Creating a Panel Definition › Designing the Panel Layout › Positioning the Cursor

Positioning the Cursor

How you position the cursor to begin a field depends on what the fill mode is for that panel. The fill‑mode is indicated on the CA Ideal status line as PANEL LAYOUT NULL or PANEL LAYOUT BLANKS.

• If the fill mode is blank‑fill, all lines are padded with blanks to the width of the panel. In this case, you can position the cursor using either cursor movement keys or the spacebar. However, you cannot use the Insert key without first deleting a number of spaces corresponding to the number of characters you want to insert.
• If the fill mode is null‑fill, the lines are not padded with blanks. In this case, you must use the spacebar to position the cursor; otherwise the space between fields remains null and the field moves back to the position immediately after the last field (or to the beginning of the line). In a null‑filled panel, you can use the Insert key to add fields before an existing field without first deleting spaces.

In either mode, trailing blank or null lines are not retained with the stored layout.