Re: [open-cobol-list] For discussion: patch to get some terminal infoand do scrolling

[Wim Niemans]

Hello Bill and All,

As a professional Cobol Developer using ACU I would very welcome the  
addition of the IS EXTERNAL FORM syntax of ACU Cobol.
I do remember such feature from my mainframe time, somewhere in the  
seventies, when programmable terminals sent formatted data.
I am using this feature extensively to run Cobol programs under a web  
server.
The trick is, that the IS EXTERNAL FORM refers to a group item with  
elementary items describing the fields of the form, which is nowadays  
a html form with post method.
ACU Cobol uses a C-library to convert the post-parameters using the  
fieldnames into the data description during ACCEPT.
The DISPLAY proces simply calls a html template file and parses in a  
similar way the data into the page.
I would expect that a similar C-library would exist somewhere?

See also an older post of John Culleton and yogibear:
http://coding.derkeiler.com/Archive/Cobol/comp.lang.cobol/2005-09/msg00227.html

What do you think?

Regards,
wim niemans ri


Op 8 jan 2009, om 23:07 heeft Bill Klein het volgende geschreven:

> Just a warning to those not familiar with AcuCOBOL extensions.  They  
> have
> EXTENSIVE extensions to Accept/Display/Screen section that include
> everything needed up to and including "GUI's" via Accept/Display.
>
> It is pretty impressive, but once you start adding support for some,  
> you may
> find demand for all of it.  I would suggest looking at the full syntax
> before deciding which (if any) to include in OpenCOBOL.
>
> To the best of my knowledge, NO other implementer has actually  
> picked up the
> AcuCOBOL syntax.  On the other hand, since they were acquired by  
> Micro Focus
> it is POSSIBLE (I just don't know) that you may see some of this in  
> the
> "native" MF compiler (to assist with migration from AcuCOBOL to MF -  
> without
> their Dialog Systems extensions)
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Ulf Dambacher [mailto:address@hidden
> > Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 2:56 PM
> > To: address@hidden
> > Subject: [open-cobol-list] For discussion: patch to get some
> > terminal infoand do scrolling
> >
> > Hi
> >
> > Just for discussion: enclosed you find a patch to OC 1.1 wich
> > implements
> > following syntax extensions:
> >
> > 1) ACCEPT field FROM TERMINAL SCREEN_COLUMNS
> > 2) ACCEPT field FROM TERMINAL SCREEN_LINES
> > 3) ACCEPT field ... [ SCROLL [UP / DOWN ] [ BY n [_LINES ]] ...
> > 4) DISPLAY field ... [ SCROLL [UP / DOWN ] [ BY n [_LINES ]] ...
> >
> >
> > to 1+2:
> > Somehow one has to figure out how many lines/cols the screen has.
> > We don't have fixed size terminals anymore .-(
> > Acucobol has this syntax:
> > ACCEPT structure FROM TERMINAL-INFO
> > and a copy library for working storage to put some information about
> > screen lines, color usage, highlight etc.
> > Can we copy this 1:1 without copyright probelems?
> > Shall we have our own syntax?
> >
> > to 3+4:
> > Currently we can't do scrolling in OC. I found there are
> > different ways
> > in different compilers.
> > Acucobol scrolls if one moves to the last line, last column
> > and displays
> >   something. Also they have a syntax like this to do
> > scrolling explicitly.
> >
> >
> > Ulf
>
>
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