>Hi David -
>I think Lewis Carol would have a field day with the way were working here.
>(He refered once to the name of the song, the title of the song and what the song is called - three different things!)
>Anyway, "name" clearly means lots of different things here too.
>Is the name of the scx the name of the form. No!
>When we DO FORM myFormName
>we're talking about the name of the scx. Once instantiated the name of the form can be quite different. (For some peculiar reason my forms are named the same as the SCX with an frm in front)
>I don't really want to reference a form by name, although I often want to know if a form of a given name is running already (and there could be many). I would like to know if you *can* refer to a form by name.
>
>>
>>Inside form methods always use thisform or this. Outside a form you can use the _screen.Forms[] collection or _screen.ActiveForm or your own forms manager object (but hardcoding a reference to an app object or form manager object can come back to hinder you). If one form is talking to another pass references from one to the other do form xyz with thisform this let's xyz easily work with any caller form.
>>
>>Coding to a specific form object name restricts you too much especially when dealing with multi-instance forms.
>>
>>>That all makes sense. I was thinking of "forms" at the time. Does that mean we can't or shouldn't refer to a form by name?

Hi David,
At runtime if your form.name is manually coded to be unique then you could use it for forms collection provided you work with single instances. Rather thisform and do .. with this (thisform) is one good way. Also you could have a formcontrol class at app level to control all instances of all forms. By this way you could keep multipl instances of a form(set) and yet control them individualy. Here is a very simple formcontrol example :

oFormManager = createobject("FormControl")
oFormManager.NewInstance("c:\temp\itest.scx")
* Add three buttons to itest
* One button calls oFormManager.NewInstance("c:\temp\itest.scx") n Times
* and with some other scx another n times
* the other just releases form
* Third calls oFormManager.cascadeinstances("c:\temp\itest.scx")
read events

define class FormControl as Custom
    Protected FormInstances[1,2]
    
    procedure NewInstance
    lParameters cSCXName
    	with this
		    dimension .FormInstances[alen(.FormInstances,1)+1,2]
		   	.FormInstances[alen(.FormInstances,1),1] = cSCXName
	   		.FormInstances[alen(.FormInstances,1),2] = "F"+sys(2015)
	   		cVarname = .FormInstances[alen(.FormInstances,1),2]
	   		public &cVarName
		   	do form (cSCXName) name (cVarName) linked with cVarName
		   	return alen(.FormInstances,1) && Return new id
		endwith
    endproc

    procedure CascadeInstances
    lParameters cSCXName
        nLeft = 0
        nTop = 0
	    for ix=1 to alen(this.FormInstances,1)
	    	if Type("this.FormInstances[ix,2]") = "C" ;
	    		and Type(this.FormInstances[ix,2]) = "O" ;
	    		and !isnull(eval(this.FormInstances[ix,2])) ;
	    		and this.FormInstances[ix,1] = cSCXName
			    with eval(this.FormInstances[ix,2])
    			   	.left = nLeft
	    		    .Top = nTop
				endwith
				nLeft = nLeft + 20
				nTop = nTop + 20
	    	endif
	    endfor
    endproc
enddefine

Cetin