The future of filePro... one major one anyway!

[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 Fairlight
> Sent: Friday, May 18, 2007 2:11 PM
> To: Filepro-List at Lists. Celestial. Com
> Subject: Re: The future of filePro... one major one anyway!
> 
> At Fri, May 18, 2007 at 01:54:32PM -0400 or thereabouts, 
> suspect Kenneth Brody was observed uttering:
> > My point was that I thought it was a good thing.  The website isn't 
> > worded along the lines of "Reface is for guifying filePro", but for 
> > so-called "legacy applications" in general, and it was nice to see 
> > filePro being used as the example.
> 
> I'm actually sitting here thinking, "Hmmm...semi-admin stuff 
> that people don't tend to know inside-out but still try to 
> use.  What about 'top'?  The normal display is one thing, but 
> if you can then put the buttons for re-sorting on there by 
> the various criterion..."  I'm not sure how well that falls 
> under the screens can't change thing, but it does have a 
> standard layout on top, it's just the middle section is 
> variable.  But if it can handle a browse lookup in an 
> overlay, top should be doable.
> 
> So suddenly top as a tool becomes more accessible to the 
> mid-range user because you can have buttons and such without 
> memorising keystrokes, checking the help screen, etc.  Heck, 
> buttons?  I wonder if it's complex enough to have those 
> tab/cell type things across and be able to treat them as 
> buttons so you could do a re-sort as one traditionally does 
> in windows.
> If they thought of as much as they seem to have, quite possibly.
> 
> Which actually brings up an interesting idea in terms of fP 
> again...once you come up with the chain of thought and 
> backreference.  What about browse lookups that, if you 
> -could- have cell-based sorting with the labels as sort 
> indicators, basically it's programmed to pushkey the right 
> stuff to bring up a re-sorted browse lookup based on a 
> different sorting...same info, different browse lookups 
> sorted differntly.  But you're doing it like you'd do in 
> Excel or whatever and it's totally transparent.  Just a 
> thought...  I bet people would fall over themselves 
> scrambling for that kind of functionality.
> 
> This kinda thing certainly makes one think of a lot of 
> possibilities...

Mark,

I'm doing this currently, I have a browse which lists order details by the
sequence they were entered, by product # and finally by description.  All in
one browse use @bk functions to loop.

The original browse was made using the wizard and then broken into 3 parts. 

AA= the browse format and xkeys, show= etc
AB= Browse headings
AC= Fields

I set a flag, for a GOTO the browse and re re-executes using a different
lookup line

F="1"
Lookup ord = orders  k=1  i-a -nxm b=(aa&ab&ac)
F="2"
Lookup ord = orders  k=1  i-D -nxm b=(aa&ab&ac)
F="3"
Lookup ord = orders  k=1  i-J -nxm b=(aa&ab&ac)
F="5"
Lookup ord = orders  k=lu  i-d -nxm b=(aa&ab&ac)  - this option allow for
finding one item by item #

The primary sort on each index is the order #.  Therefore index D is
order_num&item_num.

This works very well.  I could just as easily adjusted the fields and/or
display sequence using this method.  If I played with this a bit more, I
could highlight the key field or every other line.

Richard Kreiss
GCC Consulting