The Secret Label Commands – Revealed

Most stylists are familiar with use of the Label command as a target for the Jump To command. Until version 6, however, few users knew of the secret commands embedded within. Now, when the Label command is selected, you get a window asking if you want to make a regular free form label or use one of the secret labels. I suppose this means they aren’t really secret anymore, but lets just keep calling them that to avoid confusion.

[img:xo3aenej]http://www.possupport.net/dealer/kbase/images/labelcmd.jpg[/img:xo3aenej]

Why did we make secret label commands? Why didn’t we just make a new instruction to do these tasks? Three reasons.

  1. We didn’t want to clutter the already large list of instructions with special commands that were not needed for most applications.
  2. TouchPro has special logic built in to spot secret label commands, providing more flexibility from a programming point of view.
  3. We knew some commands that others didn’t, making us appear more knowledgeable than we really are. (I may not be speaking for others here)

Here are the commands available:

    *CHECK

    *@SHOWPG

    *@LOCK/@UNLOCK

    *@MEMORY

    *@MODSEQ+/@MODSEQ-

    *@ORDINS+/@ORDINS-

CHECK

This command will cause the items of the check to be listed within the zone containing the check command. All secret commands normally start with an @ sign to eliminate the possibility that someone might trigger one of these commands accidentally when creating a label. Why doesn’t the CHECK command follow this rule? Actually, we created the command before we adopted this standard, and lots of applications already had this label, and we would have to restyle all of them if we changed it, and, well, hey,… give us a break on this one, OK? The CHECK command is designed to work under very specific circumstances. Here are the restrictions and characteristics of the command:

    *      It must be styled into a zone on a margin only. It does not work from a page, control page, or window.
    *      It must be the first command in the zone.
    *      It assumes the attribute located in the top left corner of the zone to be the same for the entire zone.
    *      It overwrites any characters that might be on the margin itself
    *      Names start three characters to the right of the left edge of the margin and continue to the right edge of the margin, regardless of the right edge of the zone.

@SHOWPG

This causes the screen to be redrawn. Since screen draws can be very processor intensive, TouchPro cleverly waits until instruction chains have completed or come to a pause before drawing pages, margins, and control pages. If the stylist desires the screen to be redrawn immediately after issuing a screen command (Page = , Margin = , etc.) this can be accomplished using the @SHOWPG label. Note that this does not work for windows, as they are drawn immediately on execution of the Window = command. Also note that because you are causing a screen draw when TouchPro is not expecting it, incorrect screens can occur if this is command occurs when changing between screen formats, such as from a page and margin to a control page. The bottom line is that you will have to experiment to see if the @SHOWPG label will accomplish what you want.
@LOCK/@UNLOCK

These two commands can be used to lock and unlock a screen image to suppress output to the screen where it is not desired. This is the same as the Lock Video option when running a shell. An example of its use might be where you want to quit TouchPro, then rerun it in another application directory without the user seeing the DOS screen that would normally occur. Place the @LOCK label immediately prior to the Quit – Do command. Then put the @UNLOCK label as the first command in the Startup chain of the second application. The transition will appear seamless to the user.

As with everything else, there are some situations where this may not work as desired. Any program that bypasses the video BIOS calls that DOS and most applications use, will probably still write to the screen. Additionally Win95 gives only limited control of the video to applications and will be very upset with you if you try locking the video.

@MEMORY        [img:xo3aenej]http://www.possupport.net/dealer/kbase/images/labelmem.gif[/img:xo3aenej]

This handy/dandy command pops open a window for 10 seconds giving memory usage and availability. It is used primarily for troubleshooting by techie types who thrive on this kind of information. The fields are pretty much self explanatory (at least to you techie types; and you know who you are), except for Data space. This is the amount of free base memory currently available.
@MODSEQ+/@MODSEQ-

Whenever the Order an Item, or Order by PLU/PIN instructions are executed, TouchPro checks the product database to see if a modifier sequence is assigned to the PLU being ordered. To turn off the modifier sequence checking, place an @MODSEQ- label prior to the Order instruction, then turn the checking back on by placing an @MODSEQ+ label after it.
@ORDINS+/@ORDINS-

Whenever the Order an Item, Order by PLU/PIN, or Duplicate Item instructions are executed, TouchPro checks the local options for that node to see if an order item instruction exists. To turn off this checking, place an @ORDINS- label prior to the Order or Duplicate instruction, then turn the checking back on by placing an @ORDINS+ label after it.