RevMedia

Thanks to Les Palenik of Cosmotron Systems Ltd. for pointing out a useful and aesthetic technique to eliminate redundant softkeys (see last issue). Les stated that the only limitation of his routine was that it required the user to be positioned in the actual prompt before pressing SF3 rather than having it available throughout the window as a normal softkey. To overcome this limitation, I've extended the code to that shown below (as always, source will be available on the next utility diskette if you can wait that long.) In addition, I've corrected a slight oversight in the original code which would have led to errors if Deep Zoom was used on multivalued data (note the convert statement near the end!).

If the user is NOT in a Deep Zoom prompt, then an anchored popup is displayed showing all of the associated windows available. It establishes this information by scanning the WC_W% array looking for information in prompt register 1. (The original code used WC_Prompts%, but the dimensioned array used here gives faster results in the loop.) The user can then access the window(s) of their choice.

The format of the information stored in the prompt register has also been enhanced; it should now be in the form WindowName, (Description), (NullSuppress) (although the code is backward compatible for any existing windows!) WindowName functions exactly as before. Description should contain brief text about the related window for inclusion in the popup (CUST_REL_INV might not mean anything to the average user!). Finally, the optional parameter NullSuppress, if set to true, tells the routine NOT to present the related window if there is no data in the relevant column of the current row.

It is also now possible to include the routine on a macro keystroke (ideally Alt-3) as well as/instead of the previously recommended SF3 softkey. This is made possible by a simple check on @Tutor (see RevMedia passim) but note that if the user has access to system windows which use register 1 for other nefarious purposes, then a more rigorous check might be required later in the program.