RE: FW: Keyword on DSPF entry field

["Smith, Nelson" <NSmith@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

You're right of course, but how do you get that across to thousands of
low-level clerks in remote offices, pounding on PC keyboards, who've never
heard of 5250, whom you've never met and never will?  Telling them not to do
it is fruitless.  If it can be done on a PC keyboard, it will be.  We have
to invent our own protections back here in our own applications and the
reasonableness tests are about the only viable solution I've heard.

The fact that this is such a universal problem and has been around for so
long now, is what led me to suspect that, surely, someone had come up with a
solution to it by now, and I was just ignorant of what it was.  Apparently
not, and I think we've pretty well beat it to death now.  I apologize for
having asked.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Langston [SMTP:jlangston@celsinc.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 2:41 PM
> To:   'rpg400-l@midrange.com'
> Subject:      RE: FW: Keyword on DSPF entry field
>
> 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.
>
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