When the data capture interview is constructed by XPressDox while running a template, the data capture controls (control is the word used to generically describe any item on a Windows form – like the place where you capture a name, or like a check box, or like a drop-down list) are labelled automatically with the name of the data element.
Often the names of data elements can be self-explanatory (such as DateOfBirth or NumberOfChildren). But data elements named Amount1 or SpseName are not all that clear (of course, if the template author has complete control over how the data elements are to be named, then s/he will in all likelihood choose understandable names, but the template author is sometimes the victim of history and has to make do with names defined in other contexts).
The Caption command will empower the template author to supply more meaningful labels to data capture controls while retaining the original data element name.
Thus, for example, if the SpseName data element contains the first names of the spouse, then the command <<Caption(SpseName,Spouse's First Names)>> will result in the label of the data capture control for that data element being worded “Spouse’s First Names” rather than “SpseName”.
The Caption command won’t define the position where the data in the SpseName data element will be inserted in the document. A fillpoint like <<SpseName>> will need to be included in the template in the place(s) where the spouse’s first names must appear. In fact, if there is no such fillpoint anywhere in the template, then the data capture interview will not have a control on it for that data element. This is not by accident, but by design, as the discussion later in this article (or, rather, the article on the Help command to which it refers) covers.
If a data element name requires a long description, then trying to fit that description into a caption might not be appropriate. In this case the Help command would be the one to use.
It may be that you have a number of related templates containing the data element(s) for which you want to supply captions. It would then be tedious to have to code the Caption commands on each of those templates. The article Working with Help (referred to above) discusses this issue with reference to the Help command. Exactly the same applies to the use of Caption, and so you are encouraged to read that article if this situation applies to you.
