ISPF panel scrollable field indicators not behaving

Ron Masters · New User Joined: 21 Dec 2011 Posts: 24 Location: UK

I am 35year mf, but this is my first in-depth go with writing and ISPF/rexx Dialog, and I can't get the -+ scrollable field indicators to behave properly. I don't know if it's a "feature" of ISPF or if it's me doing something wrong.

I use TBDISPL to display a table - one of the table columns has values that are longer than the field on the screen, so I am using a scrollable field to display this column. The panel definition has
)FIELD
FIELD(TblFONam) IND(si)
and the )MODEL specifies si at column 76
and the attribute byte is '33'x for which I have a )ATTR statement
33 TYPE(OUTPUT) COLOR(RED)
and so I get a display that looks like this:
View Function Row 1 to 5 of 5
Command ===> Scroll ===> CSR

Function . : RON.FUNCTION1
Description : RON DESC ONE
Team . . . : ESS Type . . . . . : STD RACF Auditor . :
Div . . . . : CT Default group : RAESDFLT RACF Special . :
Dept . . . : ITSM Function Group : RAESAAAB RACF Operations : Y
Usertype . . . :
Screen 1/6 Offerings
S Team Type Div Dept Offering Name si xx
PMC D2D CT ITSM RH_OFFER1_MOD +
STG D2D CT ITSM RH_OFFER2_
ESS D2D CT ITSM RON.OFFERING_ENGLISH_IS_A_WEST_GERMANIC_LANG +
DB2 ELV CT XXXX RON.OFFERING1 +
ESS D2D CT ITSM RON.OFFERING2 +
******************************* Bottom of data ********************************
Everything's great (except I did expect the '+' in column 'si' to be in =all= displayed rows).
At least, it's great until I try to scroll right on the scrollabel field. With scroll amount set to either CSR or PAGE, I type RIGHT in the primary command input field, I put the cursor in the middle of the TblFONam field (titled Offering Name on the panel) and hit Enter.
Yes, the field scrolls to the right, but the scroll indicator is not right. It should be showing '-+', but it doesn't. This is what I see:
View Function Row 1 to 5 of 5
Command ===> Scroll ===> CSR

Function . : RON.FUNCTION1
Description : RON DESC ONE
Team . . . : ESS Type . . . . . : STD RACF Auditor . :
Div . . . . : CT Default group : RAESDFLT RACF Special . :
Dept . . . : ITSM Function Group : RAESAAAB RACF Operations : Y
Usertype . . . :
Screen 1/6 Offerings
S Team Type Div Dept Offering Name si xx
PMC D2D CT ITSM _MOD -+
STG D2D CT ITSM _
ESS D2D CT ITSM ING_ENGLISH_IS_A_WEST_GERMANIC_LANGUAGE_THAT +
DB2 ELV CT XXXX ING1 +
ESS D2D CT ITSM ING2 +
******************************* Bottom of data ********************************
It seems that only the first row of my table has the correct indicator, the others are all missing the '-'. And the second row doesn't even have anything showing in the scrollable indicator.

Can anyone advise me where I'm going wrong please?
Anything extra you'd like to know, just ask.

Thanks
Ron

Pedro · Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 12:29 am

Show us your )MODEL line and your TBCREATE statement.

I think your SI column should not be part of the TBCREATE

What happens when the cursor is on other rows when you scroll?

Use code tags to display your examples.

PeterHolland · Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 2:09 pm

publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/zos/v1r12/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.zos.r12.f54dg00%2Ffield.htm

Ron Masters · New User Joined: 21 Dec 2011 Posts: 24 Location: UK

Thank you for your prompt responses.

I've been to the referenced online manual already, and tried IND, LIND, RIND, with and without indicator overrides, but I can't shake the problem.

I put trace c in the rexx code, the TBCREATE is like this:

Ron Masters · New User Joined: 21 Dec 2011 Posts: 24 Location: UK

Screenshot attached, with "Offering Name" field scrolled fully right.

Ron Masters · New User Joined: 21 Dec 2011 Posts: 24 Location: UK

The first row of the table seems to behave correctly at all times. It shows + when scrolled fully left, - when scrolled fully right, and -+ otherwise. It's the subsequent rows that are wrong.

enrico-sorichetti · Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 3:43 pm

please do not post screenshots
a plain text cut and paste with the code tags is more than enough!

Ron Masters · New User Joined: 21 Dec 2011 Posts: 24 Location: UK

Sorry, I didn't know not to. I won't paste screenshots again. It did look a bit big.

When scrolled fully left, looks like this

don.leahy · Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 6:30 pm

Have you tried the SFIHDR keyword on the )MODEL line?

I haven't tried it, but the manual says:

The SFIHDR keyword is used when a variable model line defines scrollable
fields and scroll indicators are required for the scrollable fields.
SFIHDR indicates that the first variable model line defines scroll
indicator fields for scrollable fields that are defined on subsequent
variable model lines.

Ron Masters · New User Joined: 21 Dec 2011 Posts: 24 Location: UK

The SFIHDR looked a very good suggestion. So I changed my model line from

don.leahy · Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2012 11:15 pm

Question: When you scroll left/right, are you expecting the entire "Offering Name" column to scroll, or just the selected row?

If the entire column scrolls, then why would you expect to see scroll indicators on each line? Does the scroll indicator disappear when you scroll down?

Ron Masters · New User Joined: 21 Dec 2011 Posts: 24 Location: UK

hi don, when I scroll left/right I expect the whole column to shift (and it does). That's good.

If the entire column scrolls, then why would you expect to see scroll indicators on each line?
Not knowing what I'm doing wrong makes it hard to answer this question. Having scroll indicators on every row is what I want to achieve. I'm assuming I'm allowed to code the scroll indicator variable in the model line (even though it's not in the table), and that's why I expected to see it on each line.

Does the scroll indicator disappear when you scroll down?
Please refer to my post of Thu Jan 26, 2012 10:23 am which shows the top of the screen. From experiment I found that the scroll indicators were correct only in the top row of the table; scrolling up and down gave unpredictable indicators, sometimes they were blank, sometimes they were +, none of them were - or -+ except row 1.

I appreciate all the help I'm getting here, thanks guys.

don.leahy · Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 12:48 am

I ran my own simple experiment, and my results were similar to yours.

TBDISPL treats an entire table column is as one field, so ISPF probably only wants to support one occurrence of the scroll indicator field. That's my theory, anyway.

Personally, I can live with that. It seems more intuitive to me; if I see scroll indicators on every line of a scrollable list, I would expect that each line on the screen can be individually scrolled left and right. Since that is not the case, then a scroll indicator at the top of the list seems logical to me.

I think that to do what you want you may have to abandon TBDISPL and use a dynamic area.

Marso · Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 3:52 am

Perhaps you can get some help from "ISPF Panels Beyond the Basics"
There is a whole chapter on scrollable areas.

Ron Masters · New User Joined: 21 Dec 2011 Posts: 24 Location: UK

don, thanks for your input and validation of the behaviour. I have to agree, it seems TBDISPL doesn't like the indicator in the model line. I'm going to put the SI variables into the fixed part of the panel.

Many thanks to all who participated.

Ron