Re: Elimination of PDM/SEU in favor of WDSC/RDI

[Vernon Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Navigator has a lot of good stuff - it's fantastic to drag a spooled 
file to the desktop and have a text file automagically created there. 
It is fantastic to create a shortcut on the desktop for individual 
functions. Some things can only be done there, so we are forced to 
use it. And I cringe at using the new web-based subset - if that 
thing is as slow as the Web administration page - Yikes!! Although I 
do like using the Web-based admin for HTTP, it is not easy to put up 
with slow all the time.

But for performing operations on multiple items, it is horrible. Take 
a look at Windows Explorer sometime - select several objects and 
right-click - select Properties - you get the check boxes and 
attributes available for all the objects you selected. Those that are 
not applicable to all the items are disabled.

Do the same in Navigator - you are prompted for EVERY SINGLE ITEM!!! 
This is awful! Even in something so obvious as the printer output, 
where all the objects are the same, you are not given a single dialog 
that will apply to every object selected.

That is where WRKSPLF and PDM shoe their brilliance - put a 2 on 
several spooled files, then type OUTQ(QPRINT) on the command line - 
one press of the enter key - you CAN prompt if you want, but it is 
not forced on you. It is SO convenient and fast.

I begged IBM years ago to fix Navigator to at least come up to the 
"standard" of Windows Explorer.

This is why I asked Joe whether WDSC behaves like Navigator or like 
Explorer when you select several objects and run a user option - from 
my experience, it is like Navigator - one at a time nonsense.

So if I have a lot of system, operational work to do, green screen is 
my friend. I use the tool that does the best job at what I need to 
do. Admittedly, I have a bias against GUIs for text-based work - you 
have to position by eye, and that is patently slow by definition. 
OTOH, I love writing code in WDSC, except for quick tests and very quick fixes.

Learn both, except now you might not have the opportunity.

As to those who say SEU is so bad - may I recommend you put your 
cursor in the sequence number area and press F1 sometime - there are 
treasures there you will NOT believe. TAB stops, overlay, shifts of 
all manner of kinds - it is still a very powerful and useful editor 
for iSeries applications.

Regards
Vern

At 07:17 AM 3/12/2008, you wrote:

> The PDM replacement I have seen is ObjTool from Brad (
> http://bvstools.com/objtool.html). I have never used it, so I can't say
> anything more about it.
>
> What everyone seems to be missing is that iSeries Navigator is the
> operations tool, not WDSc. I agree that I use PDM a lot for that, but
> honestly, between WDSc and Ops Nav, I can get most things done that I need
> to get done.
>
> On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 11:11 PM, CRPence <crp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > Seems like a good opportunity for a tool vendor or an open source
> > project.  Maybe then there could be a /position-to/ in the options and
> > something enabling options to be active specific to the level of LIB vs
> > OBJ vs MBR.  And perhaps actual commands with CMD() parameters that
> > implement ADD & CHG for the user defined options; maybe there was some
> > design limitation that I am not aware of, for which UIM panels versus
> > command panels were preferred.?
> >
>
> --
> Mike Wills
>
> Check out my music show at http://thenextgenerationofradio.com
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