In the EDGAR world, inline CSS can be used to style documents. However, CSS style sheets are not allowed. I recently ran into a case where document needed to be published on a system which was just the opposite — CSS classes are ok, but inline styles are verboten. A quick Legato script saved may hours of work by translating the inline styles to a style sheet.

Arrays, such as lists, tables or cubes, are a useful programming tool. However, to get the most from using an array, it helps to have a more thorough understanding of exactly how arrays are stored and allocated.

When a script has finished its assigned task, it can ‘return’ or ‘exit’. However, which is best? What style of coding should you use? It depends on the circumstances. Legato allows for flexibility in how scripts are structured and executed.

When it comes to text, we as programmers live in a world that is a combination of 8-bit and 16-bit. Living in 8-bit is okay until you need to access characters outside the scope of standard ASCII and ISO Latin 8859. Then you need additional support, and that support comes from Legato’s functions to handle Unicode and UTF-8.

The Legato IDE contains a nice feature called the Debug View, which is obviously very useful when debugging. In this blog, I will discuss the basic functionality of Debug View. It allows a programmer to view and inspect the details of variables while the target script program is running.

Automatic operation of checkbox and radio buttons is easy, but what if you want to extend the functionality or do something out of the ordinary? This blog discusses how to manage the control more closely via button notifications. I will also update the checkbox script from Part One of this series to use notifications to add a narrative description to the dialog.

The radio button is a common tool used to select a single option among multiple choices within a dialog box. In part two of this series, we will be covering the radio button and taking the mystery out of the “group box” and the operation of automatic radio buttons. In addition, the combo box will also be examined as an alternative.

For user selection controls within dialog boxes, there are three conventional options: checkboxes, radio buttons and list/combo boxes. Each has its application since each has its strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes developers make poor choices concerning which of the three to use on their on dialogs or web pages. Bad implementations may still work, but they provide a less intuitive user experience, and these uses may not be in the spirit for which the controls were designed. Hopefully this article will help improve your knowledge and therefore ability to choose a selection control through providing information on how each type works.

In this discussion of dialog boxes, I will continue to explore the data control by looking at how we can manipulate the content and retrieve data. As mentioned in Part V, the Data Control and Data View share many of the same functions as well as the same base, the Data Sheet. If you would like to review part 1, it is available here.

Scripts can share a data pool that transcends the life of a script and can therefore be shared by multiple other scripts. There are other methods of storing what we usually call “meta” data, but session data is specifically designed to allow scripts to communicate and share information over time and threads. In this blog, we will explore session data and, as a side discussion, atomic operations.

When a program presents textual data to a user, it is usually (and hopefully) formatted for easy consumption. As the programmer, understanding how to format strings will make the process of making text presentable significantly faster and smoother. Legato offers an arsenal of tools to make formatting text simple and easy.

Well, may be. When the house of cards you are in begins to fall, wouldn’t it be nice to grab Fluffy the cat, your wallet, phone, and perhaps the car keys? Sometimes a program engages in operations that just cannot be casually aborted without an orderly shutdown. Within Legato, there is a function that help you to just that. This can even apply when a run-time error occurs within your script.

A term often used in programming that sometimes leaves new developers flummoxed is the “handle”. Handles are a convenient way to identify complex objects like windows, files, etc. In this blog, we’re going to get a “handle” on handles by explaining what they are, how Legato creates and manages them, and what you need to know to properly use them.

Version Legato 1.1n (GoFiler 4.24a) introduced trackbar support. This is a Windows common control allowing for the adjustment of a visual slider. Trackbars are commonly employed to allow users to adjust things that have a range of values, such as the magnification of a document or image, the position inside a document, or the volume of the playback on an audio/video file. Trackbars are similar in many ways to scrollbar controls.

Sometimes it is desirable to display tables of information and allow user to edit the data on the sheet directly. Novaworks’ products employ a table data editing platform that in many ways operates like MS Excel™ and provides a high level of flexibility. It is used for XBRL editing, EDGAR Forms, and much more. In this article, I will introduce the data control.