Re: Re: TN5250 0.16.2 released!

On Tue, 28 Aug 2001, tonyl wrote:

> If the product is supposed to emulate a 5250 terminal, I would suggest that
> the emulation should cover the whole terminal and not just the display. Maybe

I guess that is an interesting point:  is the product supposed to emulate
a 5250 terminal?  Are we (actually Mike, Jason, Carey, all the
coders) trying to create something that does exactly what a 5250 terminal
does and no more (implying that keyboard remapping would not be part of
tn5250 - you can't remap a 5250 keyboard) or are we making something that
allows users to access and use an AS/400?  Client Access doesn't emulate a
5250 terminal exactly - should we?  If we deviate from exact 5250
emulation should we do it the same way IBM did with Client Access?

Neither a 5250 terminal nor Client Access can display HTML or XML, but
embedding mozilla in tn5250 would allow that.  Or embedding tn5250 in
mozilla (something I started on) would allow your web browser to
seemlessly browse from web pages to green screen.  Companies interested in
web applications would probably find that ability very useful.  In the
host negotiation tn5250 could tell the AS/400 that it understands markup
languages which would enable all kinds of possibilities for AS/400
programmers.  Ever wanted to have mouse-over help for your green screen
app?  How about launching your applications from a green screen menu by
clicking on hyperlinks?  Context sensitive help written in HTML launched
by the user clicking on a term they don't understand?

> Maybe you've already completed that wonderful howto and all the relevant info
> is already available, and I'm just being a prat?

Not complete - I'm still gathering information from the mailing list
archives and comparing against my own notes, etc.  Thanks for the kick in
the butt, though - I do want to get this done.

James Rich
james@eaerich.com