screens other than 0-9 (was: Re: Windows 2003/IIS6issues...new and improved ones.)

[Bruce Easton]

Kenneth Brody wrote Thursday, May 24, 2007 12:06 PM:

> Quoting Bruce Easton (Thu, 24 May 2007 11:57:05 -0400):
>
> > Kenneth Brody wrote Thursday, May 24, 2007 11:25 AM:
> [...]
> > > Screens 0 through 9 are made available without any programming.
> > > Lettered and named screens (ie: all but 0 through 9) are only
> > > available if the developer programs access to them.
> > >
> >
> > I've always wondered why filepro's clerk's default dialog excluded named
> > screens, but accepted that a "design decision" must have been made
> > early on.  Was there ever a time when only single character screens
> > were allowed?  If so, then the dual syntax (quotes/no quotes) for the
> > screen/display commands makes more sense.
>
> filePro 16 version 1.0 had only screens 0 through 9 and A through Z.
> The syntax for the SCREEN command did not require quotes around the
> screen number/letter.  For compatibility, you can still leave off
> the quotes for 0-9 and A-Z if you so desire.  (Though it's always
> possible that this may be deprecated somewhere along the line, so
> you should use quotes on any new code with a literal screen name.)
>
> > It would be nice to have the built-in dialog for clerk bring up
> > all the screens on file - I know it is easy to code this
> > functionality, but requiring processing to be in place for that
> > basic function is limiting of filepro's otherwise pretty good
> > out-of-the-boxness.  Of course, for backward compatibility, if such
> > a feature was ever added, define screens should allow any screen
> > to be marked to not appear by default (which would give more
> > flexibility) AND a global env to make things work entirely the
> > current way.
>
> Of course, adding a "don't display this screen" flag would require
> that filePro open/read/close every screen for the file before it
> could display the list.  See my recent note regarding PFDIRFILTER,
> and that slowdown was caused by a mere stat() call.
>
> (And the same applies to a "don't display the output format" flag.)
>

Then regarding potential slow-down, I'm guessing even without a
"don't display this screen" feature, but only a env flag for current
behavior, showing the whole list of screens for a file would still
require you to open each screen to check for passwording, for
instance?

Bruce

Bruce Easton
STN, Inc.