Long Processes

Determines how PBL Peeper responds to long processes. All of the attributes affecting behavior after a long process include the minimum time in seconds the process must take before the behavior is initiated. For example, the Beep is set and the minimum time is set to 10, PBL Peeper will beep when the process is finished if the process takes at least 10 seconds.

Beep After

Sounds a standard Windows beep after processes that take more than the minimum time.

Message After

Produces a message box after processes that take more than the minimum time.

Focus After

Brings PBL Peeper to the top of all windows after processes that take more than the minimum time.

Warning Before

In anticipation of a process that ordinarily takes a significant amount of time, a message will be produced, giving the user the option of canceling the selected action.

Show Progress Meter

Since screen I/O is slow, the progress meter can cause a performance bottleneck. Unchecking this option will remove the progress meter.

Min. Progress Incr.

Sets the minimal additional percentage a process must complete before updating the progress meter on the status bar. A lower number will provide more user feedback; a higher number will reduce the performance impact of providing user feedback.

Identify Ancestors

When an item is selected in the Browser Page, if this item is checked PBL Peeper will immediately try to determine if an ancestor exists, and disable the ancestor button immediately. If this item is unchecked, if PBL Peeper doesn’t already know if an ancestor exists, the button will remain enabled until the user clicks it. If the user clicks the ancestor button when no ancestor exists, the button will become disabled and there will be no change in the display.

Trace Load Limit

When this value is non-zero, the trace page keeps track of how many children it is loading to a single trace item. If the value is x, for every x children, the user is prompted to continue or not. This avoids loading traces of infinite loops and running out of memory.

Skip Trace Lines

If checked, the Trace page will skip over numbered line executions when loading the trace file.

Sort style

For any window that uses the DataWindow sort functionality (e.g. the List subpages), determines which style of sort dialog is supplied. The list corresponds to those made available by PFC.

PB’s Sort

The sort window that PowerBuilder provides.

Drag & Drop

A simple drag and drop style sort window.

Simple

A window that allows selection with a drop down of only one column to sort by.

DropDownListBox

A window that allows selection with drop downs of one or more columns to sort by.

Filter style

For any window that uses the DataWindow filter functionality (e.g. the List subpages), determines which style of filter dialog is supplied. The list corresponds to those made available by PFC.

PB’s Filter

The filter window that PowerBuilder provides.

Extended

A filter window that provides a tabbed interface to help build the filter expression.

Simple

A filter window that builds expressions with drop down lists.

Width style

For any grid DataWindow, PBL Peeper adjusts the width of the columns so that none of the data is hidden. The different algorithms produce differing accuracies with differing performance.

None

Does no column width adjustments.

Express

Reviews all rows where the column being adjusted contains a value that matches the maximum number of characters in a field.

Exhaustive

Reviews the width of all rows for the column being adjusted.

Simple

Reviews the width of only the first row that contains a value that matches the maximum number of characters in a field.

Margined

Reviews all rows where the column being adjusted contains a value that is within 15% of the maximum number of characters in a field.

Tip of the Day

If checked, displays a tip on the operation of PBL Peeper on every splash window.

Min Time

Normally, PBL Peeper’s splash window stays open until it is finished intial processing. This will force PBL Peeper to stay open for a minimum time (in seconds), so that the tip can be read.

Resolve Style

Determines to what degree an object’s ancestry influences its representation within PBL Peeper and in the Browser Page. Change in the Resolve Style makes significant changes in the means PBL Peeper can be used and in performance. When portions are ghosted in the Browser, they appear with a white mask.

None

Only portions that are represented in the export of an object are represented. This is the fastest option.

Orphans

When portions are identified whose parent tree is not clearly identified by the portions within the object, ancestors are indexed until a representation of the parent tree can be identified. Ghosted portions are added to the representation of the object to clarify its relevance to the object. (E.g. Often inherited menus will contain scripted Clicked events, while their parent menu items will not be referenced at all. In the browser, a series of unparented Clicked events is ambiguous. Resolving orphans would create ghosts of menu items to parent all the Clicked events.)

Controls

All controls inherited from ancestors are ghosted.

Scripts

All controls and scripts from ancestors are ghosted.

List Ghosts

Include ghosted portions in the List Page. (See Resolve Style)

Resolve DWs

If one of the sub-options is checked, for any control that has a DataWindow object associated with it (DataWindow control, embedded datastore, drop-down DataWindow, nested report), elements of the default DataWindow (the DataWindow assigned at design time) are ghosted below the control.

DW Controls

Control or user interface elements are ghosted below DataWindow associated controls. As in a DataWindow, they are grouped by band.

DW Table

DataWindow table or data set elements are ghosted below DataWindow associated controls.

Derive System Event Defns

A bug up to PowerBuilder 7.0.3 causes PBL Peeper to blow up when exiting if metaclass objects are used to access certain ScriptDefinitions. This functionality was used to load full system event definitions, such as “Event retrieveend (long rowcount) returns integer” instead of “Event retrieveend”. Probably the main benefit of this is for documentation generation. If you don’t use this functionality, turn it off and the failure when leaving PBL Peeper should go away.

Keep Object Source in Memory

By default, to keep memory usage down, PBL Peeper typically does not keep source loaded in memory. As a result, the source has to be read in from the disk every time it is needed. Checking this option improves performance, at the cost of memory usage.