Features and Options for Memo Fields

Memo fields share many of the same features available for data fields, including the following:

• nChanging the inactive, active and skip video attributes. See Chapter 15, "Changing the Appearance of Data Forms."
  
  
• nSpecifying a message to appear in the message window when the memo field is active. See Chapter 9, "Data Field Processing Options."
  
  
• nInstalling context-sensitive help information for the memo field. See Chapter 44, "The Help System."
  
  
• nInstalling choice lists on tickertape memo fields. See Chapter 12, "Choice Lists."

There are some differences, however, in the field options available for memo fields. Only the following options are supported for memo fields.

• nCLEARONKEY
  
  
• nFORCECONVERT
  
  
• nINITIALBLANKS
  
  
• nSKIP
  
  
• nPROTECTED
  
  
• nINSERTINIT
  
  
• nREQUIRED
  
  
• nREQ_AT_EXIT
  
  
• nTRAILBLANKS
  
  
• nKEEPNEWLINES

Memo fields support a special field option, KEEPNEWLINES, which specifies whether you want spaces or newline characters inserted after every line during data conversion.

If you use the Designer to create a data form containing a memo field, these memo field options can be set from within the Designer. If you are writing the code to create a data form with a memo field, these field options can be set using the set field options function, sf_opt(). See Chapter 9, "Data Field Processing Options," for more information.

One other note must be added. The form option AUTOMOVE, if set, is not supported while the user is in a memo field. Since users often go to the first or last character of the memo field buffer by hitting the arrow keys until the memo field stops scrolling, AUTOMOVE is disabled to prevent the user from accidentally jumping to the next or previous items.