are some libraries at the http://www.iiug.org site that does some ok things in this respect. It may be an idea to take a look at them. We have allways used our own, but you may find some of them ok or get good ideas from them. >Regards, > >Jorgen Lehmann >Systemansvarlig > >jll@nst.dk >---------- Nils Myklebust NM Data AS Norway E-mail: Nils.Myklebust@nmdata.com FAQ at: http://www.iiug.org/techinfo/faq/faq_top.html (Now with ODBC info under "Third party products".)