HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
EXAMINE THE FIELD MENU When you press ENTER to record the completed form, FORMSPEC automatically issues the Field Menu for ORDNUM, the first field. The menu shows the field with all default values: enhancement is HI for Half-bright, Inverse video; field type is O for Optional; and data type is CHAR for any Character. Note that the field number for the ORDNUM field is 8 even though it is the first field in physical screen order and precedes the ORDATE field, which is field number 1. This is because field numbers are assigned in the order in which fields are created. These numbers are not related to the order of the fields on the form. Field names are shown on the Field Menu in all uppercase letters, whereas the field tag entered during form layout can be any combination of upper or lower case letters, such as ordnum. The uppercase name, ORDNUM, is the name by which the field is identified on the Field Menu, as shown in Figure 3-6. If you want, you can change the field name to another all uppercase field name. You may want to do so for several reasons. For instance, since lowercase letters are never used in the field name, but only appear in the field tags, the shift to uppercase may force you to assign a new name to a field so that the field names are unique. Thus, if you layout a form with two fields tagged respectively, F1 and f1, the field names displayed on the Field Menus are no longer unique; they both appear as F1. You must make them unique, using new field names of up to 15 characters long for one or both of the fields. You might also change a field name to make it more meaningful. For example, suppose the name TR identifies a two-character field. Changing it to TAX_RATE makes its function easier to remember.