Re: RLU (vs) handcoded prtf DDS -- MIDRANGE-L

Tim

At 09:08 PM 6/11/1998 -0400, you wrote:
>Hi All,
>I dislike learning things the hard way....   :)
>Well where I work now they have all their PRINTFILES (PRTF's) coded by
>the standard handcoded DDS entry method.  As far as I am concerned the
>RLU (Report Layout Utility) is an IBM award winner, I love this
>utility!!!  Well...something unforseen occurred and I wanted to submit
>the question to the list and see if you people know anything about it.
>I used RLU to call up and change interactively one of these handcoded
>PRTF DDS sources, well it did all sorts of ungodly things to this
>handcoded PRTF DDS source... Any ideas why this happened?  Also, is
>there a utility I can run a handcoded PRTF DDS member thru that will
>allow RLU to be used on it without obliterating it?

RLU is not well liked, generally. It was quite poor when it first came out.
It promised an SDA look-feel, but it didn't really deliver. Print Coder,
from Help Systems, was better�more like SDA, but it got orphaned when HS
concentrated on operations automation software. RLU was purchased on the
cheap, I think (sorry, Jon)

It _is_ better now, IMO. I can do anything I want to do with it, but I'm
just about the only one in our shop that would use it regularly, although
I'm getting a few converts. (People who saw it at its early stages still
reject it out of hand, remembering the bad taste it left in their mouths.)
It is _still_ a bit of a bear to make dance without it stepping on both
your left feet.

There are assumptions about SPACEA/SPACEB, etc., that RLU makes. If you
move some things around, I have found that a number of things may change.
The main problems appear, I think, when you have conditioned records and
conditioned fields. This can get messy. Also, any fields you add will use
relative positioning. And the order of fields as they appear in the DDS
depends on what you moved last.

There appears to be a better way, in the guise of CODE/400. This has a
graphical design environment that is _identical_ for DSPF and PRTF. (Right,
Booth?) I've only had a little experience with it so far, but it looks neat.

Cheers

Vernon Hamberg
Systems Software Programmer
Old Republic National Title Insurance Company
400 Second Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN  55401-2499
(612) 371-1111 x480


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