Designing Interactive Panels (Panel Services) › Panel Design › Field Types

Field Types

Each field is allocated a field type which prescribes the method for processing the field. Four field types are supported:

OUTPUT

Display only. No data can be entered from the screen.

INPUT

You can both display and enter data.

SPD

Selector pen detectable; data cannot be typed in.

NULL

Display only. Although unprotected, any data entered will be ignored.

Any mixture of these field types can be defined to suit the requirements for a panel you are designing.

The field character that precedes each field determines:

• The field type
• The display characteristics of the field (intensity, color, highlighting)
• (For input fields) the internal validation rules that must be obeyed for data entered in that field. Such rules can specify, for example, that a field is mandatory, must be numeric, cannot contain imbedded blanks, or must be a valid date, and so on.

Each field character you define, occupies the equivalent screen position when the panel is displayed, but appears as a blank character (the attribute byte).

The field proper starts from the next position after the field character, and continues to the next field position on the same line, or to the end of that line where there is no intervening field. Fields do not wrap round from one line to the next.

The three standard default field characters are:

%

high-intensity, protected (no input)

+

low-intensity, protected (no input)

_

high-intensity, unprotected (input, no validation).

These do not require definition by a #FLD statement.

Define any additional field characters you need using the #FLD statement. The attributes for the defaulted characters can be modified. The #OPT statement can be used to nominate alternative standard field characters, so that %, +, and _ can be used within the panel and not processed as field characters.

Column 1 of each line of a panel must be a valid field character; if one is not defined, the attributes for the second standard field character, (normally as +, for low-intensity, protected) are used to replace any data incorrectly placed in that column.