The width of the widget or the display used in the current session, in character units.
Data type: DECIMAL
Access: Readable/Writable
Applies to: BROWSE widget (browse, column, and cell), Buffer-field object handle, BUTTON widget, COMBO-BOX widget, CONTROL-FRAME widget, DIALOG-BOX widget, EDITOR widget, FIELD-GROUP widget, FILL-IN widget, FRAME widget, IMAGE widget, LITERAL widget, RADIO-SET widget, RECTANGLE widget, SELECTION-LIST widget, SESSION system handle, SLIDER widget, TEXT widget, TOGGLE-BOX widget, WINDOW widget
The attribute is read-only for field groups, and the SESSION handle.
For control-frames, the WIDTH-CHARS attribute maps to the Width property of the control-frame COM object (ActiveX control container).
In character mode, the WIDTH-CHARS attribute must be set before the browse is realized. Attempting to set the attribute after realization of the browse causes a run-time error.
For editor widgets, this attribute can set the word wrap margin for the WORD-WRAP attribute. For more information, see the WORD-WRAP attribute reference entry.
For buffer-field objects, the WIDTH-CHARS attribute is the number of characters in the STRING-VALUE, which the AVM calculates using the FORMAT attribute. In addition, the WIDTH-CHARS attribute of a buffer-field is readable but not writeable.
For browses, the WIDTH-CHARS attribute sets the width, in characters, of the browse without changing the width of any browse column. If you change the value of a browse's WIDTH-CHARS or WIDTH-PIXELS attribute, the horizontal scrollbar might appear or disappear, which might cause the number of rows that appear in the viewport to change.
For browse columns, the WIDTH-CHARS attribute sets the width, in characters, of the browse column without changing the width of the browse.