🚀 go-pugleaf

Leonard D Woren <LDW@USCMVSA.BITNET> writes:

|> > In particular, I want to know how to interact with a user.

|> Can you be more specific?

|> It sounds like you're trying to control the screen layout.  Any time I
|> see this type of desire, I have one comment:  Use FULLSCREEN.  If you
|> don't, then you won't be able to have complete control, and the user
|> will lose other messages.

How very perceptive!  Thanks for pointing out a pit into which I would
have fallen.

|> > The traditional environment causes the user to hit Enter at the
|> > bottom of each page, etc., but the Session Manager does not.

|> Yes.  Not be snide, but... so?  Again, you haven't explained what your
|> actual problem/need is.  You're fishing for information without
|> supplying enough information for an intelligent response.

Let me correct that.  I am converting an interactive program to run
under TSO.  It displays data at the user's request.  Each clump of
data has a header and footer.  On character-oriented systems, it keeps
track of the screen so it can display the footer and stop at the
bottom of the page to allow the user to see what's on the screen
before continuing.  After the user says to continue, it again displays
the header and resumes displaying the data.  On such systems, all
prompts and responses are together on the same line.

As usual, I have a short schedule to convert to the TSO environment.
I had thought I could use the TPUT and TPG macros to accomplish a
decent interface.  Then I realized the SM disallows ASIS processing.
I was thinking about the pagination at about the same time, and
realized it doesn't resolve very well either.  In the non-SM
environment, it would probably require clearing the screen after
prompting, which I thought would be okay, but the SM environment
changes all that too.  Consideration of these issues led me to post my
question.  The answers are exactly what I didn't want to hear, but
it's better now than later.

I don't have the manuals in front of me here at home, so I'll have to
lookup the FULLSCREEN stuff Monday.  Correct me if I'm wrong: it
doesn't matter how you got there, and it doesn't matter what else is
running.  I believe it's the basis for the ISPF interface.  I had
initially considered and then rejected it because I thought it would
be too much work, but it's clear that a good interface a little bit
late is better than a bad interface on time.  How does one interact
with the user under ISPF?  I probably better order the ISPF Dialog
manuals...

One more question about the TSO non-SM environment: how large is the
buffer between the program and the screen?  I originally thought that
when the screen is full, and TSO issues the famous "***" prompt at the
bottom, the program stopped dead in its tracks hanging on the TPUT
which is trying to write the line which will be the first line of the
screen after TSO clears it when the user presses an action key such as
Enter.  Something happened recently which now leads me to believe that
the program continues executing, presumably filling a buffer.  I'd
like to understand this better.  What is the impact of PA1?  I'd
imagine it causes a flush of the buffer.

Speaking of PA1, I believe I need to have an ESTAE handler to catch
it, but I'm not sure.  I probably also want to detect it uniquely so
that other ABENDs continue as appropriate.$$
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