Idea Delivered Partially

A significant number of system variables were added in XPP 9.5. Please refer to the XPP 9.5 Release Notes for further information.

Enable access to ALL system and frill variables

While there are pages and pages of system and frills variables, there are still many missing.

When viewing the Status Window, there are many attributes and dimension values that are not accessible via the % or ! variables.

E.g.   !tbcypos - tabular cell y position.

Strangely, there IS tbcxpos - but not the ypos?

Rather than list variables that aren't present, it would be easier to simply make ALL Status Window values available as % or ! variables.

Mark Hutchinson
Parents

  • You are going to have to list the variables that you want (and I'm assuming they are pretty much all tabular). In your example, you say that "!txcxpos" is there, but "!tbxypos" is not. However, the value representing the "!tbcxpos" is not in the status window, so I cant tell what you want.

  • in reply to Steve Piercey

    !tbcxpos exists (and is described in the xymacro manual), but !tbcypos is NOT described in manual.   Even in the executables (xyview and compose) tbcxpos can be seen in a long list of other !variables, but no tbcypos.

  • in reply to Mark Hutchinson

    Hi Mark,

    As far as not currently having available "row" variables like !tbcypos, I'll just note that when the "table column system variables" (such as !tbcxpos) were added (back in the XPP 7.1 release) it had only been requested to have access to the "column" information and so that's all that we did back then.

    To add the corresponding "row" variables would also require adding the ability to do e.g. <whichrow;row#> to specify which row's information is being accessed (the parallel to using <whichcol;col#> that we have now for the column variables).

    I believe that Steve was asking you to be more specific about what "variables" you really need, or at least some prioritization of such. To just ask for "ALL" Status Window variables is really too open-ended and doesn't really allow for other customers to "vote" on what specifically is important to them. It's just not plausible for us to spend the time and resources to try to do "ALL" possible variables - at least not all at once.Cold sweat

    And Steve was pointing out that in your initial post at the end as a "summary" you mentioned wanting "ALL" Status Window variables, but earlier you referred to wanting "row" variables like !tbcypos which actually does not have any corresponding value in the Status Window (Line Status does show Rdpth, row depth, but it does not show any e.g.. Rypos, row Y-pos, value).

    So can you be more specific about what you really "need" and also give some prioritization? Perhaps you could split up your request into some separate Ideas so that voting by others can also be more specific (such as one Idea for "table row system variables" and then one or more separate Ideas for some subsets of "Status Windows" values if there are other values that you want).

    Jonathan Dagresta
    SDL XPP Engineering

  • in reply to Jonathan Dagresta

    I'll create a short, definitive list of what I would like to see as variable access and also what existing variables should (IMHO) appear in the Status Window.  Not being an engineer it seemed sensible to think if something did appear in the Status Window then XPP "knows" about it so it -should- be relatively easy to populate a variable.  Having worked with XPP since IPS 1.? I naturally assume that everything is possible. XPP Engineering Dept rarely disappoint ;)     I'll get onto that list ASAP.

  • in reply to Mark Hutchinson

    Thanks, Mark.

    And I missed that you had three "categories" in your request:
    1. Values "missing" in Status Window that have variables
    2. Variables "missing" for values in Status Window
    3. Values "missing" in both Status Windows and variables

    Yes we have the "technology", but not necessarily the time and resources.  Slight smile

    Jonathan Dagresta
    SDL XPP Engineering

Comment
  • in reply to Mark Hutchinson

    Thanks, Mark.

    And I missed that you had three "categories" in your request:
    1. Values "missing" in Status Window that have variables
    2. Variables "missing" for values in Status Window
    3. Values "missing" in both Status Windows and variables

    Yes we have the "technology", but not necessarily the time and resources.  Slight smile

    Jonathan Dagresta
    SDL XPP Engineering

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