The Form and Menu Language

Descriptors

Descriptors are the basic building blocks of the Form and Menu Language. Each descriptor defines a particular attribute that you can customize for the type of frame you are defining. The three types of frames that you can define--menus, forms, and text frames--each have their own set of descriptors, as do the initialization file, the commands file, and the alias file.

The general syntax of descriptor statements in the Form and Menu Language is

   descriptor=value

where descriptor is any valid descriptor for the frame definition file or application level definition file you are writing, and value is a value of the type expected by the descriptor. The value may include backquoted expressions that evaluate to part, or all, of the descriptor value, as well as FMLI commands and their arguments. Some descriptors have default values.

To take a simple example, if the variable LOGNAME evaluates to chris, then

   name=hello there $LOGNAME --today is `date`

results in the value of the name descriptor being

   hello there chris --today is Sun Aug 27 16:07:23 EDT 1989.

Note that there are no spaces around the equal sign (=) in a descriptor statement.