Introductory frame descriptors

An introductory frame is a frame that is displayed briefly when your application starts, and is then cleared from the screen and replaced by the frame(s) you specify as arguments when fmli is invoked as the initial frame(s) to open. The introductory frame will be displayed again briefly when the user exits from your application.

The introductory frame is defined with four descriptors normally used to define a text frame. Note, however, that the defaults are different when they are used in an initialization file.

The introductory frame descriptors are described below. Either the title or text descriptor must be included in the set of introductory frame descriptors.

columns

The columns descriptor defines how many columns wide you want the introductory frame to be. It defaults to the integer value 50 if not defined for an introductory frame.

rows

The rows descriptor defines how many rows high you want the introductory frame to be. It defaults to the integer value 10 if not defined for an introductory frame.

text

The text descriptor defines the text you want to display in the introductory frame. It defaults to NULL if not defined. If neither the title descriptor or the text descriptor is defined in the initialization file, the introductory frame will not be displayed.

title

The title descriptor defines the title that will appear at the top of the introductory frame. It defaults to NULL if not defined. It will be truncated if it is longer than DISPLAYW-6. If neither the title descriptor or the text descriptor is defined, the introductory frame will not be displayed.

Example definition of an introductory frame

A definition for an introductory frame is simple, as the following example shows:

   title="WELCOME TO"
   text="My Application
   Copyright (c) 1989
   My Software, Inc.
   All rights reserved."
   rows=5
   columns=25

   text="`readfile DEF_FILES/myintrotext`"

which will cause the text frame definition file myintrotext to be read from the directory whose alias is defined to be DEF_FILES, and passed to the text descriptor as the argument. (See ``The alias file'' for more information about how to define aliases.)