UIM
UIM or User Interface Manager is a language for defining display panels and panel groups.
If you were to look at UIM source code, not knowing anything about it in advance, you would see 95% text, with scattered letters combined with special characters.
It is conceptually similar to the Web Programming language HTML in that there are bodies of plain text surrounded by small amounts of coding inside some odd characters to control how that text is to be displayed, and sometimes it is only on a new line that there is a character or two with a special character to designate something about how to display the text that follows.
Thus it is like DDS and SDA in that it creates an object that is to be used by a HLL, not something that DOES SOMETHING other than link to other objects.
What are Panels?
This is just a name for a particular kind of screen. Examples:
- help screens
- informational screens
- menus
- data entry screens
- action lists
Panel Groups
It is possible to program a cluster or hierarchy of related panels inside an outer shell, in which different kinds of panels are combined within the group.
Panel Tags
Help Panel Tags
An example of a Panel Tag would be a Hypertext link.
Menu Panel Tags
An example of a Tag on a Menu would be in support of a pull down option.