Specifications

Defining display formats
264 InfoMaker
Combining formats
You can include different types of display format masks in a single format. Use
a space to separate the masks. For example, the following format section
includes a date and time format:
mmmm/dd/yyyy h:mm
Using sections
Each type of display format can have multiple sections, with each section
corresponding to a form of the number, string, date, or time. Only one section
is required; additional sections are optional and should be separated with
semicolons (;). You cannot use sections in edit masks. Semicolons can be used
only in display formats.
The following format specifies different displays for positive and negative
numbers—negative numbers are displayed in parentheses:
$#,##0;($#,##0)
Using keywords
Enclose display format keywords in square brackets. For example, you can use
the keyword
[General] when you want InfoMaker to determine the appropriate
format for a number.
Using colors
You can define a color for each display format section by specifying a color
keyword before the format. The color keyword is the name of the color, or a
number that represents the color, enclosed in square brackets:
[RED] or [255].
The number is usually used only when a color is required that is not provided
by name. The named color keywords are:
[BLACK]
[BLUE]
[CYAN]
[GREEN]
[MAGENTA]
[RED]
[WHITE]
[YELLOW]
The formula for combining primary color values into a number is:
256*256*blue + 256*green + red=number
where the amount of each primary color is specified as a value from 0 to 255.
For example, to specify cyan, substitute 255 for blue, 255 for green, and 0 for
red. The result is 16776960.
If you want to add text to a numeric display format and use a color attribute,
you must include the escape character (\) before each literal in the mask. For
example:
[red]\D\e\p\t\: ###