Re: SEU Enhancements (was Large screen monitor) -- MIDRANGE-L

> From: barsa2@ibm.net (Al Barsa, Jr.)
>  >
>  >"Al Barsa, Jr." wrote:
>  >
>  > > I like to use dumb terminals when working at a command line.  
>  >
>  >I believe that a dumb screen is vastly more productive for heads down
>  >data entry than any PC, with or without an emulator, and they don't need
>  >rebooting.   
>  >With all your influence, can't you persuade Rochester that SEU,
>  >for many, is a much better option, that there is nothing wrong with
>  >green screens for non graphical tasks, and that green screens don't turn
>  >blue!  They should carry on developing SEU.
>  
>  
>  I wish I could.
>  
>  The problem is that they feel that these products are dead.  They feel 
that 
>  CODE/400 is the future, however I think that our customers have voted with 
>  their usage statistics.
>  
>  I suspect that CODE/400 will become free for ADTS customers in the next 
>  release, but I fear that customers will still not use it.
>  
>  Keep in mind, IBM does not program on the AS/400, so they don't see which 
>  platforms are more productive.
>  
>  Al

I recognize that IBM corporate is not technical staff, but how about the 
Rochester crowd - what do they program on & for?

>  From:    leif@leif.org (Leif Svalgaard)
>  
>      Somebody wrote:
>      What features would you like to see them include as enhancements in 
SEU? 
>  
>      ====> place the cursor on a variable or procedure or labelanme, 
>  press an F-key
>      to go to the definition of the variable, press same F-key to go back

We have something very much like this in CL programming.
I want it in RPG & DDS & other languages.

There may be a way & I just have not yet learned how.

When I am viewing / editing some code & get to a call to another program or 
exit to subroutine or do some exception output ... I would like to be able to 
do an F-key to view that other whatever was called with F12 return but that 
F-key can dig me deeper into call call call EXSR EXSR EXSR let's see that 
stuff with some other F-key to get me back to where I started without a 
string of F12 or F3 all the way out.

> From: lundgren@iris-software.com (Chuck Lundgren)

>  >I believe that a dumb screen is vastly more productive for heads down
>  >data entry than any PC,
>  
>  Do you do "heads down data entry" when you enter and debug code? If so, 
why?

Most ordinary users whom I have seen doing "heads down data entry" are doing 
it because either they are not touch typists & they HAVE to look at the 
keyboard, or they are good typists & they are looking at the document being 
keyed in, not at the monitor, in which case what they really need is software 
to scan in the document they are keying from & twist it into the files that 
are getting the data.

When I am writing new code, it is in my head what I want to do & a goodly 
chunk of how I plan to do it, so if there was some way to mental telepathic 
transmit mind images to the editor  <G>... except I do not expect to "see" 
this capability for several decades, by which time I will probably have 
retired.

I wonder how blind programmers handle this ... I have known a few who use 
brail keyboards & brail readers where we sighted folks use monitors.

> From: Ken.Slaugh@cm-inc.com
>  
>       While we're on the SEU subject, there is something I've wondered for
>  years. Since I also use Visual Basic quite a bit I have grown to appreciate
>  a few simple and helpful IDE techniques. One is particular would minimize
>  the most often compile time error. That would be the 7030 error. Here's how
>  it would work:
>  
>       When a field is defined a mixed case field name would be typed by the
>  programmer. Then each time the field is retyped SEU would change the case
>  to match the original used. All the programmer would have to do would be
>  type in lowercase and the mixed case result would be returned. Thus making
>  it more readable and give a visual verification of definition.
>  
>       Just wondering...

On my home PC, I moved from Windows 3.1 with Word 2.0 to Win 98 with Word (I 
lost track of the number) last year & one thing I really like about my 
current version of Word, is that when I am typing merrily away, it underlines 
in red any word that is not in its dictionary which often is a typo by me 
that it is in effect gently prompting me to correct, and it underlines in 
green any words whose grammar is not good by MS definitions, until a document 
gets so large that it cannot keep track of all the stuff it wants to color 
code.  Of course there are some other areas where I do not like it second 
guessing me, so I want to learn how to turn on & off different aspects of 
this.

It should be possible for an editor to do something similar for programmers, 
color coding variables that have not yet been defined by the rest of the code 
that we have keyed in, or by the included stuff not normally accessed until 
it is compiled, like externally defined files ... since on AS/400 with less 
gas resources this could slow down SEU access we could use F13 options to say 
whether or not we want this support ... a variation on this is when we define 
a field ... it is already defined elsewhere different - either we made a 
mistake or here is an alias.

I know some people who muck with a program, run a compile, use split screen 
to search for errors, search main code for matching code line, fix it, run 
another compile, repeat the cycle, but this presupposes that the AS/400 has 
the gas for the programmer to be rapidly recompiling.  I do not consider any 
resource to be infinite or that it is appropriate for any user to behave as 
if any such condition exists.

> From: eMail@James-W-Kilgore.com (James W. Kilgore)

>  What I would really like in SEU is to be
>  able to press F4 at the opcode field and get to a directory of opcodes
>  that I could click on and get the full definition, examples, help text
>  for.
>  
>  Sort of like when you typed HELP under DOS and go a list of commands,
>  their syntax and example.

There might be a market here for 3rd party improvement of documentation 
products.

Like I am in DDS & I want to know what is the keyword to do X, except I do 
not have the correct terminology for what I want to do, so I spend 1/2 an 
hour or so looking up the index of possible leads in the DDS manual, then 
find some prospects & be studying what each does to decide which keyword I am 
going to use.

Possibly some variation on a spell checker might be included.

I might want to use the command for WHO is doing WHAT at the called level, 
but I do not happen to remember what that is, so I key in 

DSPUSRCALLOW & the helpful tool tells me this is not a valid command, then it 
lists a bunch of possible alternatives that might interest me, including 3rd 
party products like DISPLAY BPCS PROGRAMS IN USE from 
http://www.precosis.com.au/piu1.htm & looks up data base of various other 
relevant products from Robot & TaaTools & etc. & mentions if in fact we got 
any of this stuff installed on our AS/400.

Al Macintyre  ���
MIS Manager Programmer & Computer Janitor of BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 running on 
AS/400 V4R3 http://www.cen-elec.com 
+---
| This is the Midrange System Mailing List!
| To submit a new message, send your mail to MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com.
| To subscribe to this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-SUB@midrange.com.
| To unsubscribe from this list send email to MIDRANGE-L-UNSUB@midrange.com.
| Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com
+---