What is FMLI?
The Form and Menu Language Interpreter provides a framework
for developers to write applications
and application interfaces that use menus and forms.
It controls many aspects of screen management for you.
That means you do not have to be concerned with the
low-level details of creating or placing frames,
providing users with a means of navigating between or within frames,
or processing the use of forms and menus.
Nor do you need to worry about what kind of terminal your
application will run on.
FMLI takes care of all that for you.
FMLI is a high-level programming tool having two main parts:
-
The Form and
Menu Language is a programming language for writing scripts that define
how an application will be presented to users.
The syntax of the Form and Menu Language is similar to that of
the UNIX system shell programming
language, and includes the following:
variable setting and evaluation,
built-in commands and functions,
use of and escape from special characters, redirection of input and output,
conditional statements, interrupt signal handling, and the ability to set
various terminal attributes.
The Form and Menu Language also includes sets of
``descriptors'' that are used
to define or customize attributes of frames and other
features of your application.
-
The Form and Menu Language Interpreter,
fmli(1),
is a command interpreter that sets up and controls the
video display screen on a terminal, using instructions from your
scripts to supplement FMLI's predefined screen control mechanisms.
FMLI scripts can also invoke UNIX system executables,
either in the background or in full screen mode.
The Form and Menu Language Interpreter
operates similarly to the UNIX command interpreter
sh(1).
At run time it parses the scripts
you have written,
giving you the advantages of quick prototyping and
easy maintenance.
Next topic:
Screen layout
Previous topic:
Introduction to the Form and Menu Language Interpreter (FMLI)
© 2004 The SCO Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
UnixWare 7 Release 7.1.4 - 27 April 2004