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Uniface 10 Web Edition: Confusing 3 ways GOLD* is presented: please give us back the centered dot in all contexts

  • November 19, 2018
  • 2 replies
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Jan Cees Boogaard

Confusing 3 ways GOLD* is presented: please give us back the centered dot in all contexts

Author: ulrichmerkel@web.de (ulrich-merkel)

I just had some serach field which holds a profile as an initial Value: In U9, no matter if I enter this in the Initial Value field or use it stringed to assign it via proc, I always get the centered-dot combonation: myField = "DAB·*·|TST·*" Compared to the U8 way, it's superb that I can copy&paste it to my winword documentation (or in this post here) and even when I print it, it's black-and-whicte clear that this is a gold-combination.   Now I've done the same in U10. The InitialValue was empty and when I clicked I got the data entry field which shows GOLD-Keys as I am used with the centered dot. But as soon as I hit ENTER, the centered dots disappeard leaving the keys in a red color (not so good if you print). Writing script introduced a 3rd way of displaying a GOLD key with a black (sorry, looks like a purple) background. Copy-Paste will transfer these as ESC etc. so documenting a piece of code in WinWord is a matter of manual modifications ... Think a lot of people in Amsterdam remember the waste of time when you have to do this to show code examples for the helpfile. And in contrast to U9, I can not copy the contents of InitialValue and paste it to my field assignment string script to achieve the same result. The editor will treat this just as ordinary text and not as a retrieve profile.   Suggestion: Would it be possible to have GOLD-keys beeing handled like U9 in all different contexts ? Think this would be very helpful not only for developers comming from the U9, but for newones as well to have a single best representation.

2 replies

Jan Cees Boogaard

Confusing 3 ways GOLD* is presented: please give us back the centered dot in all contexts

Author: ulrichmerkel@web.de (ulrich-merkel)

I just had some serach field which holds a profile as an initial Value: In U9, no matter if I enter this in the Initial Value field or use it stringed to assign it via proc, I always get the centered-dot combonation: myField = "DAB·*·|TST·*" Compared to the U8 way, it's superb that I can copy&paste it to my winword documentation (or in this post here) and even when I print it, it's black-and-whicte clear that this is a gold-combination.   Now I've done the same in U10. The InitialValue was empty and when I clicked I got the data entry field which shows GOLD-Keys as I am used with the centered dot. But as soon as I hit ENTER, the centered dots disappeard leaving the keys in a red color (not so good if you print). Writing script introduced a 3rd way of displaying a GOLD key with a black (sorry, looks like a purple) background. Copy-Paste will transfer these as ESC etc. so documenting a piece of code in WinWord is a matter of manual modifications ... Think a lot of people in Amsterdam remember the waste of time when you have to do this to show code examples for the helpfile. And in contrast to U9, I can not copy the contents of InitialValue and paste it to my field assignment string script to achieve the same result. The editor will treat this just as ordinary text and not as a retrieve profile.   Suggestion: Would it be possible to have GOLD-keys beeing handled like U9 in all different contexts ? Think this would be very helpful not only for developers comming from the U9, but for newones as well to have a single best representation.

Ha Uli, it was our intention to make the GOLD more consistent and exchangeable, both within Uniface and outside. Obviously we are still in the middle of things so we are not consistent yet. So point taken. Personally I never liked the centered-dot combination (as you call itWink) because it suggests 2 characters while it is just one. So, I always preferred the GOLD representation in the (old) Unifield, where the gold represented as a single character in a different color (red). So, this is where it is coming from. The documentation has yet another way to represent a GOLD character being with an underline "1=One;2=Two", at least single char but also not clear in black & white . So I see your point when you copy-paste to e.g. a word processor. Indeed, the centered-dot representation is always clear. Good feedback, thanks a lot.


Author: Gerton Leijdekker (gerton.leijdekker@uniface.com)
Jan Cees Boogaard

Confusing 3 ways GOLD* is presented: please give us back the centered dot in all contexts

Author: ulrichmerkel@web.de (ulrich-merkel)

I just had some serach field which holds a profile as an initial Value: In U9, no matter if I enter this in the Initial Value field or use it stringed to assign it via proc, I always get the centered-dot combonation: myField = "DAB·*·|TST·*" Compared to the U8 way, it's superb that I can copy&paste it to my winword documentation (or in this post here) and even when I print it, it's black-and-whicte clear that this is a gold-combination.   Now I've done the same in U10. The InitialValue was empty and when I clicked I got the data entry field which shows GOLD-Keys as I am used with the centered dot. But as soon as I hit ENTER, the centered dots disappeard leaving the keys in a red color (not so good if you print). Writing script introduced a 3rd way of displaying a GOLD key with a black (sorry, looks like a purple) background. Copy-Paste will transfer these as ESC etc. so documenting a piece of code in WinWord is a matter of manual modifications ... Think a lot of people in Amsterdam remember the waste of time when you have to do this to show code examples for the helpfile. And in contrast to U9, I can not copy the contents of InitialValue and paste it to my field assignment string script to achieve the same result. The editor will treat this just as ordinary text and not as a retrieve profile.   Suggestion: Would it be possible to have GOLD-keys beeing handled like U9 in all different contexts ? Think this would be very helpful not only for developers comming from the U9, but for newones as well to have a single best representation.

Hi Gerton, thanks for explaining your view on the GOLD character displays. in the actual u10 implementation a severe obstacle in the IDE is that I can not just copy&paste an initial value of a field into the script code.   And it's not only U9-nostalgia if we see the PROs of the centered dot: - one can copy&paste from the IDF code to Winword documentation and vice versa. As far as I am concerned, this is a big bonus compared to fight the "unprintable characters" / "underscored meand GOLD" by hand. - and I can even copy the code into an external editor when I need special functionality like regex based replaces. Thanks for your reply, think we can make U10 a useable and productive tool, Uli P.S. When we look into many programming languages, we always see some "escaped" characters like , \\t etc. So I think accepting the centered dot prefix as an escape for Gold characters is not too strange for most coders.


Author: ulrich-merkel (ulrichmerkel@web.de)

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