Defining display formats

Display formats are represented through masks, where certain characters have special significance. PocketBuilder supports four kinds of display formats, each using different mask characters:

Numbers
Strings
Dates
Times

For example, in a string format mask, each @ represents a character in the string and all other characters represent themselves. You can use the following mask to display phone numbers:

(@@@) @@@-@@@@

Combining formats

You can include different types of display format masks in a single format. Use a space to separate the masks. For example, the following format section includes a date and time format:

mmmm/dd/yyyy h:mm

Using sections

Each type of display format can have multiple sections, with each section corresponding to a form of the number, string, date, or time. Only one section is required; additional sections are optional and should be separated with semicolons (;).

The following format specifies different displays for positive and negative numbers; negative numbers are displayed in parentheses:

$#,##0;($#,##0)

Using keywords

Enclose display format keywords in square brackets. For example, you can use the keyword [General] when you want PocketBuilder to determine the appropriate format for a number.

Using colors

You can define a color for each display format section by specifying a color keyword before the format. The color keyword is the name of the color, or a number that represents the color, enclosed in square brackets: [RED] or [255]. The number is usually used only when a color is required that is not provided by name. The named color keywords are:

[BLACK]
[BLUE]
[CYAN]
[GREEN]
[MAGENTA]
[RED]
[WHITE]
[YELLOW]

The formula for combining primary color values into a number is:

256*256*blue + 256*green + red=number

where the amount of each primary color is specified as a value from 0 to 255. For example, to specify cyan, substitute 255 for blue, 255 for green, and 0 for red. The result is 16776960.

Table 21-1 lists the blue, green, and red values you can use in the formula to create other colors.

**Table 21-1: Numeric values used to create colors**
Blue	Green	Red	Number	Color
0	0	255	255	Red
0	255	0	65280	Green
0	128	0	32768	Dark green
255	0	0	16711680	Blue
0	255	255	65535	Yellow
0	128	128	32896	Brown
255	255	0	16776960	Cyan
192	192	192	12632256	Light gray

Using special characters

To include a character in a mask that has special meaning in a display format, such as a square bracket ( [ ), precede the character with a backslash (\). For example, to display a single quotation mark, enter \'.

Setting display formats during execution

In scripts, you can use GetFormat to get the current format for a column and SetFormat to change the format for a column during execution.