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

[Bill Klein]

John,
  Just call me "ignorant" <G>.

I have never heard of them (so this reflects on me), but can you tell me
what the following are or where I can read about them? 

 - Tcl/TK, 
 - Rildo 
 - Expect

Are these Unix or Linux things or are they available on Windows or are they
gcc or something else? (I know that I could "google" them, but I thought you
might give me an overview - or point me to one.)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: address@hidden 
> [mailto:address@hidden On 
> Behalf Of John R. Culleton
> Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 3:20 PM
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [open-cobol-list] human input options WAS 
> Intoducing myself.
> 
> 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
> Able Indexing and Typesetting
> Precision typesetting (tm) at reasonable cost.
> Satisfaction guaranteed. 
> http://wexfordpress.com
> 
> 
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