RE: FW: Keyword on DSPF entry field

[Jim Langston <jlangston@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Nelson,

You also have to realize that a lot of times someone may have a solution
they think of as being pretty bad, so don't offer it until they see no one
else has a better way to do it.

In your particular case, there is no solution that fits your original
question.

So now you are up to working with kludges.

The best kludge, IMO, is to tell your users not to do that.  I'm sorry, but
there are numeric fields used on thousands(millions?) of 5250 displays used
all over the world every day, and users have learned to not tab out of these
fields but to hit field exit.  Teach your users the same thing, or tell them
you'll give them a dumb tube to work with <g>

Another kludge: as someone brought up, change the numeric fields to alpha
and do your own conversion to numeric.

Another kludge: write your own 5250 emulator.  In your 5250 emulator don't
allow tabs out of numeric fields.

Another kludge: write your own software interface as a front end to the
program.

The only one of these that is really doable, IMO, is the first one, unless
you have a lot of time/money to spend.

Regards,

Jim Langston

-----Original Message-----
From: Smith, Nelson [mailto:NSmith@lincare.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 11:05 AM
To: 'rpg400-l@midrange.com'
Subject: RE: FW: Keyword on DSPF entry field


Point taken on the tone of the post, Joe, and I apologize to the list for
that.  I didn't realize it would come across that way.

The reason for the second post was that it appeared no one was taking the
original question as a serious one.  Generally, the most trivial of
questions receive a lot of responses here.  I believe though that the first
response I did receive got it right when he said no one had responded
because there was no good solution to the problem.  But if you thought the
original was a newbie post, wouldn't that be more reason to help rather than
less?  I hope we don't become too elitist to help newbies.  I've always seen
just the opposite in the past here.

BTW, I've been dealing with the 5250 interface since 1979, but I don't have
an answer to this particular problem.  If that makes me a newbie, so be it.