The character browse shares most of the same functional capabilities of the Windows graphical browse, including all methods and most attributes and events.

However, there are differences from the Windows graphical browse in:

  • Font management
  • Color management
  • Row and cell navigation

Font management

Because there is no font management within character interfaces, all font attributes are inactive for the character browse.

Color management

For color terminals, the character browse supports the following attributes to manage its color:

  • LABEL-DCOLOR — Specifies the color of a column label (like LABEL-FGCOLOR for the Windows browse).
  • COLUMN-DCOLOR — Specifies the color of a single column (like COLUMN-FGCOLOR for the Windows browse).
  • DCOLOR — Specifies the color of an individual cell (like FGCOLOR for the Windows browse). You can only specify the color of an individual cell as it appears in the view port. For more information on specifying individual cell color, see the Browse events section.
  • COLUMN-PFCOLOR — Specifies the color of the enabled (updateable) column with input focus (unsupported for the Windows browse).
  • PFCOLOR — Specifies the color of the updateable cell with input focus (handled by default processing for the Windows browse).

By default, the COLUMN-PFCOLOR and PFCOLOR values are both set from the INPUT color value. In Windows, you can specify this value in the registry or in an initialization file. On UNIX, you can specify this value in the PROTERMCAP file.

Row and cell navigation

Unlike the Windows graphical browse, the character browse does not support column searching (positioning to a row or cell by typing a character contained in that row or cell).

Unlike the Windows graphical browse, the character browse uses a different set of key functions to tab between updateable cells than between the browse and other sibling widgets. Tabbing between cells occurs only in the edit mode of the character browse using the EDIT-TAB and BACK-TAB key functions.

Tabbing forward from the character browse to a sibling object occurs in either row mode or edit mode using the TAB key function. However, tabbing backward from the character browse to a sibling object occurs only in row mode using the BACK-TAB key function.