Re: (RtnDspAtr-like) functionality,for EVERY input/output field

Your example *is* a good reason for judicious use of color. I've also seen multi-line (per record) displays that emulated green bar to help with separation - another useful implementation of color.

But.... When a screen title and a separator bar is spread out with spaces and hitting enter causes a sequential changing of every letter and the bar (think scrolling marquee type), I'd say you have an egregiously poor use of color, a contractor milking his time, and shame on management for allowing it to happen and go into production that way. The worst screen design I saw in over 37 years....


Roger Harman
COMMON Certified Application Developer - ILE RPG on IBM i on Power





-----Original Message-----
From: RPG400-L <rpg400-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Alan Cassidy
Sent: Friday, September 16, 2022 1:51 PM
To: rpg400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: (RtnDspAtr-like) functionality,for EVERY input/output field

I just noticed this thread and wanted to share something about it.

I understand about wasted time on doing pretty color displays, and agree
with the sentiment usually, except that the loud RED color has its place
in special circumstances.

That said though, for the associates I'm working with who have to go
through sometimes literally thousands of subfile records per each user,
each multi-row record representing a shipment. They have to work through
them all in one day, and the next day a new batch.

And making something stand out helps their productivity. They need
performance, and it helps them when they are looking for a certain color
that represents a certain priority. They say it makes a significant
difference.

And they need all the productivity they can get. It's a very complex set
of conditions for this data for what gets on the screen. <rant> The guy
that wrote it left it with a /literal average/ five-second time to
initiate the program from the menu, and not much better switching sort
order or going to different views, one per program, with code pretty
much duplicated across the board but with different selections.

I'm working on that right now. Already have time between views cut down
considerably.

--Alan


shipments represent

On 8/23/2022 6:30 PM, Roger Harman wrote:

I think it's just semantics. It does support color via the attribute byte - albeit rudimentary choices - but does not support a true "color" attribute.

No big deal to me. I can tell you I sometimes have wished there were no colors - I've seen some massively wasted time by developers to leverage that - likely for their own gratification as it certainly did not add to - indeed, detracted from - the user experience.