Patches for tn5250-0.15.7, Field Exit etc. -- LINUX5250

Mike and Jason,

As I have mentioned in the past I have about 100 users running tn5250
in production using the Linux Terminal Server Project (www.ltsp.org).

They are using version 12.43, with many hacks, and it no longer
compiles on Redhat Version 6.0.

Needing to move them forward to the current version, during our testing
we
had a number of problems.

I have fixed the problems in the attached list and have created a patch
file for version tn5250-0.15.7, sorry I started weeks ago with patching
and testing.

I did not include the patch file, wasn't sure if it would be polite
to publish it on the mailing list, a couple hundred lines.

You can find the patch file at ftp dresults.com anonymous login
pub/tn5250/(blah - blah).diff

I think when you look at the fixes you might want to implement
some or all in a different, manner. I tried my best to think
like you guys and make it look like you might have coded the
changes yourself.  So feel comfortable to hack the hacks.

These are important fixes to make tn5250 more viable in a production
environment. I would really like to see tn5250 mature such that
I can take a stable release from the project, compile it and put
it in production.  I think my environment, (not exclusively of course)
would be a great test of it's stability.

Thank you
Ron Colcernian

By: Ron Colcernian rcc@dresults.com
Date: April 8, 2000

The following Problems were Fixed
=================================

1) In an ALPHA Right Justified Field that is a FER when typing 
   a character in the last character position and then typing
   Field Exit. The field was right justified and zero filled
   which threw away the last character of entered data.

2) The BackSpace and Delete Key returned the same Key sequence.
   Both performed the Delete fucntion.  Modified cursesterm.c
   to define the Delete key consistant with the XTerm file.

3) Key Pad Enter which I mapped to FieldExit Function was
   mapped to Enter (@8) modified it to be K_FIELDEXIT.

4) When in the last character position of a Alpha Right Justified
   FER field and you press the  enter key the Reset (Control R)
   did not reset.

5) When the user is in a field exit required data entry field, if
   the enter key is press tn5250 would accept the input and the
   AS/400 might append zeros to the data field. For example,
   14.65 might become 14600.00.  Modified tn5250 to check
   when the enter key is press to see if the current data field
   has an attribute of Field Exit Required, if so disallow the
   Enter Key and Inhibit the screen.  Additionally, modified
   the code to be smart enough to understand if the cursor is
   in a field exit required field but the user had not entered
   any characters to accept the entry key.

6) In one of our applications the user input screen defined
   second input field as the first input field for user
   data entry.
   While tn5250 received the IC command to position the cursor
   to the appropriate row and column, the function
   tn5250_session_write_to_display would not execute logic
   correctly to set the cursor to end_y and end_x. End_y and
   end_x may not have the value of the IC command during the
   invocation of session_write_to_display and as a result
   it would always execute the logic to search for the first
   non-bypass field and postion the cursor at that position.

7) Added to field.c:tn5250_field_dump the ability to dump
   in Hex and Ascii the contents of a data field.
   (Used existing code from another function).