x5250 update

Hey everyone,

This email probably doesn't interest most people on the list other than
those interested in the testing and development of x5250 - the Xlib front
end to tn5250.  x5250 is in very early development and doesn't do anything
particularly useful yet.  Nevertheless, it is more than just a demo now
and if you're into doing lots of work for very little reward then x5250 is
for you!

In the spirit of "release early, release often" I'm sending out this
update on the progress of x5250.  x5250 has now progressed beyond the
simple demo stage and actually does stuff!  The "stuff" that it does is:

1. given a tn5250 profile (as defined in ~/.tn5250rc) connects to the host
specified.
2. 'enter' works.
3. the attention key works
4. the system request key
5. print screen
6. colors
7. the arrow keys

Things that don't work:

1. everything else ;)

If you have a username and password in your .tn5250rc for the given
profile you will be able to get past the sign on screen and test the keys
out.

At this point none of the other keys are doing their thing, so you can't
type anything into any of the fields.  That's why you can't sign on unless
you have your username and password already in your ~/.tn5250rc file.

Clicking any mouse button anywhere on the window will end the program.  It
won't stay this way forever - stay tuned.

I'm thinking over key events.  Normally everytime a key is pressed,
lib5250 calls x5250_terminal_update().  This is a real performance
problem, since x5250_terminal_update redraws the screen.  My key handler
function doesn't have this problem, but it also doesn't communicate
keystrokes to lib5250.  I need to hand the key strokes off to lib5250,
but I don't want the screen to flash or flicker because it is getting
redrawn all the time.

You can get the tarball at:

http://www.chowhouse.com/~james/x5250.tar.gz

Download the tarball and do:

tar -xvzf x5250.tar.gz
cd x5250
xmkmf
make
./x5250 <iseriesprofile>

Compile notes:
I don't know a thing about autoconf, so I'm using Imake.  Unfortunately,
that means that if glib and lib5250 aren't where I'm expecting them,
you're going to have to edit the Imakefile by hand.  If the compile fails
with complaints about not finding glib.h, edit the Imakefile and replace
the relevant parts with the output of 'glib-config --cflags'.  Then do
'xmkmf' again and things should work.

Have fun and email me your complaints/suggestions/flames.

James Rich

Vs lbh guvax bs argjbex frphevgl nf na vzzhar flfgrz, Jvaqbjf vf UVI.
        -- Wbr Cyhgn