NET/MASTER Network Control Language (NCL) Programmer's Guide

The Structure of a Panel Description File
Working With Panels
14–6 106160 Tandem Computers Incorporated
A panel control statement can occur more than once. The sequence of panel control
statements is not significant. The settings of later #ERR, #FLD, and #OPT panel
control statements supplement the settings of earlier #ERR, #FLD, and #OPT panel
control statements. A later #NOTE panel control statement does not supplement or
override an earlier #NOTE panel statement (the #NOTE panel control statement is
ignored during panel processing).
The Display Part of a Panel
Description File
The display part of a panel description file is the part that is displayed on a screen
(after processing by NCL and Panel Services) when the PANEL verb in an NCL
process names a panel description file. It contains the text you want to present to a
user. The display part of a panel begins from the first line that is not a panel control
statement.
For clarity, it is often convenient to separate the control part of a panel and the display
part of a panel by at least one blank line (unless the first line of the display must be the
top line of a screen).
The display part of a panel consists of a series of lines and columns. The number of
lines and columns that can be displayed on a screen is restricted by the characteristics
of the screen. The maximum number of lines that can be displayed on any screen is 62.
The maximum number of columns that can be displayed on any screen is 132.
It is your responsibility to test the number of lines and columns currently available for
displaying a panel. Lines and columns are truncated if they do not fit on the available
screen. You can use the &SYS.TERM.ROWS and &SYS.TERM.COLS system variables
to test the number of available lines and columns, respectively. (When a screen is split,
the &SYS.WINDOW.ROWS and &SYS.WINDOW.COLS system variables return the
number of lines and columns available within the current screen window.)
You are responsible for subtracting any fixed fields associated with displaying a panel.
This includes heading lines. You should also plan for small windows, where there
may not be sufficient lines to display data.