Larry,

>am wondering if there is a simple way to do messages, i.e. without creating
>the message first in the application registry.
>The DisplayMessage() only appears to be a wrapper for WAIT WINDOW.

The Form.DisplayMessage() method can display pre-defined message keys, or literal text strings. Whether it uses a WAIT WINDOW or a message box dialog is determined by the user preference "%Local.Message.Preferences.Flash Info Messages" setting in the app registry table (appreg02.dbf).

For more direct control over the type of dialog used to display literal strings (without pre-defining a message key) you can call the message manager methods directly, rather than going through the form.DisplayMessage() method. For example, the message manager Confirm(), Warning(), Inform() methods wil display a string in a variety of different dialogs. See documentation for details.

>Same thing for thermometers. I'd like to just be able to do a quick call to
>display and update a thermometer.

The steps for doing this are outlined in the docs. Essentially, you first create the progress indicator object with the message manager ProgressBar() method. This reterns an object reference to the progress indicator, which you can then update via the UpdateProgress() method. For example:
LOCAL ix, op
m.op = THISFORM.oMessage.ProgressBar('Working on stuff...')
FOR ix = 0 to 100
* Do whatever processing you need here, and update the indicator
* each pass through the loop
m.op.UpdateProgress(m.ix)

* A little delay so bar wont go away too fast in this test loop
=INKEY(.1, 'H')
ENDFOR
m.op.CloseProgress()

Use the SetProgressRange() method to set the allowable range of values. The default is 0 to 100.

-Dave
Tech Support