Introduction to the Screens tab

This section shows some of the ways in which the Screens tab of the Macro Editor is related to the XML <screen> element described in the previous section. Figure 1 shows the Macro Editor with the Screens tab selected:

Figure 1. Screens tab of the Macro Editor

In the figure above, notice that the Screens tab contains:

A Screen Name listbox at the top of the tab.
Three subordinate tabs, labeled General, Descriptions, and Actions.

Currently the General tab is selected.

You should notice that there are two Screen Name fields on the Screens tab:

The Screen Name field at the top of the Screens tab is a listbox that contains the names of all the macro screens in the macro.
The Screen Name field at the top of the General subtab is an input field in which you can type the name that you want to assign to the currently selected screen.

In the Screen Name listbox at the top of the Screens tab, you click the name of the macro screen that you want to work on (such as Screen1), and the Macro Editor displays in the subtabs the information belonging to that macro screen. For example, in Figure 1 the listbox displays the macro screen name Screen1 and the subtabs display the information belonging to Screen1. If the user selected another macro screen name in the listbox, perhaps Screen10, then the Macro Editor would display in the subtabs the information belonging to macro screen Screen10.

In the Screen Name input field under the General tab, you type the name that you want to assign to the currently selected macro screen. A screen name such as Screenx, where x stands for some integer (for example, Screen1), is a temporary name that the Macro object gives to the macro screen when it creates the macro screen. You can retain this name, or you can replace it with a more descriptive name that is easier to remember. (When all your macro screens have names such as Screen3, Screen10, Screen24, and so on, it is difficult to remember which macro screen does what.)

You have probably already noticed that the subtabs General, Description, and Actions on the Screens tab correspond to the main parts of the XML <screen> element described in the previous section. Specifically,

The General subtab presents the information stored in the attributes of a <screen> element.
The Description subtab presents the information stored in the <description> subelement of a <screen> element.
The Actions subtab presents the information stored in the <actions> subelement of a <screen> element.

But what about the <nextscreens> subelement? For usability reasons the information belonging to the <nextscreens> element is presented in a higher-level tab, the Links tab. You can see the Links tab immediately to the right of the Screens tab in Figure 1.

Figure 2 shows the XML begin tag and end tag of a sample <screen> element named Screen1:

Figure 2. Begin tag and end tag of a <screen> element

   <screen name="Screen1" entryscreen="true" exitscreen="false" transient="false">
   ...
   </screen>

In the figure above, the ellipsis (...) is not part of the XML text but indicates that the required elements contained inside the <screen> element have been omitted for simplicity. You should notice that the attributes in the begin tag correspond to fields on the General tab in Figure 1. For example, the name attribute (name="Screen1" ) corresponds to the Screen Name input field on the General tab, and the entryscreen attribute (entryscreen="true") corresponds to the Entry Screen listbox on the General tab.

Figure 3 shows the XML text for the entire <screen> element including the enclosed elements:

Figure 3. Sample XML <screen> element

   <screen name="Screen1" entryscreen="true" exitscreen="false" transient="false">
      <description>
         <oia status="NOTINHIBITED" optional="false" invertmatch="false" />
      </description>
      <actions>
         <mouseclick row="4" col="15" />
         <input value="3[enter]" row="0" col="0" movecursor="true"
                   xlatehostkeys="true" encrypted="false" />
      </actions>
      <nextscreens timeout="0" >
         <nextscreen name="Screen2" />
      </nextscreens>
   </screen>

In the figure above you should notice that the <screen> element contains the required <description>, <actions>, and <nextscreens> elements.