Re: CGI Fact Finding Mission (Need Input)

[email@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (James W Kilgore)]

Joe,

Sorry to take so long in responding to your inquiry.

Here's the history:

First, we were not looking to screen scrape, our goal was to create
HTML, Javascript source code.

We wanted to walk before we ran, so we started with a simple single
record panel.  With DDS defined fields, we didn't have any real
problems, except that HTML is not an absolute formatting. Default font
and resolution resulted in inconsistency.  We got by that, sort of.

Then we moved on to referenced fields. BTW, we were working from DDS
source.  Well, you can't count on the DDS source referencing fields to
be where the source saw it at creation.  So we moved to API's to get the
current object definition.  This created a problem.  The current object
may be inconsistent with the rules/values obtained at creation. Go
figure <g>

Right or wrong, this gave use the Javascript to compare to a list of
values for a field.  We got every field with a list of values to have a
drop down choice list.

Then we faced a more "real world" situation of compound displays:
header, subfile control, subfile, command keys, error messages.  Well,
we don't know how "real world" it is, it's just our shop standard.

So we tried introducing frames to handle the multiple parts of a
compound display with <table> to deal with the subfile.  The subfile to
table we could get to work, but heading alignment under HTML frames made
things look "funny".

So we've decided to back up to square one.  Forget the source code and
start working from the DDS object code.
Get smarter about absolute positioning and font size control.  Haven't
figured out how to detect size of monitor and pixel choice and translate
that into HTML specs.

At this point it's become my personal windmill, like Don Quixote, I
believe that if VARPG can create JAVA source, I can do this!





Joe Teff wrote:
> 
> > I've been working on a display DDS to HTML conversion tool and we use
> > Javascript for all the validation that is normally handled by the DDS
> > before the screen is sent to the program.
> 
> How is this tool coming along? I am quite interested in seeing this.
> 
> Joe Teff
> 
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