The Printer Maintenance program provides filePro Plus with information about the printers connected to your system and allows you to enter and store print codes for each printer.
Print codes are of two types; those which call for the printing of a special character, such as a fraction or registered trademark, and those which call for some special operation, such as underlining or italics.
In the Define Output program, you can insert print codes into your output format. When filePro Plus prints the format, the print codes are sent to the printer at the appropriate moment.
You can usually find a list of print codes for your printer in an appendix at the back of your printer manual.
1. To define print codes, select main menu option “7- Printer Maintenance”.
2. At the Printer Maintenance screen, press <U> for update mode.
The print code table for your default printer is displayed or a list of the 12 supplied print code tables appear.
The numbers down the left side of the screen are identifier numbers for the print codes. The sequence is a set of characters and control codes sent to the printer for each code. The description is the action the action performs. These descriptions are predefined and can be changed. (You can find more information on defining print codes in the “filePro Plus Reference Manual,” Chapter 15.) Whenever you need to insert a print code in an output format (in Define Output), press <F5> and you will be able to enter the identifier number of the code you want.
<P> for Printers lets, you access the available printer table. This table keeps up to nine printers on call for use in filePro Plus. You can change the default printer by moving the asterisk.
3. Press <ESC> then <X> to return to the main menu.
In this tutorial, you have created files, indexes, screens, output formats, and processing tables. A filePro Plus file may have all theses things and more: such as automatic and output processing tables; selection formats for precise selection and retrieval of records; browse mode formats for arranging the fields displayed in browse mode; and customized field edit types for data-entry.
How can we remember which of these important elements a file has, and the names they have? In addition, how can we delete one or more of them? Use the filePro Plus Directory, option “?“ on the main menu.
1. From the main menu, select option “? - filePro Plus Directory”.
2. For the file name, select:
invc
Figure 28-1a. filePro Plus Directory Screen for “Invc” File
Figure 28-1b. filePro Plus Directory Screen for “Invc” File
3. To delete a format, press <D>. The “Delete Formats” menu appears.
In this case, let’s delete screen 0 since we have screen 1. Press <A> for Screens.
4. Move the highlight over screen zero (0), then press <RETURN>. An asterisk appears next to the screen name, which marks the screen for deletion. Press <ESC>.
5. At the prompt “Are you sure”, press “Y”. At this point, all screens marked with an asterisk would be deleted. Press <X> to return to the main menu.
You can change the background, foreground, and reverse video colors of the filePro Plus system, including menus, submenus, messages, format screens, etc., by selecting option “F - filePro Plus Utilities Menu” from the main menu.
With main menu option “A - Expand Files” you can reserve space for future filePro Plus records on the current hard drive or on other hard drives in your computer system. You can also use this option to determine how many records are currently on file and how many more records will fit on the current hard disk. To leave the program without adding any records, at the “How Many Additional Records” prompt, press <0> and <RETURN>. To cause a file to span more than one hard disk, type the word:
switch
Press <RETURN> at the above prompt.
From the main menu, select option “0 - Run A User Menu”. Just type or select the menu name from the window, and the menu will run immediately.
For our tutorial menu we used the name “tmenu”, use option 0 and try the “tmenu” menu. Try the various choices to see how they work. Remember to have your printer ready before trying choices on the “output” submenu. When you are finished, press <X> to return to the filePro Plus menu.