XFormDBF Help

Options Page

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The Options page specifies parameters for setups, cleanups, a template output file for cloning, and miscellaneous checkbox options.  The settings on this page would generally be established by a developer, not a "normal" user.  Brief descriptions of the Options settings follow:  (Note that all of these settings are saved and restored on a per-configuration basis, as are all user-settable form parameters throughout XFormDBF.)

InitExp Button and Textbox
Clicking on this button invokes VFP's expression builder, allowing you to specify an optional input initialization function.  This function, or functional expression, will be evaluated immediately after opening the input table for the current configuration.  The point of this feature is to provide a "hook" for performing an application-specific step such as opening a bunch of code lookup tables.  The result of evaluating the initialization expression is a success flag, i.e. .T. means initializations were successful; .F. means initializations failed, which is treated as an error.  (In order to clear the current expression, you must enter at least one blank character in VFP's expression builder dialog, because entering nothing is interpreted as "no change").

CleanupExp Button and Textbox
Click this button to enter an optional expression to be evaluated when the input file is closed or closed and reopened.  This allows for any required cleanup steps to be performed, such as closing lookup tables.  The function return value and method of clearing this expression are similar to InitExp.

Template Button and Textbox
This button allows you to pick a template output table, which would typically be an empty table structure (including DBF, FPT, and CDX files).  If you Escape or Cancel the dialog to pick an template file, the previous setting is restored.  The template file need not exist at this time, but the Clone action will be disabled until it does.  When there is a template file for a configuration, the Clone button on the Files Page is enabled, otherwise the Clone button is disabled.  Also the Clone button is disabled if the template file is the same as the output file, because you can't copy a file onto itself.  XFormDBF also can be invoked non-interactively with an action that instructs it to Clone the template before running the transformation.

The accompanying read-only textbox displays the path of the template file, if any, associated with the current configuration.  You can edit this path directly in the textbox by double-clicking, and you can enter a relative path or eliminate the template by this method.

Note that the current implementation uses VFP's GETFILE() dialog to pick a file.  Unfortunately, this causes some minor annoyances: there is no default file (even though there should be), mixed case is not preserved, and there is no way to enter a blank value that is distinguishable from Escaping or Cancelling the dialog.

Check Boxes

Dev Mode
Pretty useless in its present form, this is a vestige of the origins of the XFormDBF application.  This option should either be dropped, or redefined.  What it does right now is to enable or disable changes to the Show Tips checkbox.  (I warned you it was pretty useless!)
Show Tips
Enables or disables the display of tooltips for this form, i.e. the little messages that appear over a control when you hover the mouse.
Don't Optimize
Check this to force slower field-by-field replacement logic with field-level validation to be used when running the transformation, for diagnostic purposes.  When this is unchecked (the default), XFormDBF uses a much faster algorithm.  Note that the Test button always uses a slower, un-optimized method, regardless of the setting of this option.  The Don't Optimize option only affects the behavior of the Run action.
Auto Field Test
This option enables or disables automatic display of the current output field value as you move around on the Fields page.  The value is shown (via WAIT WINDOW NOWAIT) along with the input record number, the output field name, and the value type resulting from evaluating the current mapping expression.  An indication is also given if the value is incompatible with the output field type.  There is no display if the input table is closed, or if no output field with a mapping is currently selected.  By default, this option is turned on, but you can disable it if you prefer.

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