The AREA tag

The AREA tag (and its matching end tag) defines the main portions of the panel body. You code all of the interactive fields for the panel within AREA definitions.

Add an AREA definition to the previous application panel markup.

<!doctype dm system>
<panel name=mainpan6 depth=18>Item Selection
  <topinst>Select one of the following items and press Enter.
  <area>
    <selfld name=itemtyp selwidth=76>
      <choice>Automotive
      <choice>Hardware
      <choice>Health and beauty
      <choice>Lawn and garden
      <choice>Sporting goods
    </selfld>
  </area>
  <botinst>To exit the application, press F3.
</panel>

As stated in Panel instructions, you must code the top and bottom instruction tags outside of the AREA definition. In this example, we coded only a selection field within the AREA definition.

The AREA tag has an optional MARGINW attribute that you can use to specify the width of the panel body margins. This is useful for arranging fields on a panel.

The MARGINW attribute has a default value of 1. You can specify a different value to increase the size of the panel body margins. For example, we could specify a margin width for the AREA in the preceding markup example.

<!doctype dm system>
<panel name=mainpan7>Item Selection
  <topinst>Select one of the following items and press Enter.
  <area marginw=10>
    <selfld name=itemtyp selwidth=58>
      <choice>Automotive
      <choice>Hardware
      <choice>Health and beauty
      <choice>Lawn and garden
      <choice>Sporting goods
    </selfld>
  </area>
  <botinst>To exit the application, press F3.
</panel>

We specified a margin width of 10. Here is how the panel looks now:

Figure 1. AREA MARGINW=10

                               Item Selection

 Select one of the following items and press Enter.

          __  1.  Automotive
              2.  Hardware
              3.  Health and beauty
              4.  Lawn and garden
              5.  Sporting goods

 To exit the application, press F3.