HP 3000 Manuals HP 3000 Manuals
Choosing a Forms Package You can migrate your 260 forms files into either VPLUS forms or JOINFORM forms. Information about both these forms packages is in this chapter. General Information Forms manipulation using VPLUS/3000 is the biggest difference between HP Business BASIC/XL and BASIC/260. VPLUS is a combination of utility programs and procedures, used by programmers in all languages on the HP 3000 to assist in obtaining and presenting data to application end users. You create and modify forms on the HP 3000 by using the utility FORMSPEC.PUB.SYS. This is analogous to the CFORM and MFORM utilities of FORMS/260. You display forms and move data between the form and the program by using HP Business BASIC/XL FORM statements or intrinsics. Intrinsics are callable routines included as part of the Fundamental Operating Software (FOS) on the HP 3000. They are documented in the VPLUS/3000 Reference Manual. VPLUS/3000 has many features that are not in FORMS/260. Powerful field editing specifications are available. You can keep several forms in a single forms file and you can specify the order of presentation to the user. Refer to the VPLUS/3000 Reference Manual for more information about VPLUS/3000. Differences Between FORMS/260 and VPLUS/3000 There are fundamental differences and incompatibilities between FORMS/260 VPLUS/3000. FORMS/260 uses the normal BASIC/260 input/output statements (PRINT, INPUT, and so on) to access individual fields of a form and return control to the program after each field is entered by the user. VPLUS/3000 uses the Block Mode feature of the terminal to transmit entire screens of information to or from the program. Normal HP Business BASIC/XL input/output statements cause unpredictable results when used while a form is "active". In addition, VPLUS/3000 does not support changes to input, output, or tab order in a form. BASIC/260 forms programs require substantial manual changes. The forms portion of the migration aid changes the FORMS/260 form into a VPLUS/3000 form that you can manipulate by using intrinsics. You call intrinsics from the HP Business BASIC/XL program. Screen image layout and field location and attributes remain the same.