Fields And Formatted Displays - IBM 3270 Operator's Manual

10
Operating the 3270
Fields and
Formatted Displays
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Figure 4. Bank checks have a standard arrangement.
The upper right portion is usuaUy reserved for the date. The
center is for the name of the party to whom the check is made
payable and the amount of the check. The lower right portion
usually contains the space for the signature of the person writing
the check.
The various areas of bank checks that always contain the same
type of information or data are called "fields" in data-processing
language, for example, the
"date"
field, or the "signature" field.
Most documents to be entered into a computing system will be
organized by fields.
This practice of standardizing the arrangement of data
originated because the person using the information could do his
job much faster knowing that one type o( data would appear at
the same location on every document.
When a display station screen is divided into fields, it makes
working with the display station quicker and easier for both the
display station operator and the computer program. The applica-
tion program divides the screen into fields and establishes the
rules as to what each field will contain. The program then knows
that the same type of information will always be displayed in the
same location. Knowing this, the program can process the data
from the screen much quicker. The operator can also perform
her job more efficiently having this information.
When a screen is divided into fields, it is known as a formatted
screen. A screen that the program has not divided into fields is
known as an unformatted screen. Each job that you work on
could use a different format or none at all; therefore, you may
be working with both formatted and unformatted screens.