Weirdness in screen program (not that long!)

[Bruin, J.M. de]

Hi there,

I've posted something similar like this earlier today, but that mail exceeded
the size limit, so this is just a description of the problem without the
(extensive) source code.

I'm encountering some weirdness in a screen program (BTW my environment is VMS
7.2, PH 710G1).

The screen consists of three parts:
- identification fields of the primary file
- a cluster a the occurring detail file
- some temporary items to perform some additional prompting for a built-in copy
function.

Beside the Prim and Detail there are several secondary and designer files and a
bunch of internal and designer procedures.

Thing is the screen has been working without problems for a couple of years now
and in fact is still doing that after some changes I have made today.
These changes are the addition of the previously mentioned temp's and the fields
belonging to them.

They are character temp's and the fields have NOID, NOLABEL and DISPLAY on them
(beside some other display related parms).

At compilation time there is nothing wrong: all fields are placed as they
should, as shown in the screen layout template.

At run-time however the prompt for one of the temp's is done on the position of
the last field in the cluster (that field is normally a display only field).
Getting field info using the ??, informs me that it actually is the temp that is
needed / required / prompted.
It is just not on the right position!!!!
The other temp is filled and then forced to be displayed using Display <item>,
but alas, nothing is visible on the screen.

I can entering a value in the prompted temp and things run as intended!!!!

Disabling the last field in the cluster will resort in the prompt of the
required temp to be on the ID (!!!!!) position of the cluster !!!!!!
And again, entering a correct value will have the program run as intended.

The prompt is always done at the LAST occurrence of the cluster. Even without an
occurrence on the detail file the prompting will end up being done on the line
with the fields of the detail file. (like in a cluster)

Moving the temp fields to a position above the cluster (but beneath the primary
identification fields) will resort into a FATAL (yes FATAL) error and the
program crashes when starting to prompt for the temp field.

I've tried several other thing s (such as removing the Silent fields from the
cluster and disabling some other fields) but the behaviour stays.

I do understand this is a rather extensive and probably hard to dig into problem
without actually seeing it, but not posting it will never give me a solution.

If someone is interested in the actual source I can mail that privately as the
list server blocks it due to its size.

TIA

Mark de Bruin