Re: Please advise

Hello Booth,

You wrote:
>Screen scrapers are after all limited to what the data stream allows, and to 
>what the green 
screen developer puts out there.

Not quite true.  There are many things that can be done to the display once it 
has been 
received at the PC.

Take a look at NewLook <http://www.looksoftware.com> and see what can be done 
over and above 
what is in the data stream.  NewLook connects using the Telnet server (or 
Passthrough server 
for SNA) and can do some quite amazing things.  It's windoze only which annoys 
me but that's 
not my decision.  You can download a 30 day trial.

Disclaimer:  I am writing the server component for Look Software so I do have 
an interest in 
the product.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.

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//--- forwarded letter -------------------------------------------------------
> X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 5.0.2  November 4, 1999
> Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 12:07:49 -0500
> From: boothm@earth.goddard.edu
> To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> Reply-To: MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com
> Subject: Please advise

> 
> Leslie, While I would agree with all of your remarks I would make some 
> additional judgements.  First, the examples you give of GUI are really not 
> GUI at it's best.  Screen scrapers are after all limited to what the data 
> stream allows, and to what the green screen developer puts out there.
> 
> Good GUI architecture can provide the accelerator keys, mouseability, and 
> validity checking not otherwise available.  I'd add too that from a 
> performance point of view well designed event-driven programming can stomp 
> all over cycle driven interactive screen programming in short order.
> 
> I have realized now after doing a bit of event-driven stuff that my whole 
> approach to green screen programming has changed and that interactive 
> programs I do now are dramatically different then a year ago.  Now, where 
> allowed, I use radio buttons and checkboxes, user-changeable default 
> actions for the enter key, a settings window for filters & display 
> settings, a 27 X 132 display size, pushbuttons, scrollbars where 
> appropriate, and dropdown boxes.  I'm also tending more toward an event 
> driven program style even though I like the RPG cycle.  I find this 
> combines the nice things from the GUI empire with green screen stuff.  I'm 
> also finding that a lot of user-training goes away with this sort of 
> approach. 
> 
> In short, while I feel screen scraping doesn't show GUI at its best, I am 
> convinced we are not showing green screen at it's best either.
> 
> _______________________
> Booth Martin
> boothm@earth.goddard.edu
> http://www.spy.net/~booth
> _______________________

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