RE: "extract" command enhancement

[boothm@xxxxxxx]

ah man, off we go.  More %bif stuff.  Sorry, but I can't see where this really offers much value to the programming community.  These %bifs may be fun and really good for trivia tests and certification exams, but if there's all this energy to burn why not some energy directed to the green screen which is far from dead?  Why not subfiles that ordinary programmers can write from scratch in less than two days?  Why not windows that act like windows and don't need extensive programming  to set pushbuttons or footers for the window?  Why not a simple way to leave the underlying screens undisturbed during and after the window's display? Why not some way of using all of the colors without those damned column separators?

Don't get me wrong  -  I like %found.  I like Eval.  I like longer field names.  There's lots of things I like, but day in and day out I have to deal with presenting subfiles to users and frankly I am finding that even with a family of generic templates a subfile still takes a couple of hours or more to get "just right."  

Having a %bif that was a "subfile part" coupled with a  %bif that was a "window part" that included the border, heading area,  message line (or not) and the F-keys as text or mouseable pushbuttons (not hot spots!) and choice of colors without column separators would make my programming a lot more effective than  %bif-your-date will in a dozen years.

That is a personal opinion, not expert testimony.

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Subject:        RE: "extract" command enhancement

I actually quite liked %subdtz ("sub-ditz") but I take Jon's point about its
being potentially too restrictive. In which case I vote %subfld the best
general purpose alternative so far.

Dave Kahn
Johnson & Johnson International (Ethicon) France
Phone : +33 1 55 00 3180
Email :  dkahn1@jnjfr.jnj.com (work)
                   dkahn@cix.co.uk      (home)


-----Message d'origine-----
De: Jon.Paris@halinfo.it [mailto:Jon.Paris@halinfo.it]
Date: 17 September 1999 18:32
À: RPG400-L@midrange.com
Objet: Re: "extract" command enhancement




>> The name we're currently leaning towards is "%subdtz".
>> As in, the sub-part of a date, time, or timestamp value.

Not wild about that one Hans - for one thing I don't think I'd ever be able
to
remember it <bg>.  It's just too arcane. One of the things I was trying to
suggest with %Part - %Segment - %Subfld - %Item was that the portion
extracted
depended on the *D or whatever that was coded - I don't see that the BIF
needs
to have a strong association with date/time/timestamp per se.  Who knows -
there
may be other things we want to extract components from in future - why tie
it to
DTZ?
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