Converting CAPITAL DOS Style Sheets

CAPITAL will be able to import the basic field information of a DOS style sheet, but you will have to reorganise its structure in order to use it as a CAPITAL for Windows Form.

These are the major differences to consider:

• Control codes are not supported as they are no longer necessary. These are style sheet field codes such as [~27,...]. If you wish to change the size or font type, simply change the font of the field or line of text. Typical examples include [~15] which on dot-matrix printers made the font half size, and [~18] which printed double-width characters. All control code sequences are ignored by CAPITAL for Windows. Once they are imported onto your form you should select them with the mouse and press the Del key to delete them.

• IBM PC character set symbols such as box and line characters are usually not supported under Windows. (Although if you have access to the MS Linedraw font on your computer, you will be able to use them. The MS Linedraw font does not come with many later versions of Windows.) Remove these symbols and replace them with line and box objects.

• Trim and spacing codes such as ^, |, $ and % are ignored by CAPITAL for Windows. Double-click on the field you wish to alter and select the type of formatting you want from the Alignment and Display boxes.

• In DOS forms that have note fields you can specify the note line length, note line to extract and the note pad number using syntax such as:

     NOTES:40:10:3

     which translates into "return a line 40 characters long, extracted from the 10th such line, out of note pad 3." Under Windows the note pad line length is controlled by the Display Length field property. The line number to extract is now obsolete. (The number of lines to display is now controlled by the size of the rectangle on the form occupied by the note field.) However, you may still specify the note pad number. Thus:

     NOTES:40:10:3

     should be changed to:

     NOTES:3

     The command:

     NOTE:40:1

      would just translate to:

     NOTES

• Unlike CAPITAL for Windows Forms, CAPITAL's DOS style sheets are fairly unstructured. Quite often CAPITAL for Windows must guess about the arrangement of the form and sometimes this guess is wrong. You should check each field (by pointing to and clicking on it) to ensure that it has been assigned to either the "parent" or the "body" of the form as you desire.

• The DOS field TITLE:1, TITLE:2, etc., has been replaced with a new field code called TITLEEXTEND.

• The body section of the form will probably appear scrunched up. You must manually resize the fields in the body section using the mouse, or select the body and press CTRL-Z once you have reduced the size of the body font.

  Hints & Tips

The quickest way to arrange body fields to a specific set of sizes is to do the following:

1.      Approximately resize each field to its desired size.

2.      Click on the body section so that all body fields are selected.

3.      Press the right-mouse button and select Body Properties... from the pop-up menu.

4.      Rearrange the fields in the Body Field List using the up and down arrow buttons.

5.      Click on OK.

Repeat these five steps until you have the body section reasonably organised. It is important that you re-arrange the fields in the Body Field List if you want CAPITAL to reorder the items in the body section. You can always move the fields back to their final desired positions by repeating the five steps above.

• You can find out which fields CAPITAL for Windows does not recognise by running Files|Diagnose.