Alastair,
Good points. Forms are now very much more exciting
than I remember in my old DOS applications. I like the nice
fonts, the buttons, eeps, colors and all the rest.
My friend Rich Starkey is a Windows whiz. He can
put every table up on the screen at the same time. He uses
this feature to see every table affected by a form and
ensure that all the updates were made correctly. The secret
is to open them from the object manager, then change to the
size you want, move it, and open another.
All of the 'windows' are hot -- in other words, you
point to one and can edit or whatever.
So I tried the same thing in ConComp by going to the
object manager and selecting the Forms tab. I highlighted
employee, pressed run and sized it smaller. Then I
highlighted Product and pressed run and sized it smaller,
and moved it so it did not cover the previous table. Now I
have two forms with a smaller size, on the screen at the
same time.
I can click on Employee Information and use F8 to
see the next employees, and F7 to go back. Then if I click
on product information, I can use the Next Row and Previous
Row buttons to see other products. The key is that I do not
have to close either form in order for the other to work.
I decide to press my luck and run the product form
again, and size it smaller. Now I have two identical forms
on my screen. By clicking from one to the other, I can see
two different products at the same time. Each form works
independently. And you can click from one to the other
without closing anything. Incidentally I was not able to
open and size a report -- it seems to take the whole screen.
Right now I have four tables and three forms showing
on my screen. I simply click on the form or table and it is
live.
The question is whether this can be done with
program commands, or whether it can only be accomplished
using the object manager.
Now from your question and Rich Starkey I have
learned another way to keep a lot of useful information and
forms in front of me at the same time. As a developer, this
will give you the function you wanted. But I don't know how
to make it available to a user from a program. If you issue
the command EDIT USING product AT 0,0,600,500 a nice small
form will appear on screen. But that command has to be
completed -- closed, before the next command is run.
Calling a second form using the MDI feature will put them
both up, but not click on one, then the other whenever,
live.
If you figure out how to do it, I'm sure we would
all like to see how. [If we could just automate the
commands used by the Object Manager ...]
Take care,
Randy Peterson
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alastair Burr" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, December 07, 2002 4:00 AM
Subject: Re: Edit Using & MDI forms
> Randy,
>
> Controlling the size and the position of the form is a
major step forward as
> far as I'm concerned.
>
> It always seemed odd that whatever size R:Base was - and I
like to have it
> set to something just slightly smaller than full-screen -
a form would
> always fill that screen. For a large form that's no
problem but for forms
> with only a few fields it looked silly to me.
>
> Now I could, for example, pull up some data on the R:>
screen, leave it
> there and display a form to one side to do some editing.
If I could move
> from form to form, or report to form, then I could do
things so much more
> neatly.
>
> I agree that if you open forms from forms you have to
close them in reverse
> sequence although the "manual" implies otherwise. I
haven't found any need
> to use [Esc] every time though. As far as I know,
whichever version of the
> syntax I use all the normal buttons to exit work as
expected.
>
> Hopefully, this is all rather academic and v7 will have
whatever "problem"
> there is here sorted out. In the mean time, however, I
like being able to
> place a single form wherever I want it over a background
image or other
> data.
>
> Regards,
> Alastair.
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