RE: IBM not investing in i5/OS was: iSociety

From: Nathan Andelin

People can be pretty imaginative. How about this, if EGL comes with a
recycle bin component then place it on a form that also contains a list of
records (a table or grid). In the event that EGL doesn't come with a
recycle bin component, perhaps you can place an image on the form to
represent one.

Add logic to your table to select and highlight records in the list via
Ctrl+Click. Ensure that the application keeps track of the selected
records as you page backward and forward. Finally, add logic to drag and
drop the selected records to the recycle bin.

Here's another idea. Rather than following the traditional design pattern
of paging backward and forward through the list, implement a [more] link
that simply causes the next page of records to be appended to the bottom
of the table, without erasing or disturbing the other records in the list.
Use the arrow keys or scroll bar to navigate through the rows in the list.

Are things like this easy to do in EGL?

Other than the drag and drop, I would say yes, they're very easy. I'm sure
the drag and drop can be accomplished, it would require attaching some
custom JavaScript, but again, anything you can do in HTML I can do in JSF.

In fact, the entire thing would be very easy, since the whole thing is
simply an array in EGL, and the painting is done automatically by the JSP.
If you are only showing one page of the paged array, that's a little more
work, but no more than in a page-at-a-time subfile.

I probably WOULDN'T use a Ctrl-click, simply because I don't like forcing
those combinations on my users; it's unnecessary extra JavaScript; I'd
rather they simply click a checkbox to select or unselect. But other than
that I don't see any issues with EGL.

I can encapsulate the columns in a Record, and then encapsulate the business
functionality (say, for deleting items and putting them in a recycle array)
in a library function. I don't think today that I can pass an array of one
type of record to a function expecting another, but I could be wrong on
that.

But in any event, it's all very cool.

My point is that if you get really accustomed to using the components and
interfaces that are included in the box, you may stop thinking outside the
box.

And if you spend all of your time outside the box, you don't get anything
done. This rather artsie distinction of what's good or what's elegant is
sort of silly - all that matters is what your clients need.

In fact, spending too much time out of the box means training new users who
are used to the paradigms they see every day, so there's a tradeoff.

My purpose here is not to criticize EGL or any other tool that Joe P. or
IBM may be promoting. I mostly wanted to encourage Aaron B. and others
who may be working on native tools or applications to keep going. When
people see IBM and other vendors creating tools that tend to move
workloads off the platform it gets discouraging.

This is what gets me. EGL IS native. It uses Java, which is native, to run
on WebSphere, which is native, to interface with RPG, which is native.

It's just not pure RPG.

Joe