Derived fields are used in a similar way to derived fields in a report definition. There are a few differences which the user needs to be aware of, otherwise please see the general chapter on derived field use for more information.
What do you want to do?
Derived fields from a report definition
Although report definitions allow use of derived fields which do not
have names, Format Stationery requires all derived fields to be
named. The naming convention is as follows;
Field names can be up to 8 characters
Field names cannot start with a numeric character
Field names must end with a dollar sign if the result of the derived
field is not numeric
Some alpha fields will need to be able to hold a large number of
characters. Normally an alpha derived field will be dimensioned to
hold 32 characters. Only if more than 32 characters are required does
the field name have to be set up in a particular way. It is
structured as follows.
AAAA_##$
The AAAA portion of the field name can be any normal alpha
character, just as it can in any derived field name.
All alpha derived field names must end in a dollar sign ($).
The ## part of the name should be a number from 33 to 99
inclusive. This number will determine the length of the derived field.
On later releases of the software the format allowed will be amended to:
AAA_###$
This will allow alpha derived fields to have a length of up to 255 characters.
The report definitions that will drive the stationery format can have
derived fields of its own, however these derived fields and values
are not accessible to the standard user. More advanced users of the
software can retrieve derived information from the report definition.
Format Stationery provides some standard derived fields for everybody
to use. They are as follows:
Page number
Line number
Company name
Run date
Run time
The page number and line number fields are self explanatory. The
Company name is the one users see when they select a company when
entering a module. The run date is today's day number and, if used,
should be put onto the format as a date field with an 8, 10 or
20-character image depending on the required date presentation.
The run time will print the time the report is run.
Note: The date field will print as a full text version of the
date if 20 characters are used for the image. Remember, however, that
if the date to be printed is within three months of today's date, and
is within the same calendar year, then the year will not print. If a
letter is written on the 23rd of July, the 4th of August would be
printed without the year thus, '4th August', although if the letter
was printed in January and the date 4th of August was being included,
it would print thus, '4th August 1995', this time including the year
because it is outside of the 3-month date range.
Field names
Long alpha derived fields
Derived fields from a report definition
Standard Derived fields
