Using VPLUS: An Introduction to Forms Design (32209-90004)

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any letters outside the field delimiters. Both upper and lowercase
letters are allowed during form layout so that you can have up to 52
one-character fields. In the current example, the field tag ordate was
shifted up to become the official field name ORDATE.
The Field Enhancement Field
The field enhancement indicates how the field looks when ENTRY displays
the form. Unless you specifically change the field enhancement in the
Field Menu, the default enhancement is HI meaning that the field will be
shown as Half-bright and Inverse video, which distinguishes them from
all
other text on the form. (When you run ENTRY, you will see what this
means.) This is the default enhancement for all fields unless you change
it. Other enhancements could be U for Underline, B for Blinking, S for
Security, NONE for no enhancement, and 1 - 8 for Color. Combinations of
up to four characters of the possible enhancements are also allowed,
such
as HIU for a underlined, half-bright, inverse video field or B2 for a red
blinking field.
The Field Type Field
The field type determines whether the user can leave data out of the
field (O for optional), must enter data (R for required), or cannot enter
data (D for display-only), in which case the application must supply the
data. There is also a field type which forces the system to process the
field even if it is blank (P for process). Unless you change the field
type, all fields are optional.
The Data Type Field
The data type determines the validity of data that is entered in the
field, the formatting method allowed, and the operations, if any, al-
lowed
on the field. Each field must be specified as one of three types:
character, date, or numeric data. By default, all fields are type CHAR,
which means you can enter any characters in the field. The other two
types indicate how dates or numbers can be entered and are described
later in this section.
The Initial Value Field
If you want, you can assign a value to appear in the field when the form
is first displayed by ENTRY.