Re: Multiple colors in a Single subfile field?

Don,

>Does anyone know of this method and would like to share it?

DDS does not support this, although *some* hardware and emulators will support
multiple colors in a single field if you send the correct data streams.  The
original 5250 data stream did not support this, but it was added somewhere
around 1990 as I recall.  So probably most every AS/400 still in production use
has an enhanced WS controller capable of the extended 5250 data stream.  But
that will only affect local twinax connected devices.

These days you also have to consider other connection methods, particularly
TCP/IP.  And then it is a matter of whether the software supports the extended
display data orders correctly.  I suspect Client Access will handle it fine.
All bets are off on other emulators and telnet clients because it is such a
rarely used function.

The escape sequence you are looking for is called Write Extended Attributes
(WEA) and is documented along with the other 5250 display data streams in the
5494 Functions Reference manual.  However, the fact you want to do this with a
subfile may be a show stopper.   You have to use WEA to modify specific display
positions -- you can't do it at the subfile record format level because DDS does
not support WEA extensions.  Thus even if you successfully issued WEA sequences
for each position used by an active subfile record initially, I suspect you'd
lose them if you allowed the OS to handle subfile paging.  If you used SFLSIZ =
SFLPAG you *might* be able to get WEA to work.

However, I always strongly discourage application programs from relying on
escape sequences embedded in the output.  Few people know how to maintain such
an animal.  And what do you do when someone wants to use a connection method or
telnet client which does not support WEA?

Doug