Peck@RADC-MULTICS.ARPA (Rodney) (07/27/87)
And here's my question of the day: I'm writing a database type program which has to change data and the users would like to see "forms" that they can fill in on the screen as opposed to some sort of line by line typing thing. As I go thru the SMG routines in the programming support manual, I see lots of warnings about smg$read_composed_line and smg$read_string only working if the virtual display is pasted to the first column and there is nothing to its right. Obviously, these aren't made to fill in forms.. What call should I use? I'm working with strings, reals, and integers from VAX Fortran and writing an indexed file from the data. (That's not terribly useful to you, but I'm trying to straighten my head out..) Any suggestions folks?
mhg@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA (Mark H. Granoff) (07/28/87)
> I'm writing a database type program which has to change data and the >users would like to see "forms" that they can fill in on the screen as >opposed to some sort of line by line typing thing. > As I go thru the SMG routines in the programming support manual, I >see lots of warnings about smg$read_composed_line and smg$read_string >only working if the virtual display is pasted to the first column and >there is nothing to its right. > Obviously, these aren't made to fill in forms.. What call should I >use? I'm working with strings, reals, and integers from VAX Fortran and >writing an indexed file from the data. (That's not terribly useful to >you, but I'm trying to straighten my head out..) You can use FMS (Forms Management System) which supports the full range of video "stuff". FMS is callable from Datatrieve (I think), as well as from within languages (I think, again). Using SMG would be the hard way of doing it...you'll spend more time trying to input data (from the right location on the screen) than anything else. Hope this helps. +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Mark H. Granoff Member of the Technical Staff | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | USMAIL: The MITRE Corporation | ARPAnet: mhg @ mitre-bedford.ARPA | | Burlington Rd. M/S B015 |-----------------------------------| | Bedford, MA 01730 | A T & T: (617) 271 - 7030 | +--------------------------- Disclaimer ------------------------------+ |The views expressed herein are my own and do not necessarily reflect | | those of my employer. | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Unix commands are based on the principle of intuitive complexity. | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+