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Wow. Okay, maybe I'm nuts (yes, I probably am nuts, and will probably get a few replies telling me so) but I always thought display files were a very easy and convienient way to do plain-text screens. Have you ever tried to write programs with display-file-like functionality on PCs? or for UNIX machines? You write a whole routine that handles the cursor movement... when someone presses tab or leaves the field, you manually move the cursor to the next field. If you want to handle something like right- adjusting, or whatever, you have to do that in your code. etc, etc. It can takes hours of debugging just to get cursor movement to do what you wanted it to do :) To do a simple screen like this in a display file? 10 minutes with SDA, or maybe 30 mins without SDA. It does all the work for you. Subfiles? Well, I guess you do these on PC/UNIX much the same way you did it on the S/36. With arrays. Except, again, you have to write routines to do EVERYTHING. Maybe I'm weird (okay, we're back to that again) but subfiles don't take me long to write. Even the people that I train who have no prior exposure to the AS/400 seem to be able to pick up subfiles and write them in less than the 2 days that someone else mentioned on the list. And we don't use templates (tho programmers are welcome to make their own templates, if they wish) Granted, if the application is complex, it may take weeks to write the program -- but this isn't because of the subfiles, its because of the other things that need to be done! Display files are a GREAT tool, and they are QUITE easy to use, they save me a lot of time and make me far more productive. I seriously wonder why you'd think that they're a "file sewer" thats based on "memorizing arcane reserved words". Really, you could apply that sentence to ANY programming situation -- if you don't like memorizing reserved words (i.e. a programming language) why are you programming? Joel Fritz <JFritz@sharperimage.com> wrote: <SNIP> > I definitely agree with you and Booth about subfiles. The whole > display > file sewer is based on memorizing arbitrary arcane reserved words. > Seems > like a verb to do something like clear the subfile would make more > sense > than setting on an indicator and writing to the control record, > though. > > How many people out there use more than ten or so display file > keywords? > Of those, how many can use most of them without looking them up? > How many can use them in SEU rather than SDA? <SNIP> +--- | This is the RPG/400 Mailing List! | To submit a new message, send your mail to RPG400-L@midrange.com. | To subscribe to this list send email to RPG400-L-SUB@midrange.com. | To unsubscribe from this list send email to RPG400-L-UNSUB@midrange.com. | Questions should be directed to the list owner/operator: david@midrange.com +---
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