Enhancements to the Graphical User Interface for the SAS System on Personal Computers

Transcription

1 Enhancements to the Graphical User Interface for the SAS System on Personal Computers Carol Williams Rigsbee, SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC ABSTRACT This paper describes Graphical User Interface (GUI) enhancements to the SAS System in Release 6.10 for Microsoft Windows and OS/2. The goal of this paper is to discuss the major enhancements including a description of the improved GUI, increased application integration capabilities, and the CD-ROM installation process. Some of the improved GUI capabilities include a configurable tool bar, a more robust help system, more methods to configure your GUI, printing improvements and electronic mail ( ) support. Application integration enhancements include support for Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) and Open Data Base Connectivity (ODBC), a method to access extemal Dynamic Link Libraries (DLL's) and the ability to import and export graphics to and from common PC data file formats. INTRODUCTION This paper provides an overview of the new enhancements. You should view this paper as an introduction but you should refer to the Microsoft Windows Environment: Changes and Enhancements of the SAS System, Release 6.10 and the OS/2 Environment: Changes and Enhancements of the SAS System. Release 6.10 for more details. Additionally, refer to "Exploiting Personal Computer Operating System with the SAS System" for a summary of GUI enhancements added in Release Utilizing the feature set of Microsoft Windows and OS/2 was the primary focus of the 6.10 release. In order to create a PC application that best utilized the PC feature set, we followed the GUI standards documented in The Windows Interface, An Application Design Guide and the Common User Access Guide to User Interface Design. Throughout this paper, SAS AWS refers to the container window of the SAS System, SAS application windows refer to the windows contained within the SAS AWS, IMPROVED GUI FEATURES GUI improvements to the SAS System provide a more native look and feel that PC users have come to expect, Some improvements to the SAS AWS include a menu bar, command bar, tool bar and status line, The SAS application windows follow the color scheme for the default Windows colors. Help for the SAS System utilizes the Microsoft Windows or OS/2 help facility,... Iii... The SAS AWS menu bar contains both items that are common to all windows within the SAS System and items thai are specific to the current active window. As you move your mouse across the SAS AWS menu, help for that menu item appears on the AWS status line, If you press down on a tool on the tool bar, help for that tool appears on the status line, By defautt. the status line contains a message area and the current directory for the SAS System. The message area (on the left 410

2 side) displays the help text for menus and tools. Additionally, messages that are SAS application window specific display in this portion. The current directory displays in the right portion of the status line. There is a split box that separates Ihe two portions. You control the amount of space that each portion uses by moving the split box either right or left. To change the current directory for the SAS System, use the Change Directory dialog which you invoke by double clicking on the current directory portion of the status line. If you organize your projects into separate directories, the Change Directory dialog provides a method to quickly switch between your projects. As you select different projects, the drop-down list control retains the directories you have selected. Alternatively, you can initially populate the list with the $CDIRLIST option. For example, specifying $CDIRLIST 'c:\sales\may c:\sales\june' initializes Ihe list with the those two project directories. played on the status line. You specify a tool image by either pasting from the clipboard or using the tool browser. The tool browser provides a default set of more than 140 tool images. The command bar provides a way to quickly enter SAS commands by accepting any Display Manager (DM) command. The command bar builds a drop-down list of the commands that you enter. To repeat a command you entered previously, select the command from the drop-down list and click the check-mark" control to execute the command. Pressing the function key, F11, switches the keyboard focus to the command bar. The Preferences dialog allows you to customize your SAS System GUI. You can choose to: remove scroll bars from all SAS application windows remove the message area, current directory. or entire status line from the SAS AWS be prompted when exiting the SAS System use a monochrome display (useful for plasma displays) use popup menus or command lines use a command bar, command box or neither use a tool bar, toolbox or nei1her Qnter text in insert or overstrike mode The tool bar is completely configurable using the tool editor. The total number of tools that you can create increased to 30. You can add or delete both tools and separators. The separators allow you to logically group sets of tools. When creating a tool, you specify the tool image, the command associated- with the tool and the help text dis- 411

3 Selecting the "Advanced" pushbutton in Preferences dialog invokes the Advanced Scrolling dialog. This dialog allows you to specify the number of lines that the Log and Output windows scroll when adding information to these windows. Adjusting these values can improve the performance of your SAS programs. For example, increasing the scroll value to 10 for the Output window will delay the screen update until your program creates 10 lines of output. The performance improvements are most noticeable when you run programs that generate a large amount of output to either the Log or Output window. However, for programs that generate only a small amount of periodic output, there is a delay in the screen update until your program creates all 10 lines of output. There are several improvements to the "Save" menu item and the Save As dialog box processing in the Program Editor, Log and Output windows. The default filename for each window always displays in the window's title bar. If there is no default filename, "Untitled" displays in the window title. The Save As dialog displays if you select the "Save" menu item with no default filename specified. The Save As dialog now gives you a choice to either append or replace an existing file. The Edit menu for the Program Editor, Log and Output windows contains a new "Select all" menu item. This item selects all the text in the window with a single keystroke. For example, once you select all the text in the Log window, choosing "Copy" copies the entire contents of the Log to the clipboard. The new Libname dialog displays when you select the libname tool on the tool bar. This dialog is experimental in Release 6.10 and allows you to create and delete libnames. Additionally, you can display existing libnames, display the members within a libname, display variables within a data set and display entries within a catalog. The feature set of the SAS System for Windows and OS/2 are basically the same. However, there are a few differences. One of these differences is the behavior of maximized windows. Under Windows, this is a mode. All existing and any new windows that you create will display in a maximized state once you maximize any window. Under OS/2, only the window that you select maximizes. There are also some visual differences with maximized windows between Windows and OS/2. Under Windows, the title bar of the active window combines with the title of the SAS AWS. The system menu and the restore icon combines with the SAS AWS menu bar. Release 6.10 provides a new True Type fixed space iont. This font contains the extended ASCII characters. These characters provide better line drawing characters for FORMCHAR option used by proc Tabulate. You can use this font on either your display or printer. IMPROVED HELP The SAS System help facility uses the Microsoft Windows Help (winhelp) under Windows and Information Presentation Facility (IPF) under OS/2 to display the help text. The result is a help system with a look and feel native to the particular operating system. Additionally some new menu items on the Help menu include: Introduction - a point and click demo of the SAS System How to.- an on-line explanation of common 1asks Release notes - an on-line explanation of changes and enhancements 412

4 Sample programs - a point and cjick description of the SAS System samples m GIIIISlanedwithfwlSASSystenunMrWtndows a \ke the SAS SysternwithotherW'indowsApplic:etions SAS Sample Ubrary This i$ 0. subs81 otlhe emire SAS S=mple Ubraty. OIoo~ Co prodlldlc see Co Iis1 oiltie included scunplas 1. seled Do scunple 2. c;:gpy lite $OmpIe to the Oipbowd 3. in'" SAS Progra.m Ecfltcr. submitfrom1tle Oipb()ord using fie Locols -) Submit Oipboord pmenu orlle 'gsubrnit buller defllull' OIlolS ~~d. You can programmatically control the help system through your SAS/AF program with a DATA step function. Using this function, you can access help in the following ways: display tile contents screen of the given help file dose the current help instance display a specific topic in the help file display a specific topic in a pop-up window at the current mouse location display Help on the Help System access the search facility CONFIGURING YOUR GUI While most PC users expect an interactive method to configure the SAS GUI, this is not enough control for the SAS/AF programmers. Commands exist for all the in- teractive settings. Also, addijional commands exist to control the appearance or behavior of the SAS AWS and the SAS application windows. These commands allow you to create applications using the SAS System and then remove any trace of the SAS System creating the appearance of a stand-alone application. There are several options and commands that allow you to control the SAS AWS. These include: NOAWSMENUMERGE removes common menu items from the SAS AWS menu bar NOAWSMENU removes SAS AWS menu bar AWSCONTROL removes system controls such as the tiue bar, system menu, minimize and maximize buttons AWSnTLE specifies the tiue to use on the SAS AWS title bar AWSOEF controls the location and size of the SASAWS. AWSM1NIM1ZE minimizes the SAS AWS AWSMAX1MIZE maximizes the SAS AWS AWSRESTORE restores the SAS AWS The option SASCONTROL eliminates the system controls from SAS application windows. SASCONTROL NOSYSTEMMENU eliminates the system menu and SASCON TROL NOMINMAX eliminates the minimize and maximize buttons. This option changes all existing SAS application windows as well all windows created after submijting the options statement. You can add your own icons w~h the option USERICON. This feature is available wijh SAS/AF and SAS/EIS software. To use, create a frame entry using SAS/AF software. Make or fill a region with an icon. From the attributes screen, select the current icon button. Then, select the "user-defined" radio button. If you have specified an icon resource file w~h USERICON, clicking on the radio button displays all of your icons. Clicking on the "sas-supplied" radio button allows you to use any of the icons provided by the SAS System. With the option $SASICON, you can override the default icon for the SAS System. The syntax of this option is: 413

5 SSASICON user!nouser normal busy Where: user nouser norrilal busy use the DLL specified by USERICON use sasvicon.du as the resource file identifier of the normal icon identifier of the busy icon The following commands invoke SAS supplied dialogs: o DLGABOUT o DLGCDIR o DLGENDR odlgfind o DLGFONT o DLGLlB o DLGLlNKS o DLGOPEN o DLGPRT o DLGPRTSETUP o DLGSAVE o DLGSMAIL o DLGPREF o DLGREPLACE o DLGRUN o TOOLEDIT About dialog Change directory dialog EXit SAS dialog Find dialog Fonts Selection dialog Ubname dialog OLE Links dialog Open dialog Print dialog Printer Setup dialog Save As dialog dialog Preferences dialog Replace dialog Run dialog Tool Editor dialog DLGOPEN and DLGSAVE allow you to control the file fitters each display by adding a FILTER = "'.jnk '.doc". This adds a fiker for both.jnk and.doc files. Specifying the RE PLACE parameter will remove all the default firers. $FIL TERLIST innially controls the firers displayed in the default Open and Save As dialogs. Use $FIL TERLIST ~.jnk '.sav" to add these filters to the dialogs. Using the Tool Ednor, you can create multiple tool sets and save each to a different SAS catalog entry. Then using the TOOL LOAD command, you can programmatically load each tool set as necessary. The syntax is "toolload <boxlbar> libre1.catalog.member". You can also use the TOOLCLOSE command to programmatically close a toolbox. In addnion, if you are using the toolbox instead of the tool bar, the TOOLDEF command allows you to control the initial location of the toolbox. COMMAND controls the command bar. The syntax for this command is 'COMMAND <WINDOWIBARICLOSE' <title>.. Specifying WINDOW creates a command dialog and "title"-overrides the title of the dialog. Specifying BAR creates the command bar and CLOSE removes enher the command dialog or the command bar. The command WSTATUSLN controls the status line. Turning off the status line creates message lines in all 'SAS application windows. Turning on the status line creates the status line in its last active state and destroys message lines in the SAS application windows. The syntax of this option is: WSTATUSLN (ON I OFF] (ALL I MSG.% I CDlR.%] Where: ON turns on the status line OFF ALL turns off the status line enables both the message and current directory portion MSG enables only the message portion of the status line (".% specifies the percentage of the status line used by the message area) COIR enables only the current directory portion of the status line (a:% specifies the percentage of the status line used by the current directory) The option INITCMD allows you to invoke a SASI AF application wnhout displaying the Program Ednor, Log or Output windows. The syntax is: -INITCMD "af e=sasuser.a.a.frame" The command WHSBAR ONIOFF turns horizontal scroll bars on or off for all SAS applications windows. The command WVS BAR ONIOFF turns vertical scroll bars on or off for all SAS applications windows. The option LOGO controls the display of the logo screen. Use NOLOGO to suppress the logo screen. You can override the defaur logo screen that displays by creating a DLL containing your bitmap wnh an identifier of 1. Simply copy your DLL into sasvlogo.dll in!sasroovcore/sasdll and your logo displays when the SAS System starts. The option EXITWINDOWS will automatically cause the SAS System to exit Windows when the SAS System exits. This is useful for batch programs. PRINTING SAS now provides better WYSIWYG printing by automatically setting your formatting 414

6 options (LiNESIZE and PAGESIZE) at initialization time to match the settings of your printer. When you change your printer settings, the SAS System options automatically update so that all futu re output prints in a WYSIWYG manner. You do not need to use the forms subsystem to control your margins, fonts or page orientation. The Print Setup dialog is available across all SAS applications and allows you to customize your output on the printed page. You specify margins in real measurements like inches and centimeters instead of columns and rows. When creating output, you can use any font installed on the printer. You can take advantage of the True Type technology available with Windows and the Adobe Type Manager available with OS/2 when generating printed output. The Print dialog is now the same across SAS applications. Bringing up the print dialog anywhere in SAS is as simple as clicking on the print tool on your tool bar. When printing graphics through SAS/GRAPH. a valid SAS/GRAPH driver initially displays for you to use. You may choose to select a different one for specialized output. After invoking the Print dialog in a graph window, all you need do is choose OK. and OS2Pxxx drivers are production for Release 6.10 and also known as the generic printer drivers. The generic printer drivers use the operating system provided printer drivers to generate graphics data and then pass this data to the OS/2 printer object or the Microsoft Windows Print Manager. SUPPORT support is available interactively through the dialog or programmatically through the DATA step or SeL. The support for is experimental in Release This implementation supports both industry standards VIM (Vendor-Independent Messaging) and MAPI (Messaging Application Programming Interlace). Most popular packages provide support for either VIM or MAPI. The dialog allows you to enter a note describing the mail message. Data and reports, which are the actual contents of the messages, are sent in the form of attachments. Attachments are files that you saved previously, the current contents of the Program Editor, Log or Output window, or a bitmap of the current active application window. SAs/GRAPH software provides two types of hard copy device drivers -- the stand-alone SAS/GRAPH drivers and the WINPxxx or OS2Px)()( series of drivers. The WINPxxx You can also access through the FILENAME statement using the Device type of . The syntax of the FILENAME statement is: FILENAME fileref 'recipients' <options>; Where: fileref is a valid external file name 415

7 identifies the file to be an message 'recipients' is the list of recipients names <options> can be any of the following TO OVerriding list of recipients CC Ust carbon copiqd recipients SUBJECT The message's subject ATTACH Ust of file attachments For example, this program sends a message to Mac Johnson who has the id of mcj. FILENAME inform 'moj' subject.what is wrong'; data_null~ file inform anach='c:\sas\config.sas'; put 'Dear Mac:; put 'Attached Is my oonfig.sas file:; put 'Could you tell me what is wrong with it'; run; Add~ionally, you can embed a set of commands in put statements to allow even more flexibil~. These commands are: IEM_SEND Send the message now!em_abort Abort the message!em_newmsg Clear attributes and note field.!em_ TO OVerride the recipient list!em_cc OVerride the carbon copied list!em...,subject Override the subject field!em_attach OVerride the attachmentflelds. For example, the following program reads the recipient names and sends a different file attachment depending on the recipient's job title. FILENAME rpls 'nul' subject.weekly Report; data_null..; file rpts; length name tiue $ 12; input name tide; put '!EM_ TO' name; if title~'marketing' then put '!EM_ATTACH c:lmrk.rpr; else put'!em_attach c:\dev.rpf; put 'Attached is the weekly report': put '!EM_SEND'; cards; mwe marketing czw dev!3lopment jqm marketing bsq development run; CREATE A CUSTOM VERSION OF THE SASSYSTEM You may wish to create a scaled-down custom version of the SAS System to run your SAS/AF application. You can do this w~h the resource tracking options, RTRACE and RTRACELOC. These options create a list of files required to run a particular SAS System application. A SAS program will accept this file as input and produce a copy script containing copy commands for each of the files used during the recorded session. RTRACE all and RTRACELOC c:\filetrak.dat will activate the file resource tracking system and wr~e all trace information to the file c:\filetrak.dat. APPLICATION INTEGRATION Release 6.10 provides increased application integration through several new methods. The SAS System supports named pipes, unnamed pipes, DOE, OLE, system clipboard, and Media Control Interface with Release Additionally, Release 6.10 provides support for OOSC, external DLL access, and the abil~ to support import and export of graphics to and from common PC file formats. OLE SUPPORT Support for OLE is only available under Microsoft Windows. Currently, the SAS System provides a container for OLE objects. However, you can emulate a partial server implementation using the Object Packager application provided by Microsoft Windows. Through the use of OLE, you can add b~maps, audio, video or other multimedia ob-; jects, etc. to your SAS/AF application. The implementation of OLE in Release 6.10 is OLE 2.0 compatible. 416

8 ODBC SUPPORT ODBC is a new standard for interoperabilijy between databases from different vendors. SAS supports this standard as both a client and server, allowing data to be retrieved from other databases that support the standard as well as surfacing SAS data sets to PC applications that utilize the interface as clients. ODBC allows various levels of conformance, each providing a higher degree of interoperabilijy. SAS requires the lowest level (CORE) when it accesses other data bases, but provides a higher level (Levell) when used as a server. All products that can operate on SAS data sets and do not require write access will work with pass through views. You can use pass through to import data to create data sets. For more details on ODSC, you should refer to "Sharing Enterprise Data with 00- BC". ACCESSING EXTERNAL DLL'S You can access external DLL's through the DATA step or SCL by a CALL SUBROU TINE. This functionality allows you to access either external DLL's that you create or DLL's that you purchase. You can even access operating system DLL's. To use, you specify the name of the DLL, the function name or ordinal, a description of the function's arguments, and a description of the return code. IMPORT AND EXPORT GRAPHICS DATA The ability to import and export graphic images to and from files is available. The Graphic Editor in SAS/GRAPH software, SASIINSIGHT and ISHIKAWA procedure in SAS/QC software supports the ability to export into common PC formats. The import ability is available with the Graphics Editor. Some of the supported formats include: BMP - bitmap WMF - Windows metafile (Wmdo~ only) MET - metafile (OS/2 only) PBM - X windows format GIF -- COMPUSERVE TIF -- Tag Image File Format PCX - PC Paintbrush Addijionally, the Graphics Editor supports "Paste" of bitmaps and metafiles from the clipboard. CD-ROM INSTALL The SAS System for 6.10 ships on CD ROM. You can either run directly from the CD-ROM or install the system to your hard disk. If you choose to run directly from the CO, we recommend that you install the CORE portion of the SAS System and those SAS System products that you use most frequently to increase your performance. Leaving the less frequently used products on the CD will help reduce the required amount of local hard disk space. Additionally the Graphics maps are uncompressed so you can use the maps directly from the CO RaM. When you receive an add-on product on CD-ROM, you receive all licensed SAS System products on the CD-ROM. CONCLUSIONS This paper summarized some of the many features available in Release 6.10 of the SAS System under OS/2 and Microsoft Windows. Please refer to the OS/2 Environment: Changes and Enhancements of the SAS System. Release 6.10 and the Microsoft Windows Environment: Changes and Enhancements of the SAS System, Release for more details. REFERENCES Rigsbee, Carol Williams (1993), "Exploijing Personal Computer Operating System wijh 417

9 the SAS System", Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual SAS Users Group International Conference, Microsoft Corporation ( ). The Windows Interiace, An Application Design Guide, Redmond, Washington: Microsoft Press IBM Corporation (1989. User Access Guide to Design, Cary. North Corporation 1991),Common User Interface Carolina: IBM Barnhart, Andy (1994), "Sharing Enterprise Data with ODBC", Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual SAS Users Group International Conference SAS, SAS/AF, SAS/EIS, SAS/GRAPH, SASIINSIGHT, and SAS/QC are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. OS/2 is a registered trademark or trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. indicates USA registration. Other brand or product names are registered trademarks or their respective companies. 418