RE: ? on overlay and stupid DDS keyword tricks

On 02/03/99 11:43:37 AM Joel Fritz  wrote:

>My particular need was to put a list of stuff in a subfile and have a 
total
>for one column of the subfile always visible below the subfile and have 
this
>appear in a pop up window. Wouldn't it be simpler if you could put the
>subfile control record above or below the subfile. 

You can put the SFLCTL below the subfile if you want.  An alternate answer 
to a popup window is to put the total in a "footer" format - the same place 
you put your command key descriptions, etc.

>This leads to a pet peeve of mine concerning DDS keywords and display
>programming.  I prefer to use the fewest  DDS keywords and indicators
>possible so my code is readable (to me a week later, let alone others.)  
It
>irks me that I can't do this programatically and have to rely on magic
>words.  Consider test based screen programming on the PC (all right, no 
one
>does it any more) where screens were 2000 characters and it was up to you 
to
>put them there.  Admittedly it takes more code to do this, but you can do 
it
>all in a program and document it.

You can do this today if you're brave enough.  Use one big field, or map 24 
lines to an array in your RPG.  There are APIs available for editting 
numeric fields, etc.  Alternately, look at using UIM or CPI-C.  For a real 
trip down hacker lane, try USRDFN and directly manipulate the 5250 
datastream. 

Personally, I find that the "do it yourself" display formatting is much 
harder to read than DDS (and I've had to do both!)  When you say 
"programattically" you really mean "within the body of my HLL source code." 
  Nowadays it's hard to find a shop where one peek at the RPG source will 
tell you everything you need to know about an application, so this doesn't 
tend to be all that much of a hardship...

Buck Calabro
CommSoft, Albany, NY
mailto:mcalabro@commsoft.net
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