Dialog elements
Each dialog can have as many as 10 sections. Each section begins with a placeholder, such as )PROLOGUE.
Not every dialog uses all 10 placeholders. The program logic determines which placeholders are required. The placeholders described below are only those used in the sample dialogs discussed in Chapter 2. (You can find definitions of all 10 placeholders in the Managing Dialogs.)
Most dialogs have three main sections:
- )prologue
- Contains the statements that are executed before the BODY is displayed. Also, any unnamed section of code is presumed by the system to belong to the PROLOGUE.
- )body
- Contains the layout of the panel or pop-up window. Omit this section if your dialog involves no panel display.
- )epilogue
- Contains the logic that is executed after the display of the panel or pop-up window, although it is not limited to this purpose. Terminal input can be interrogated when the epilogue section is executed.
The other placeholders used in this document are described below.
- )comment
- Usually the beginning section, it is used to document the function, conventions used, and other information about the dialog. It is good practice to use a standard model for the comment block, such as the one used in the sample dialogs.
- )option
- Sets various dialog options and is also used to set the SSPL syntax level. (The sample dialogs in this guide use syntax level 1, which requires that function arguments appear inside parentheses.)
- )copy
- Specifies inclusion of a member of the panel library. The member is logically copied into the current dialog when it is first executed or refreshed.
- )declare
- Defines the scope of variables, that is, whether or not they are available to dialogs other than the one that defines them.
Additionally, SSPL provides statements, functions, and operators for creating applications. These are all fully documented in the SSPL Reference Manual.