Design Utilities › Panel Designs › Presenting Panel Designs › Interactive Display

Interactive Display

Toolkit provides you with a sophisticated means of presenting panel designs interactively to your users, thus giving them a realistic view of what the finished system will look like - a form of prototyping. Panel design presentation, is done using the Toolkit Display Panel Design utility (YDSPPNL).

Panel designs can contain sample data in input and output fields: sample data can help users to understand a design, as they can see what goes where.

The panel design display utility can be used in one of three modes, as specified by the OPTION parameter on the Toolkit command Display Panel (YDSPPNL):

• CHGDTA mode allows the designer to set up realistic data values for the fields on a panel design, regardless of attribute, so that your user can understand what goes where.
• DSPDTA mode displays a panel design with the realistic data values in the appropriate places, and with all fields having their correct attributes, that is, input and update fields are input capable, output fields and constants are not.
• DSPATR mode displays a panel design with all fields having their correct display attributes, leaving out any example data.

The Display Panel Design utility initially displays a specified panel design. It will branch to other panel designs if command keys are pressed, or if field values are input: the exact nature of the branching is specified as part of the panel design edit process.

The Toolkit utility Go to Menu (YGO) provides a framework for design prototyping. Simply create a menu, specifying as the menu option action the command Display Panel Design and giving as parameters on the command the names of panel designs which you want prototyped when the option is taken.

No compilation is required. A panel design may be displayed as soon as it has been edited.

Using the panel design example shown earlier, we could add sample data using the YDSPPNL command with OPTION (CHGDTA):

And then display the panel design using YDSPPNL with OPTION (DSPDTA).