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Newbie has series of questions

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    #1

    Newbie has series of questions

    Hi Alpha,

    New, with some programming background.. maybe you can help me with a series of questions :-)

    Please bear with me, some of these may be dumb or not really clear, and answers to any one or two are helpful.

    ======================================================
    Snap to Grid
    The fact that "snap to grid" only works on original placement of fields, is that something that can be emulated on moving fields, or is just tweaking with the (precise) arrow keys that most use for alignment.. ?

    Text Fields
    Would it be nice to have a command "reduce field size to text" ? Seems like it would help with some maneuvering
    rather than arrowing around.

    Control Panel
    What is the best way to see what Forms use a particular Set/Database ? (perhaps used at all, or used only as parent)
    Naming conventions help of course, but it would be nice to block out the unused forms when working e.g. with one set..
    Any tricks for doing this ?

    Database Limits
    Do we have a # of database in a set limit ?
    Is there any downside in setting up setting up separate databases for countries, states, rather than trying to do combined types of files (with multi-record type)

    Browses
    Do browses have any total line capability, or do you just do that by either calculated fields and/or switching to a report.. ? On a browse.. can you get fancy and have the calculated field only show at "total time" (and the other fields not show?)

    Forms that are Menus
    When you do Forms that simply call programs and other Forms
    (we will call them Menus) where does the Xbasic type of Scripting help compared to just using the Active Scripts
    ... In other words, are there advantages in converting
    it to code in most fairly simple usages.. ?

    Frame Buttons
    Why does that sample Invoice application Menu have those
    small "frame buttons" within each "Menu Item"

    Parameter passing
    If you are doing a report, and you wish to "prompt" for
    a number of fields to pass to the report, (Item#, from/to date,etc) are there any real advantages or disadvantages
    to placing those fields in variables versus a field in a database ?
    (assume logging what reports were run from the database is not important)

    Thanks so much :-)
    ==================================================


    Tags: None
    #2
    RE: Newbie has series of questions

    Steven
    Snap to grid : Try to select the fields that you want to align and then go to arrange and align acordinly.

    Control Panel: To the right of the interactive menu there is buttons for changing the view of the control panel select detail view.


    Rick T

    Comment

      #3
      RE: Newbie has series of questions

      Database Limits:

      from the version 4.5 User Guide:

      Number of concurrent users The number of users your network supports
      Number of open tables 100
      Number of sessions 24, limited by the number of available file handles
      Tables/Fields
      Fields per table record 1,023
      Bytes per record 19,600
      Number of characters in a character field 255
      Number of bytes in a memo field Unlimited
      Size of OLE field Unlimited
      Number of characters in a fieldname 32
      Number of calculated fields per table 512
      Number of characters in a password 8
      Number of tables in a set 24
      Indexes
      Number of indexes per table 40
      Number of characters in an index key 102
      Number of fields per index Limited by only the maximum key size and
      expression length
      Layouts
      Number of layouts per table or set Unlimited
      Number of characters in a layout name 24
      Saved Settings
      Number of saved settings per table or set Unlimited
      Number of characters in a saved setting name 24

      Comment

        #4
        RE: Newbie has series of questions

        Browses:

        If you're asking whether it's possible to total the values of a field displayed in a browse on a form, it is possible.


        Buttons on Menus:

        Action Scripting vs. Xbasic scripts -- if Action scripting does what you want, that's the easy way to go. If you want the script to do more than Action scripting can provide, dig into Xbasic.

        Comment

          #5
          RE: Newbie has series of questions

          Hello Steven,

          Glad to see you in the Alpha community.

          >>where does the Xbasic type of Scripting help compared to just using the Active Scripts>Why does that sample Invoice application Menu have those
          small "frame buttons" within each "Menu Item">If you are doing a report, and you wish to "prompt" for
          a number of fields to pass to the report, (Item#, from/to date,etc) are there any real advantages or disadvantages
          to placing those fields in variables versus a field in a database ?

          Comment

            #6
            RE: Newbie has series of questions

            Control panel:
            -Click on the appropriate header to sort by name or table

            Forms that are Menus
            "... In other words, are there advantages in converting
            it to code in most fairly simple usages.. ?"
            -Not particularly. The code generated by the genies is very clean now (by comparison to previous versions).

            Passing Parameters
            -no general answer; depends on the circumstances.

            Its a good flexible program, well worth the time required to learn it.


            Bill
            Bill Hanigsberg

            Comment

              #7
              RE: Newbie has series of questions

              Control Panel
              What is the best way to see what Forms use a particular Set/Database ? (perhaps used at all, or used only as parent)
              Naming conventions help of course, but it would be nice to block out the unused forms when working e.g. with one set..
              Any tricks for doing this ?

              from the cp, select Tables/Sets, click on your table or set, click on view: you will see all the forms, browses, reports, etc. only for the selected table or set.
              Peter
              AlphaBase Solutions, LLC

               [email protected]
              https://www.alphabasesolutions.com

              Comment

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