Hiding formats

[Bruce Easton]

On 12/5/13 5:51 PM, Jean-Pierre A. Radley wrote:
> Bruce Easton propounded (on Thu, Dec 05, 2013 at 04:22:47PM -0500):
> | Reading the recent discussion regarding "Auto Exit" and qualifiers
> | brought to mind again the need to hide formats of various kinds. Menu
> | flags/processing can address this to a degree, but what we have for
> | indexes would be great if it was extended to other formats.
> | Specifically, I would always like an application user to be able to load
> | an output format [for print form, a browse format, or a selection set,
> | but would like to be able to only restrict them from saving changes to
> | formats or loading ones that were marked to be hidden (a la indexes).
> | For qualifiers it would be nice to restrict users from selecting ones
> | that have been marked to be hidden (when -md is in play).  Screen
> | formats already have an advantage in this regard historically since the
> | developer has been able to hide screens by naming them as something
> | outside of 0-9.
>
>
>
> "What we have for indexes" could be slightly improved.
>
> I've created indices that I need to use on my clients' systems, and when
> some users were sometimes annoyed or confused to see them as a choice, I
> opted for the useful ability to make them hidden.
>
> Maybe because I'm nearing my 82nd birthday, I've been known to forget
> the existence of some hidden indices when I could have made good use of
> them.
>
> So could we have a PFIXHIDE environment variable, defaulting to YES, so
> that indices created to be hidden are in fact hidden, but when set to NO
> will force such indices to nevertheless show up in the Index Selection
> menu?
>
> Or, if other filePro objects could also be hidden, then just a PFHIDE
> setting to be able to "unhide" all of them..
>
Good point, JP.

When the advent of the -fp flag for request output, it became a little 
easier to hide dangerous one-time programs since a corresponding output 
format didn't have to exist.  But each time one wants to set up such a 
one-time processing this way, i.e. to remove a select set of records at 
a customer's request, one must create a script or add it to an admin 
menu and then consider if other flags should be added for sorting, 
etc.**  It seems part of Define Output would allow you to mark the 
format as hidden (to the Form print key from clerk), then a user who 
doesn't have access to filepro's development menu could not accidentally 
run such an output request. I can see how some developers would also use 
such a feature to also restrict forms that show up from the Form print 
key in clerk to only be actual forms (and not report type formats).

** I guess you could set up a script on a menu-passworded menu option 
that would do something like:
# code to read prcname and otherflags from user, then
~dreport - -fp $prcname $otherflags

or maybe just password a special added option for dpromenu to do similar.

But I see qualifiers being just like indexes with regard to hiding.

Then there are browse formats (main, not lookup).  I can't tell you the 
number of times I've encountered an application where the option for 
changing the browse format was disabled usually for the purpose of 
protecting the format the developer made and called. Consequently, users 
on these systems had no idea how to change a browse format.  Sometimes 
it's disabled for data security, but it's a lot of flexibility taken 
away from the end-user for viewing their data in the (access to) all 
(incl save) or one choice for the developer.

Bruce