Class TBrowse() Foundation
Class function of the TBrowse class.
The class object generates TBrowse objects using the class method :new().
A TBrowse object is an extremely flexible mechanism for browsing any data that can be represented as a table of rows and columns. This includes data that is stored in a traditional .dbf file, data stored in an array, or even data that is created on the fly. Tbrowse objects display data on the screen in a completely customizable rectangular region called a browse window.
The browse window provides a way to view data sources containing more information than can fit on the screen. TBrowse objects contain methods that manipulate the data source and update the browse window, so that the user can interactively browse all rows and all columns of the data source at will. The architecture of the TBrowse class is constructed in a fashion which hides the data implementation from a particular TBrowse object. This provides a high degree of flexibility and customization for the programmer. TBrowse relies on the services of individual objects of the TBColumn class to retrieve and display data for a particular column of the browse. The TBrowse object administers its own cursor which highlights the data in the current row and column.
A TBrowse object contains numerous methods to navigate the browse cursor through the data. Usually, these methods are called in response to keystrokes entered by the user. When the user moves the browse cursor past the edge of the visible data, the TBrowse object scrolls the browse window so that the new rows or columns are visible. It also automatically synchronizes the visible data on the screen with the underlying data source.
Since the data source is hidden from the TBrowse object, fundamental movement operations are not built in. Instead, this functionality is achieved by manually assigning code blocks that handle moving to the beginning of the data source, moving to the end of the data source, and moving one or more rows within the data source (these compare to the GO TOP, GO BOTTOM and SKIP commands). The TBrowse object in turn contains methods which evaluate these code blocks, in response to user input.
The browse window is divided into three areas: header lines with column titles, data rows containing the data from the data source, and footer lines at the bottom of each column. Each area can be visibly separated by a line. Within the data rows, each column can be visibly separated by a line.
The display of data is accomplished by a TBrowse object incrementally row by row using a stabilization cycle. During stabilization, if an event occurs which requires a skip, the incremental display is halted until the skip operation is complete.
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