Re: [open-cobol-list] Syntax problem

[John Culleton]

On Sunday 07 October 2007 08:18:18 am Etta David wrote:
> Greetings All.
>
>   I am developping a program in which i wish to display some data on the
> screen from line 3 col 4 to line 21, col 72, about 17 lines. Then clear
> this lines and continue displaying.
>
>   Which instruction can enable me to this. Please provide my with the
> syntax if possible.
>
>   David.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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In COBOL there are three approaches to screen writing. One is the SCREEN 
SECTION, which has existed for years and I believe is now in the COBOL 
standard.     
Open  COBOL has not implemented the SCREEN SECTION yet. 

The second is a common addition to the ACCEPT and DISPLAY commands that 
specifies the line and column of a data item such as:
DISPLAY "Name" LINE 10 COLUMN 5.
ACCEPT "Name"  LINE 10 COLUMN 20.
This is not standaard COBOL and the  syntax varies a bit from compiler to 
compiler.  Open COBOL has not implemented this extension either.

The third way is to use another programming system such as html or Tcl/Tk to 
actually accept and display the data. We had a discussion of the html option 
recently.  Search under the word ENVIRONMENT in the archives.  You can do 
html in using  Open COBOL to create the cgi-bin program but the constructions 
of the screens and the decoding of the results returned are both a bit 
tedious.

Tiny COBOL offers all three options and there are examples in the TC test 
programs.  I plan on mixing COBOL programs and Tcl/Tk screens in my current 
project, and have it operational  under either OC or TC, using a different 
mechanism than the C language interface described in TC.      

It would help if we knew your operating system.  The Linux vs. MSWin 
environments may offer different options.  I only work in Linux. 
 
-- 
John Culleton