Re: Opinions Wanted: 4GL or New Era??

On 28 Jul 97 at 17:40, Dan Cradler wrote: > We are going to rewrite a custom Foxbase for Unix application > because we have outgrown its capabilities. We want to use Informix > Workgroup Server as our database engine since we are also getting > accounting and payroll software that runs on it. Our custom > application runs on dumb terminals (mostly VT 525 and other VT > compatibles). We plan to stick with the terminals since they are > cost-effective, reliable, and efficient for our purposes. What we > are trying to figure out is which Informix (or 3rd party) tool would > be the best for this task. It appears that our options are: 4GL, New > Era with character VCL, and ESQL for C. Is anybody else writing new > code for terminals? What do you reccommend? So far, we are > unimpressed with 4GL's screen handling abilities (no way to make > pull-down menus, no arbitrary placement of text on the screen, no > way to get single keystrokes to make your own menus, etc.). Is there > something we are missing or a third-party tool that removes these > limitations? New Era looks much nicer but so far we haven't found > anyone that uses the character VCL. Has anyone tried it? Can you > design effective screens with it for use on terminals? If we choose > ESQL, is there a good screen handling library out there (better than > curses) that would work well with it? Well, you might be unimpressed with 4GL's screen handling capabilities, but there's not really much you can do with 25x80. Anyway, DISPLAY AT will allow arbitrary placement of text on the screen, you can use PROMPT FOR CHAR or fgl_getkey() to get single keystokes and I seem to remember John Frantz has a toolkit called Power-4GL which allows drop-down menus. Believe me, the more you use 4GL, the more impressed you get... The problem with NewEra and the ChUI VCL is that it isn't widely adopted, and I suspect it will never translate too well from Windoze. If you are lucky enough to still be in a ChUI environment, stick with a well-proven, widely-used, stable and powerful tool: 4GL. That'll be $0.02, please. -- Ciao, Billy Nose to the ground and ear to the grindstone in: Johannesburg, Murder Capital of the World +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | UNIX *is* user friendly. It's just very selective about its friends. | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+