The window is split into two sections. The upper portion is the working area for creating the program. The lower portion of the window is the code of your program. There is no menu bar appearing at the top of the window. This is because the creator of the program thought it would be advantageous to have the menu where your mouse pointer is. For this reason, it is necessary to right-click to make the menu appear. The menu is context sensitive, but help is available from all areas of the window as well as the other windows.
The panel is a window where similar programming functions are grouped together into a visual metaphor. In PTV, there are six main panels to use. Below is a list of the panels and their purposes:
Compare and Branch: This panel allows the programmer to perform a comparison between two similar data objects and, based on the result, branch to another part of the program.
Math: This panel permits addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and modulus.
Move All: This panel allows the contents of one data object to be transferred to another data object. Additionally, this panel is used for displaying text on the screen and receiving input from the keyboard.
Move Characters: This panel allows a contiguous range of characters from one character array to replace another contiguous range of characters in another character array.
Object Editor: In PTV, all programmer-defined storage and program marking points are called data objects. This panel allows for the creation, modification, and deletion of data objects.
Section Comments: This panel allows the programmer to annotate the program being written.
All of the panels except for the Object Editor, have a common "look and feel" to them. There is an area to include a program marker for this particular instruction. Once a label data object is used to mark an instruction, it may not be used to "label" another part of a program. Below this area is a comment area. Comments should be limited to what is visible in the comments area. At the bottom right of the panel are three buttons. The Apply button commits the instruction in this panel into the code area. The Clear button clears the current composition of data objects and the function in this panel. The Help button displays help for the current panel.
The instruction view for each panel is a data-flow representation. That is, arrows are drawn to show how contents are moved from the source data object to the destination data object. The exception occurs with the Compare and Branch panel where a control-flow representation is implied when the label object is used. Each data object will appear in a rectangular area from which the arrows point to or away from. The style of rectangle will change depending on the restriction of the data object. A solid rectangle will appear for a constant, literal, or if there is no data object. A literal is a data object that is a data object that is not defined with a name but does have a value signed to it based on the type and the structure. A dashed rectangle will appear for a variable data object. In addition, there are some panels that have a function button panel on them. Selecting one of the buttons in the panel determines the operation that will be performed on the operands.
Not all data objects can be used as operands for all instructions. Based on what function is selected in a panel and whether the operand area is always defined as a constant, some categories of data objects may not be available for selection as operands. For instance, the Math panel may only use integer data objects. Consult each of the panel help menus for information about what specific functionality is available for each panel.