Goodbye Old Friend - CODE400

Hello:

I think the time has finally come. We upgraded our machine going to IBM i
v7.1 from v5r4 and CODE400 can't verify newly introduced features in RPG.
I've been using CODE400 daily since about 1999.

I've made several attempts transition to WDSC/RDi/RDp, all failures.
Today I am on RDp 7.6.0.

There are two things always bothered me about this tool compared to CODE400.

No support for extending the editor like we could with REXX Macros. I
created a fairly significant library of macros and found that the most
useful and productive were based off of the IBM supplied FIELDS macro. My
macros looped through the resulting field definitions generating code for
D-Specs (work fields, structures and so on), C-Specs (comparing fields to
work fields, moving data to/from work fields) and generating various types
of SQL statements. These macros saved me huge amounts of time and reduced
keying errors.

It's possible that I could duplicate my old macro functions within the
editor if only I could figure out how to access the Field Table generated
when you do a 'RIGHT CLICK' | 'SHOW FIELDS' on a F-Spec file definition. I
have not yet figured out how to do it. Any ideas on how to loop through the
generated Field Table and output lines to the editor? Does anyone have a
different idea that I should consider? I could use both editors and flip
back and forth but that seems counterproductive.

Another idea might be to use PHP to build HTML pages with the generated code
and then 'COPY' |'PASTE' into my source. I could see that working and I
might even be able to figure out how to do it!

The second concern for me is that when you do a 'SOURCE' | 'VERIFY' and
request the compile listing, CODE400 would put the listing in another editor
window where you could search, filter and do anything that the editor had
available. In RDp you get the listing but you can only scroll. There is
no search, no filter - nothing. Am I missing something?

I think I've got a long road ahead of me before I find RDp more productive
than my trusty old friend CODE400..

TIA for your feedback!

John