Speaking of fp html commands

Fri May 30 10:22:20 PDT 2008

Richard Hane wrote Friday, May 30, 2008 11:55 AM:

> Just a general question about those who generate processing 
> using filePro and the html commands.
>
> Do you use the html commands or do you just find it earlier 
> to use html zz (regular code) ?
>
> Also, is there anywhere that you have posted sample code 
> or snipets as in a general library.  I sometimes find the 
> fp help / examples to be lacking.

Thank you in advance,
Rick Hane

Rick - our filePro Developer's Reference has about 40 pages 
on the filePro HTML commands with example code - plus there 
is a an HTML report example at the end of the chapter. The 
chapter was written by Bill Doyle who teaches our Browser- 
Based filePro class.

Regarding your first question - I only use :cr (open html 
output file for appending), :tx (like writeline - output 
to the file what follows) and :cl (close the output file).
I think you'll find some people will do the same thing 
with the open, writeline, and close file commands.
When I started creating HTML files from filePro, I already 
knew a little HTML, so knowing that I could create the 
files with those three commands above, I saw no reason 
to learn another language (the rest of the filePro HTML 
commands), especially since, at the time, I was learning 
Javascript and many other things that I would soon need 
to put to work.  I guess my instincts at the time were 
telling me that I just wanted to know <body> for the body 
tag where ever I saw it in the world, not <body> *and* 
:bo.

I guess the :zz is kind of a compromise in that you just 
need to learn the main filePro version of a tag and then 
you can use :zz to put the HTML options for in HTML 
format afterwards.

IMO, if you're starting from scratch and have to learn 
something anyway (filePro HTML commands), why not just 
learn the HTML?  Doesn't even cost anything - syntax is 
usually just a quick Google search away.  Sometimes, if 
I'm writing something like innerHTML embedded inside 
Javascript that I'm outputting from the html :tx command - 
the punctuation gets a little tricky, but other than those 
odd times, using the :tx with straight html is a breeze.

Bruce

Bruce Easton
STN, Inc.