Programming Language Constructs for Screen Definition

This paper describes a screen-oriented I/O facility, designed as a part of Rigel, a high-level database programming language. The novel features of the I/O facility, called Screen Rigel, include the use of formatting techniques to lay out text and data on the screen. Applications written in Screen Rigel can directly access the database using the database constructs already in Rigel. In addition, Screen Rigel has access to the data dictionary so the programmer can use the data descriptions in the database instead of respecifying them. These features make Screen Rigel programs simple to write and highly data and terminal independent.