Infopro, Inc.Sunbelt Computer Systems
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October 29, 1997, Arlington, TX -- Infopro announced and demonstrated its new Systemaker for Windows product at the 1997 Sunbelt User Conference. This powerful PL/B workbench and application development toolset works with the new Sunbelt 8.08 SUNDBCMP compiler and operates under Windows 3.x, Windows NT, and Windows 95.
Systemaker for Windows extends Infopro's character based screen designers and application generators to support GUI style applications. Applications may also be developed which operate in both character and GUI environments. In this case, both character and GUI screens are developed, then generated and compiled into the same object. At run time, the application senses which environment is being used and presents the appropriate user interface. The dual GUI plus character generate capability is licensed as an option.
Current Systemaker developers are not required to spend a lot of time to layout GUI screens when upgrading current character based designs. The GUI screen design module of Systemaker for Windows automatically proposes well layed out GUI screens based on original character screens and a set of heuristics which create better looking GUI screens than just formatting text and fields according to original character positions. Rectangular borders are turned into 3D backgrounds, titles are repositioned, screen labels are fonted distinctly from screen text, fields are turned into 3D edittext boxes with either white (read/write) or light grey (read only) backgrounds. In addition to a GUI menu layout across the top of a window (screen), a floating tool bar shows available actions (next/prior screen, add new record, update record, print screen, etc.). Designers use the GUI screen layout facility of Systemaker to view and modify screens: position individual or grouped text and fields, change fonts (color, size, style), add boarders, associate radio buttons and check boxes with field data values, and more.
8.1 Event Handling -
presented by John E. Michelsen, Infopro, at the 1997 Sunbelt Conference. Other
presentations and information is available from Sunbelt
Computer Systems.
