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

Defining Field Characters in a Panel Description File
Working With Panels
106160 Tandem Computers Incorporated 14–29
(The underscore is not used as a field character in the ZEX1402P panel description
file.)
You can add attributes to the standard, predefined field characters by using the #FLD
panel control statement.
Defining Alternative
Standard Field Characters
You can change the standard, predefined field characters using the #OPT panel control
statement and the DEFAULT operand. This specifies alternative standard field
characters. This allows you to use the percent sign, the plus sign, and the underscore
within the panel description file as ordinary text or to define them as field characters
with the attributes you require.
Syntactically, the order in which you specify alternative standard field characters in
the #OPT panel control statement is significant. The following example changes the
standard, predefined field characters to the tilde (~), exclamation mark (!), and at
sign (@):
#OPT DEFAULT=~!@
The following table summarizes the result of the preceding #OPT panel control
statement and the DEFAULT operand:
Field Character Description
~ (tilde) Specifies that the field it precedes in the display part of a panel description
file is an output field to be displayed in high-intensity.
! (exclamation mark) Specifies that the field it precedes in the display part of a panel description
file is an output field to be displayed in low-intensity.
@ (at sign) Specifies that the field it precedes in the display part of a panel description
file is an input field to be displayed in high-intensity. (Input is not validated.)
After defining alternative standard field characters, you can add attributes to them by
using the #FLD panel control statement.
Note You cannot specify a character to use an alternative standard field character if you have already defined it
as a field character.
Extent of a Field Character A field starts from the position after a field character. The field continues to the next
field position in the same line, identified by the next field character, or to the end of
that line if there is no intervening field. Fields do not wrap from one line to the next.
If there is one field on a line, the end of the line terminates the field. If there is more
than one field on a line, successive field characters delimit each field. If there is no
field character in a line, the line is regarded as an output field to be displayed in
low-intensity. (This is required to avoid interference of fields in a vertical split
operation.)
When a panel is displayed, each field character you define occupies the equivalent
screen position. (For this reason, it is often necessary to use short variable names for
each field.) However, the field character is not visible on the screen because it is
overwritten with a blank character. This is called the attribute byte of the field.