Re: Where do I start?

Thanks Mike and Gerhard...



On Sun, May 23, 2010 at 2:32 PM, Gerhard Postpischil
<[email protected]>wrote:

>
>
> On 5/23/2010 3:43 PM, Ron Hudson wrote:
> > Time for the next great leap forward! I want to write a simple full
> > screen application..
> >
> > One that keeps a contact list perhaps....
> >
> > What language would be best for this?
> >
> > I am guessing Cobol as I have heard it associated with
> > full screen apps.
>
> The language to write it in is the one you know well enough to
> finish the task <g> Of course, *real* programmers use assembler
> language (or better yet, key code in from the front panel <G>).
>

I am most familiar with Fortran but it does not seem to be one of the
choices. I wrote a Cobol program in highschool on paper and never
even tried to execute it. Assembly is a deep mystery that I don't
think I am prepared to attack just yet. Cobol is slightly less mystery


Soooo, Cobol.  (urk / flinch)

But here I am open to suggestion - and school breaks for the next
two weeks so perhaps assembly (with the proper tutor) would
be approachable enough.


> CoBOL doesn't know 3270s from a hole in the ground; however, it
> is frequently used with CICS because it makes transaction
> writing fairly simple, and leaves all the dirty work to CICS.
> There is a TSO application called KICKS that's still a work in
> progress, that might do most of the work for you. CICS also
> works with PL/I, but I don't know whether KICKS supports it.
>

I looked at the KICKs website and it seemed that the first rule
of KICKs is you don't talk about KICKs.

I have taken a short look at the MAP3270 stuff - and it looks
interesting so far.


>
> (While I was writing this, I was interrupted by a phone call,
> and when I came back I noticed Mike Stramba supplied most of the
> information).
>
> For VSAM, look at Dave Cole's SCHEDULE program - you don't need
> to schedule stuff, but it has a generalized VSAM I/O routine
> that could get you started.
>

For this outing I think a flat file is going to be fine..Don't want to drag
too
many of the worms out of the can at once.

NAME    PIC X(20)
STREET  PIC X(20)
CITY    PIC X(13)
STATE   PIC X(02)
ZIP     PIC X(05)
CONTACT PIC X(12)

Total record  72 chars.
coincidence? I think not.


>
> For 3270, I looked at FSI, but have never tried it, as I prefer
> to use my own code. The big hitch is learning how the display
> hardware works, and writing code that is not locked into the
> default 24*80 size.
>

yikes, hadn't even thought of that - I only use 24x80 3270s so I can
get nice BIG letters..

What would you have to do, proportionally place everything rather
than have a static format you could just throw at the screen?



> Gerhard Postpischil
> Bradford, VT
>  
>