ENFORM User's Guide

How to Change the Message Table
Changing The Message Table Text
058058 Tandem Computers Incorporated E–9
If you either create a new ?MESSAGES section or modify the ?MESSAGES section of
the Edit file version of the default message table, the ?MESSAGES section must
conform to the following rules:
1. You must not include a ?MESSAGES section without including a ?HELP section.
2. In the Edit file, enter the ?MESSAGES section after the ?VOCABULARY section (if
present) and before the ?HELP section.
3. You must enter the characters ?MESSAGES in columns 1 through 9 of the first line
of this section.
4. For the subsequent lines of the ?MESSAGES section, enter one line of text for each
message. You must enter the text in the same order and with the same number of
entries as are present in the current ENFORM message text. Include the text for
each message even if you do not change the message itself. If you change the
order of the messages, ENFORM could print an incorrect or garbled message
when an error occurs. If you omit a message, ENFORM prints ??? in place of the
message text.
5. You can enter a maximum of 132 characters for the message text. The maximum
length of the message depends upon where ENFORM uses the message.
Figure E-4 shows a diagram of the ?MESSAGES section.
Figure E-4. Diagram of the ?MESSAGES Section
?MESSAGES
error-message-1
error-message-2
error-message-3
...
error-message-last
You can obtain a current copy of the ENFORM ?MESSAGES section by duplicating the
?MESSAGES section of ENFORMMT, the Edit file version of the default message table.
An asterisk that appears within the ?MESSAGES section of ENFORMMT represents a
table entry reserved for future messages. To preserve the order of the message text,
include any asterisks appearing in ENFORMMT in your new ?MESSAGES section.
?HELP Section
The ?HELP section contains the text that ENFORM displays when the ?HELP
command is issued. This required section is divided into several subsections with one
subsection for each of the items for which help is available. Each subsection of the
?HELP section contains the lines which ENFORM displays when a specific form of the
?HELP command is entered.