Tip of the day! show and cls - The lost commands

[GCC Consulting]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: 
> filepro-list-bounces+gccconsulting=comcast.net at lists.celestial
> .com 
> [mailto:filepro-list-bounces+gccconsulting=comcast.net at lists.c
> elestial.com] On Behalf Of fp at casabellagallery.com
> Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2007 11:00 AM
> To: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com
> Subject: Tip of the day! show and cls - The lost commands
> 
> In an era of msgbox(), errorbox() and popup ... I am sure 
> some of us have forgotten how handy these two (show and cls) 
> were when nothing else was available.
> 
> I use cls() mostly when running reports and I want to display 
> my own screen and not the standard ...  and ... since I write 
> a lot of programs using arrays + waitkey, cls is very handy 
> to ensure I have a very clean screen (of course, I could 
> simply do display "blank-screen" but I find that cls beats 
> that since I need only type three characters - lazy?  
> perhaps, but why do you think must great programming features 
> are written?).
> 
> >From the help file:
> ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
> ??????????????????
> ? Processing Table Commands                                   
>                  ?
> ?                                                             
>                  ?
> ?3.0      CLS                Clears entire screen.            
>                  ?
> ?         CLS(s)             Clears screen from line "s".     
>                  ?
> ?         CLS(s,n)           Clears screen from line "s" for 
> "n" lines.        ?
> 
> What, you did not know cls() existed?  Well, now you do.
> 
> The show command is one we cannot simply forget and live 
> without, filePro simply is not designed to do that.  I make 
> very intensive use of this command, in fact, it is the one 
> command I never have to lookup its syntax.  :-)
> 
> My most common use is the simple show "".  What does this do? 
>  Well, it clears lines 22 through 24 on your screen.  Ever 
> seem a program with a msgbox(), errorbox() browse-lookup, 
> popup on middle of screen and the not relevant options on 
> bottom of screen?  I know I have and I find it of very poor taste.
> 
> What, you are about to argue that browse-lookup refreshes 
> these lines showing only relevant options?  Try running it 
> with menu flag -d set ... 
> 
> In short:
> 1) re-discover cls() to clear blocks of your screen or your 
> entire screen.
> 2) Make use of show "" to make sure those non-relevant 
> options are gone off the 
>    bottom of the screen.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> 
> ---
> Jose Lerebours
> 954  559  7186
> http://www.fpgroups.com
> 
Jose,

Remember that msgbox() and errorbox() take position and input options(single
key). One can place these boxes anywhere on screen.

The also take the standard show codes for displaying text and background
colors, at least with the windows version.

The problems with show popup is most programmers do not end this command
properly.  The just CLEARP which closes the screen but doesn't end the
function.  You will get an error if that same screen needs to come up again.

Richard Kreiss
GCC Consulting