WebFOCUS Language

The following are release considerations and product changes for HTMLCSS:

• The default value for the HTMLCSS parameter has changed to ON. All core WebFOCUS styling is activated by this change.
  • Due to this change in the default, you must add the SET HTMLCSS=OFF command to the procedure to provide continued support for external cascading style sheet styling.
  • When HTMLCSS=ON, and grids are enabled, the inner gridlines inherit the color applied to the font defined in each cell.
  • When HTMLCSS=ON and SQUEEZE=OFF, the em font measurement is used. The em font measurement is based on the point size of the font, which is the height of the character set including ascenders, descenders, and gap spacing. An em font measurement is wider than the largest letter in the font, usually a capital M or W, because it is not a measurement of width. Given these font measurement considerations, for requests with SQUEEZE=OFF, the following is recommended for the column width calculation to be the largest column value or the width of the column title, whichever is larger:
    • Use proportional font.
    • Add the SET HTMLCSS=OFF command to the procedure.

Activating the right-to-left setting in the SET LAYOUTRTL command will shift the table contents to align to the right of the page, but will not move images placed in headings or footings.

The MISSINGTEST parameter determines how IF-THEN-ELSE expressions in a DEFINE are evaluated when the virtual field can have missing values.

In prior releases, by default, when an IF-THEN-ELSE expression was used to calculate a result and the IF expression evaluated to zero (for numeric expressions) or blank (for alphanumeric expressions), the left hand side was checked to see if it had MISSING ON. If it did, the result of the expression was MISSING, not true or false, and the outcome returned was MISSING, not the result of evaluating the THEN or ELSE expression, if the field only needs some missing values. The SET MISSINGTEST = NEW command eliminates the missing test for the IF expression so that either the THEN expression or the ELSE expression will be evaluated and returned as the result. This is the new default behavior.

The increased number of ACROSS columns to 1024 may exceed browser support for colspans in a table. Prior to the increased limit, users received a WebFOCUS message. Now, the table is created, but may present with issues due to browser limitations.