New VPLUS Utilities [ COMMUNICATOR 3000/XL XL RELEASE 3.0 ] MPE/iX Communicators
COMMUNICATOR 3000/XL XL RELEASE 3.0
New VPLUS Utilities
by Cory Cooper
Commercial Systems Division
This version of VPLUS (B.06.00) includes two new utilities called VCYCLE
and VFNAMES.
The first utility, VCYCLE.PUB.SYS, is available for previewing forms in a
VPLUS forms file. Any set of forms within a specified forms file can be
displayed in any sequence. During the preview, you signal VCYCLE to show
another form by pressing the enter key.
A simple file containing form names is used to control VCYCLE. You can
create the file by using an editor and typing in the names of the files
you want to preview. Alternatively, you can use the second utility,
VFNAMES.PUB.SYS, to create the file. The file created by VFNAMES will
contain the names of all the forms in the forms file you specified.
VCYCLE offers a simple way to verify the appearance of each form you have
designed. You can also prototype the screen flow for various application
scenarios. By ordering the form names in the control file to reflect the
application flow, you can demonstrate the proposed scenario. A single
form name can be used as often as required to simulate the desired screen
flow.
The utilities are executed as follows:
:RUN VFNAMES.PUB.SYS;INFO="formsfile namesf"
(the file names will now contain a list of form names from the forms
file, formsfile)
:FILE VCYCLEFF= formsfile
:FILE FNAMES= namesf
:RUN VCYCLE.PUB.SYS
(each form specified in the file namesf will be displayed sequentially)
With the system-defined file $NEWPASS, it is easy to use the two
utilities together as follows:
:RUN VFNAMES.PUB.SYS;INFO="formsfile $NEWPASS"
:FILE FNAMES=$OLDPASS
:FILE VCYCLEFF= formsfile
:RUN VCYCLE.PUB.SYS
Modification to ENTRY.PUB.SYS
ENTRY.PUB.SYS has been updated with a new method of specifying the files
needed for using the application. It is now possible to use the INFO
string on the RUN command. If the INFO string exists and correctly
specifies a forms file, all run time control will come from the INFO
string. In this case, no interactive prompting will occur. The first
interaction will be with the head form in the named forms file.
Executing ENTRY with an INFO string is done as follows:
:RUN ENTRY.PUB.SYS;INFO="$FORM= formsfile,$BATCH= batchfile, $LANG=
nlslang,& $OKVERSION,$OKFILE
The only information required in the INFO string is the forms file
option.
$FORM - forms file to be used for display and data entry.
$BATCH - batch file to be used for data collection.
$LANG - language id for an international forms file.
$OKVERSION - okay to continue processing even though forms file
has been recompiled since batch file was last used.
$OKFILE - okay to continue processing even though the
previous data collected in the batch file was from a
different forms file.
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