Re: [open-cobol-list] human input options WAS Intoducing myself.

[John R. Culleton]

On Wednesday 11 April 2007 15:22, Robert Keane wrote:

> <font face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Why not skip the
> Accept/Display method altogether and try using a browser as input.
> You can edit on the client side using javascript or if you have to
> pass an input against a file for verification, do so on the
> serverside and report errors back to the browser.<br>
> <br>
> Regards,<br>
> <br>
> Robert Keane<br>


First it helps is you repeat the subject of the thread and not just 
the digest number.  Second, it helps if you submit your answer in 
plain text rather than html. Like many folks I turn off html 
interpretation in my mail client because it is a security hole.

Now to the issue at hand. Using HTML as a user interface is certainly 
a possibility, athough it is complex compared to DISPLAY/ACCEPT or 
even SCREEN.  I am also considering Tcl/TK, either with Rildo's 
interface or with Expect.  Rildo's is better in that it treats the 
input window as a subordinate and has a mechanism for delivering the 
screen results back to the program. Perhaps his C language interface 
program could be tweaked to work with Open Cobol. 

The difficult goal is field by field editing on the fly. Ideally if I 
key in a customer number it is edited immediately against the 
customer file and either some data is retreived or an error message 
is displayed. Each stock number gets the same treatment.This editing 
pass is accomplished most easily with (you guessed it) ACCEPT/DISPLAY 
logic but the human interface is ugly. Or the editing could be done 
in Tcl/Tk but rather quickly the whole shebang becomes a Tcl/Tk 
program with a trivial COBOL back end. I like COBOL better because it 
is easier (for me) to program. 

I have even toyed with having the COBOL program modify the Tcl/Tk 
program on the fly (it is at bottom just a script) but that seems to 
me a bridge too far. HTML could also be handled this way perhaps. 

Other solutions and working examples would be welcome. 
-- 
John Culleton
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