Most front panel buttons and many of the measurement application softkeys within the VM700A "Turbo" or the VM700T have no provisions for being remotely queried as to their present state. The recommended work-around for knowing the state of a particular front panel button or softkey at any given point in time is to create functions, and use them as entry points into Measurement Applications. Upon entry into a Function, the button and softkey conditions are known. Changes to button/softkey settings within a particular measurement application must be tracked by the programmer until another known state (another function) is executed. There are several advantages to using the Function capability of the VM700A "Turbo" or VM700T in this manner. The primary advantage is that the available button, softkey and knob positions are extensive, and would therefore be extremely difficult to document. A great secondary advantage is that a function can be viewed (and used) as a type of sub-routine. Functions can make difficult or long programs easier to write, much easier to edit, and can also be layered as sub- sub-routines. A function can call another function. Refer to additional FAQs on this site for information on constructing a simple function, or preset.