Submitted by Kim Egekjaer on Wed, 07/01/2009 - 00:00
Forums
InterForm

There are functions in InterForm400 that are not described fully in the normal training program as these are rarely used and can be hard to understand.

However if you meet a customer with VERY special requirements for the design you have this special ace up your sleve ;-)
So what can these hidden functions do? Well they can solve these 3 situations:

a) In special cases you want to remove or insert a line or more to remove/insert space in the output. (E.g. write something with a VERY large font - creating the need to push the rest of the page downwards).

b) In the original spooled file there are sometimes quite a few blank lines in the middle of the spooled file. You want to remove these lines (even though you do not know how many they are) and push the rest of the spooled file up to be placed one line (or a few fixed lines) below the previous non-blank line.

c) In a conditioned overlay you can now use e.g. a remap window with extended adjustment. With extended adjustment you let InterForm400 decide the line breaks after you have told InterForm400 the font to use and e.g. the width available. Now you can let the rest of the spooled file be moved up or down to fit the placement of the last element placed in the conditioned overlay (e.g. one line below).

Ok, so that is what you can do. The question is then how??

Green screen:
If you are running the green screen designer, you can activate the solutions when you state (on the ?=If..then line), that at least one spooled file line is to be moved to the conditioned overlay. Then this window will pop up:

 --------------------------------------------
  Vertical cursor repositioning             
 before execute of sub overlay             

 Position related to actual position       

   Number of pels . .  ___    ( -99 - 99 ) 

  Or reposition related to previous         
 non blank input line                      

    Number of pels . .  ___    ( 0 - 999 )  

 Or reposition after execute of suboverlay 
 related to highest Y-adress used in any   
 remap window in sub-overlay.              

    Number of pels . .  ___    ( 0 - 999 )  
 
  F3=Exit           F12=Cancel              
  --------------------------------------------
To solve a situation like a) above then you fill in a number of pels for the first parameter. This can be either a positive or negative value. If it is negative then the rest of the spooled file is moved up and a positive value will push the spooled file downwards.

To solve a situation like b) you the number of pels from the last non-blank line (seond parameter) down to where this conditioned overlay should be placed (and all subsequent spooled file lines will also be repositioned).

Situation c) is solved via the last parameter shown above. Please notice that this is not yet implemented in the graphical designer. This is a new (undocumented) feature/secret in InterForm400! You should fill out none or just one of the parameters on the screen above.

Graphical designer:
After you have inserted the conditional line you click on the 'Formatting' folder in the lower left window (attributes window). See left image below (3a.jpg). Click on 'actual position' and the number of pels to reposition (which can be negative for moving the conditioned overlay up). In order to position the conditioned overlay relative to the last non-blank line (situation b) you do as shown in right image below (3b.jpg).

Situation c is not yet implemented in the graphical designer, so this you will have to do in the green screen if necessary.