Joseph,
 
     Just out of curiosity, since your applications were written in BASIC
     (and since it sounds like you are not using VPLUS), did they happen to
     originally come from ADI - American Data Industries??  If so, ADI used
     their own screen handling routines and I have some documentation which
     may help.  (Or you could ask Gavin!)
 
     Let me know...
 
     Gordon
 
 
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______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Block mode  vs  Block heads  (with too many thumbs)
Author:  [log in to unmask] (Joseph Todaro) at Internet
Date:    7/21/96 2:25 PM
 
 
Hi to all you HP3000 gurus, I wonder if anyone can help me.
 
We have a 957RX with over 100 users using IMAGE and a swag of
in-house programs mainly written in HPBASIC V. (We have source)
 
One thing that has always concerned me is inexperienced users using Block Mode
screens to update or add to Image data sets.
 
If the user presses any keys while the screen is drawing (and they usually do)
it will result in a 'corrupt' screen draw. The boxes will all be in the wrong
place with incorrect lengths !!!
 
If the user still manages to use this screen it could lead to 'corrupt' data
being written to the data set. (NULL's and junk)
 
I am sure many of you programmers out there have experienced the same problem
and am wondering what programming techniques ,escape sequences or environment
variables you have used to overcome this problem. We have tried user training
(even with a cricket bat) but it is not fool proof !!
 
Any suggestions will help.
 
Thanks in advance,
 
 
Joseph Todaro