Re: 24 x 80 is too small.

["James H H Lampert" <jamesl@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I don't think this is what he was saying,  GUI vs. green screen.  I
> think  he was saying that, instead of shoving more data on the screen
> perhaps you  should redesign your screen.

That I can agree with. But at the same time, 132 column mode can certainly
be less cluttered than having to chop up a lot of long fields into
itty-bitty pieces to make them fit an 80-column screen, and it allows you
to spread things out a bit better.

132-column mode is a useful tool for improving screen layouts, as is
having your layouts page in two directions (analogous to having
horizontal, as well as vertical, scrollbars in a GUI). Other useful tools
include the use of color, highlighting, reverse image, column seps,
underscores, and even the occasional flashing field to set off different
parts of your screen layout.

And no, I wouldn't characterize it as being particularly difficult, even
if you're providing 80-column as a fallback, especially if you're using a
display file (as opposed to a UDDS), and using SDA. Certainly no more
difficult to learn than the API calls required for, say, a Java Swing GUI.

If you have QuestView, I believe you can find some examples of 132/80
display file source packed in the VIEWLANG foreign language translation
kit (a save file called VIEWLANG, in the AQUESTVIEW library). Sorry, no
RPG source to show how a program uses them, though. And I'm sure others on
the list can provide a more complete example, or even a tutorial.

--
JHHL