Re: Blank field preceding link in UIM -- MIDRANGE-L

Hello Don,

You wrote:
>Anyway, I guess I should have specified the IBM panels are those in the
>Infoseeker realm, which I think are UIM, but maybe not.  Open the "ILE
>RPG/400 Programmer's Guide", tab down to "1.0 ILE RPG/400 Introduction",
>and press enter.  Then scroll down one page to see the list of sections
>in the chapter.  Notice the lack of a preceding space.  If you tab to 1.1
>and press enter, you will see a link to "ILE RPG/400 Reference.", which
>also lacks a preceding space.

OK!  InfoSeeker was (sort of) removed at VRM440 so after creating the data
area to enable it, changing the book path to include the CD-ROM drive,
inserting the VRM410 Softcopy library in the CD, and cranking up
InfoSeeker, I'm ready to explore!!!

I see what you mean.  All the links in these panels do not have a
preceding space.  I'm fairly certain they are not using :LINK to do this.

>Assuming these are UIM generated panels, how'd they do that?

They are UIM panels.  The list of book shelves are real UIM lists but the
books themselves are not lists even though they look like them.  I guessed
they weren't real lists because of:
        1/ the line count at the top right is updated as the list scrolls
        2/ the end of list message changes according to the current topic
        3/ the entries are expandable via the + and - fields
        4/ the "tab-able" fields can be disabled and enabled by function
key and even when disabled they still work if you move the cursor to them
with the arrow keys.

I traced the open of a book and generated 8533 pages of trace data.  I'd
forgotten what a pig InfoSeeker is -- to think we used to run this thing
on a B60!  There is some very clever coding going on but it certainly
sucks CPU to achieve its results.  There is no call to QUIADDLE or
QUIADDLM but there are many calls to QUIPUTV so I know they are faking the
lists.

Although IBM use UIM they do not use the same compiler that we do
(CRTPNLGRP).  They use an internal compiler called CRTUIMPGO (Create UIM
Panel Group Object) and it supports some additional tags and options.  I
don't know if it is possible for us to create panel groups that behave
this way and I don't have the time to experiment yet.  I'll put it on my
to-do list.

Interestingly, you get a different error message depending on where the
cursor is when you try to type.  On the first position of one of the
fields results in KBD0004, anywhere else results in KBD0005.  Examining
the 5250 data stream appears to show a space overlaying the first
character of the field but I need to investigate that further.

The net is that although InfoSeeker is using UIM it is not trying to do
this with help panels as you are.  The :LINK tag will always insert the
leading space.  To do otherwise would require that you build the help
screens as UIM panels and manage the navigation yourself, but as yet I'm
not certain how to achieve that.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.

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