Re: [open-cobol-list] User interaction preference.

[studiok]

> > I occasionally check in on the progress of both Open COBOL and  
> > TinyCOBOL.
> > At the present time it seems that Open COBOL does some things better  
> > than
> > TinyCOBOL and vise versa.  Both would benefit greatly from an embedded  
> > SQL
> > pre-processor.  The logical solution to the user interface problem  
> > would be
> > for SCREEN SECTION functionality to be added to Open COBOL.  But, until  
> > that
> > happens TinyCOBOL does have SCREEN SECTION functionality.  So, if one  
> > would
> > like to do everything with one language(COBOL) TinyCOBOL might be a good
> > choice for the user interface portion of the program.
>
> What COBOLs that you know of out there come with their own SQL
> pre-processor?  Seems to me you'd use the COBOL SQL pre-compiler that
> comes with your RDBMS.  Since each RDBMS has its own unique API I'm not
> sure how one could even have a generic SQL pre-processor.  Perhaps I'm
> missing something...

I partially solved the display problem by writing a few cobol programs  
which build tcl scripts from cobol's screen sections.
cobol program writes passing parameters to a file and does a call to tcl  
interpreter. Called tcl script reads that file,
fills fields, displays them and, on exit, rewrites to the same file.
It is rather rough since any called tcl form flashes.
I am now trying to:
        Start tcls first
      get it call cobol programs
      get cobol programs not to use linkage section but a file for  
internal passing parameters, and exiting by stop run    	    instead of  
exit program.
I insist in saying tha what open-cobol is really missing is multi-user,  
multi-locking and multiple keys (including split-keys) handling for i-o.
Marcello