and modifying
FMSform descriptions. Being interactive, the editor lets you see
each form as you create it, exactly as it would appear in finished form. You can
make adjustments, or wholesale rearrangements, at any time during the design
process.
7-13 The Forms Editor is also menu driven, with an extensive online HELP facil-ity, making it simple enough for end users to successfully create and modify their own forms.
The Forms Test Facility lets you test as many possible matrices as you wish before selecting the most preferred final form design. And using your terminal's keypad, a variety of editing functions can be invoked. All form attributes, indi-vidual field attributes, and named data constants are assigned in this form edit-ing process. The result of a session usedit-ing the Forms Editor is an intermediate form file, ready for processing by the Form Librarian.
The Form Librarian
Essentially what its name suggests, the Form Librarian allows individual forms to be inserted (into storage), deleted, extracted and replaced. Forms will typi-cally reside in form libraries on disk, and are retrieved as needed by application programs during their execution. This arrangement makes possible a high degree of independence between form data structures and application pro-grams. Forms can be modified without the often-encountered requirement for recompilation or relinking of those application programs.
User Action Routines (UARs)
A key feature of VAX FMS is the virtually boundless capabilities it offers through its User Action Routines, or UARs. Functioning as extensions to the FMS Forms Driver, UARs are routines that you can write in your favorite VMS programming language and then associate with a field, a HELP request, or a function key.
UARs can be as long and sophisticated, or as short and simple, as your needs dictate.
The Forms Driver calls a UAR "into action" when a specified event takes place, a field is completed, or a function or HELP key is pressed. Different forms in different applications can share one or more UARs. Regardless of the VMS lan-guage(s) in which they are written, all UARs can be stored in UAR libraries, avail-able to application developers.
The three different types of UARs available are Field-Completion, HELP Key-Associated, and Function Key UARs.
Field-Completion UARs
You can associate a UAR with the completion of a particular field. As soon as data entry to that field is completed, The Forms Driver calls the associated UAR(s) before advancing to the next field, giving you considerable flexibility in data validation.
7-14 • VAX TDMSand VAXFMS
As an example, suppose you had a form with DATE'OF-BIRlli and AGE fields.
You could write a UAR that would compare the DAJ'E-OF-BIRlli with the cur-rent date to validate each person's age, and would then associate this UAR with the completion of the AGE field. Every time a user filled in the form, the UAR would automatically validate .the AGE field.·
You can also use UARs associated with field completion to branch from one form to another. If you had a number of forms that needed to be filled out sequentially, you could associate a UAR with the completion of the last field in the first form to call the next form in the sequence;
HELP Key UARs
You can associate a UAR with a HELP request to provide even more detail than is provided by standard FMS HELP processing. You can also use
this
feature totrack HELP requests. .
You carl write a UAR that presents a unique HELP message for each field in addition to the standard FMS help. For example, you could display a list of allowable entries for a particular field. Or you could, of course, defer to the form-level help for those fields that do not requite more detailed help messages.
You can also use the HELP key-associated UARs to keep track of HELP requests.
You could track requests by user, by form, by field, or by any combination of the
three.
Inthis.
way you could quickly discover if users were having particul,ar difficulty with a certain form, or even a specific field.A UAR that is activated before the standard field- or formclevel HELP facility is called a PRE-HELP UARYou can also write a UAR that
will
be activated only after the form-level HELP messages have been exhausted - this is called a POST-HELP UAR. This POST-HELP UAR could provide a more detailed HELP message or could even.notify a supervisor that the user has a problem.Function Key
UARs. .
You can associate UARs with function keys to define function keys tor your application, which can make that application exceptionally easy to u~e.
For example, if you were designing a hotel management application you might have separate forms for reservations, check-ins and check-outs: You could establish UARs to call these forms with different function keys. You could then label certain keys accordingly, speeding the access of the correct form to the desk clerk's screen.
7-15 The Forms Driver
The Forms Driver is the runtime component of VAX FMS. Called from applica-tion programs as the means to control screen processing, the Forms Driver is a shareable, native mode subroutine. It manages all screen I/O, displays forms, manipulates the screen, performs some basic input validation, and responds to an operator's request(s) for HELP. It allows you to specify input and output one field at a time or on a whole-form basis.
FMS's Forms Driver has several features that enable fine tuning of the interac-tion between applicainterac-tion and user. Field Highlighting, for example, causes the video attributes of each field to be changed as the cursor enters the field, and to be restored to their original state when the operator exits that field.