Re: Informix 4GL help files

On Fri, 24 Jul 1998, Shaun Campbell wrote: > Can anyone tell me whether there are any disadvantages in compiling > Informix 4GL help messages into one big file. At the moment I have > several help files but am getting rapidly confused/disorganised as I > need to resuse messages in other files. > > I am tempted to put them into one big help file, but before I do this I > would like to know if there are any implications I should know about. Several points: 1. A single I4GL program can only have one help file active at a time. 2. There is no convenient way to find out what the current help file is, so you have to code and use a mechanism to handle a stack (probably) of help files. It isn't hard, but I don't have code to do it. 3. I have some antique code (last modified in October 1988) which can implement a stack of help files. It cheats on the internals of I4GL so it isn't a good thing, but it did work and I don't know of any changes that would invalidate what it does. Available on demand -- demand not recommended. 4. The Informix message files vary in size but some of them are quite large. Contrary to what I saw someone suggest, the message files used at runtime are the various *.iem files, not the data in finderr.txt. The iem files provide much quicker access to the error messages than the finderr system, but they also include less information -- just the concise message and not the detailed explanation. 5. It is feasible to have a single big message file spread across multiple I4GL programs. Whether it is a good idea is more debatable. In terms of performance, the impact will be minimal. In terms of maintenance, it may be easier. 6. If you're using I4GL 6.x or later, your message numbers are 32-bit signed integers; if you are using 4.x I4GL, then you are constrained to 16-bit signed numbers. 7. I also have a set of routines (last modified in November 1991) which work with 4.x message files (they need fixing to work with 6.x message files; not hard, but I haven't done it to this code yet). These allow you to get at messages in a help file of your choosing, roughly like ERR_GET(). Available on demand -- could be useful. Info on what it takes to handle 6.x message files readily available. Yours, Jonathan Leffler (jleffler@informix.com) #include <witticism.h> Guardian of DBD::Informix v0.59 -- see http://www.perl.com/CPAN