Opinions Wanted: 4GL or New Era??

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? Thanks Dan Cradler dcradler@clp.com