=========================================================================
M I C R O F O C U S
D I A L O G S Y S T E M V 2.5
C H A R A C T E R
V4.1.10
For Use With Micro Focus COBOL for UNIX
Running Under The DG/UX
Operating System Version R4.11MU03
On The AViiON
=========================================================================
RELEASE NOTES
=============
TABLE OF CONTENTS
=================
INTRODUCTION
OVERVIEW
MINIMUM CONFIGURATION
MEMORY REQUIREMENTS
ISSUED ITEMS
ERRORS FIXED
RESTRICTIONS
INTRODUCTION
============
These release notes describe errors and restrictions found in the
software, and give other information not appropriate for the printed
manuals.
NEW FEATURES
============
From V2.5.64 onward, major new features added to Dialog System through
the regular product updates are accessible only to customers subscribing
to the Micro Focus Annual Maintenance Agreement. If you are a subscribing
customer but have not received a copy of the "New Features" disk, you can
access the files from your account on the Micro Focus Bulletin Board.
To install the files needed to use these new features, see the file
readme.txt on the New Features disk.
WHERE TO FIND INFORMATION
=========================
Features added in this update and earlier updates are summarized in the
on-disk document called New Features. Features that are subject to an
Annual Maintenance Agreement are indicated. Additions and amendments to
the manuals are given in the on-disk document called the Documentation
Update Notes (DUNs).
Documentation for the new features that are subject to an Annual
Maintenance Agreement is available after you have installed their files.
The documentation is in the file dsannu.1.
The filename of the New Features document is dsfeat.1 and that of the
Documentation Update Notes is dsdun.1.
OVERVIEW
========
Dialog System Character Mode is available for both DOS and
UNIX environments. It allows you to define and run screensets within
your chosen environment. Dialog System screensets are transferable
between the two environments, so they can be defined in one environment
and executed in the other as your circumstances require.
Micro Focus Dialog System Character Mode consists of the following
components:
o Definition software (DS)
o Run-Time Support software (DSRUN).
These Release Notes contain details of the configuration and memory
you need before installing your Dialog System Character Mode software.
They also provide a list of the files you install to enable you to define
and execute Dialog System screensets and instructions on how to install
these files onto your machine.
Certain restrictions may apply to your environment when running Dialog
System, so you are advised to read the section "Restrictions" later in
this document before running your software.
MINIMUM CONFIGURATION
=====================
o The DG/UX operating system Version R4.11MU03
o Micro Focus COBOL Run-Time Environment
o AViiON
MEMORY REQUIREMENTS
===================
You need a minimum of 4 Mb of free disk space to run Dialog System.
ISSUED ITEMS
============
The following documentation is supplied with your Dialog System software:
o Dialog System Character Mode User Guide (Issue 5, September 1994).
o These Release Notes.
o Documentation Update Notes.
o New Features.
Media supplied as follows:
o Diskette(s) containing your Dialog System Character Mode system
software.
The media contents are installed as follows:
$COBDIR:
helpds1.lbr
dsrtever
dsver
$COBDIR/bin:
ds
$COBDIR/dialog:
BIGMAC.gnt DSEXPDS.gnt DSPROT.S
BLOCK.gnt DSEXPMES.gnt DSRUN.gnt
copybook.mac DSEXPMES.S DSSYSFMT.gnt
DRAW.gnt DSEXPORT.gnt DSTERM.gnt
DSFLD.gnt DSTFSM.gnt
DSC.gnt DSFLDNAM.gnt DSTRACER.gnt
DSCOBGEN.gnt DSFLDNAM.S DSTUTOR.gnt
DSCOBGEN.S DSGETSS.gnt DSTUTOR.S
DSCOMP.gnt DSGROUP.gnt DSUSRCAL.gnt
DSCREENS.gnt DSGROUP.S
DSCRUN.gnt DSHEAP.gnt DSUSRFMT.S
DSCUADEF.gnt DSIMPDS.gnt DSUXPATH.gnt
DSCUADEF.S DSIMPD01.QRT DSUXSYSP.gnt
DSCUAGEN.gnt DSIMPD02.QRT DSVALDEF.gnt
DSCVALRN.gnt DSIMPD03.QRT DSVALDEF.S
DSDATDEF.gnt DSIMPD04.QRT DSVRSCRN.gnt
DSDATDEF.S DSIMPD05.QRT ERRHAND.gnt
DS-DB.gnt DSIMPD06.QRT export.mac
dsdef.cfg DSIMPD07.QRT FEM.gnt
DSDGRP.gnt DSIMPFIO.gnt FSI.gnt
DSDIALCV.gnt DSIMPORT.gnt FSIHEAP.gnt
DSDIALIN.gnt DSIMPORT.S MLOAD.gnt
DSDIALOG.gnt DSLCONV.gnt MSAVE.gnt
DSDIALOG.S DSNLSRTN.gnt POPUP.gnt
DSDIATRN.gnt DSPARSER.gnt SCONFIG.gnt
DSDLGINI.gnt DSPFLDCV.gnt SCREENS.MNU
DSERRDEF.gnt DSPRINT.gnt SSP.gnt
DSERRDEF.S DSPRINT.S SSTRAN.gnt
DSERRHAN.gnt DSPROT.gnt VERDISP.gnt
$COBDIR/docs:
dialog.1
dsdun.1
dsfeat.1
dsannu.1 (if you have the New Features)
$COBDIR/src/dialog:
DOSC2M.TRN DSGETSS.o DSUSRCAL.o
DSC.o DS-KEY.CPY DSUXSYSP.o
DS-CNTRL.ANS DSLCONV.o DSVRSCRN.o
DS-CNTRL.MF DSNLSRTN.o OLD2NEWM.TRN
DSCOMP.o DSRUN.o 850-HPR8.TRN
DSCRUN.o DSTERM.o 437-unix.TRN
DSCVALRN.o DSTRACER.o 850-unix.TRN
DSDLGINI.o DS-TRAN.CPY 437-8859.TRN
DSERRHAN.o DS-USER.CPY 850-8859.TRN
DSFLD.o DSACTBAR.CBL BAD2OKM.TRN
DSUSRVAL.CBL
The following demonstration files are also supplied:
$COBDIR/demo/dialog:
CUSTOMER.S Advanced data and dialog handling
CUSTOMER.S1 " " " " "
CUSTOMER.S2 " " " " "
CUSTOMER.S3 " " " " "
CUSTOMER.S4 " " " " "
CUSTOMER.S5 " " " " "
CUSTOMER.CBL " " " " "
CUSTOMER.ERR Error messages file
DSDEMO1.S Fields and groups
DSDEMO2.S Input attributes
DSDEMO3.S Group types
DSDEMO4.S Data validation
DSDEMO5.S Paging a large file
DSDEMO5.CBL " " " "
DSDEMO5.FLE " " " "
DSDEMO7.S MENU selection 1
DSDEMO8.S MENU selection 2
DSDEMO.ERR Error messages file
DSUSRFMT.CBL Sample user format routine
DSUSRFMT.S " " " "
Q1.S Validation message appearance
Q2.S Validation message panel
Q3.S Scrolling of data
Q4.S Array insertion and deletion
Q5.S Checking the size of an array
Q6.S Menu entry table
Q7.S Menu entry by highlighted line
Q8.S Virtual text extraction
Q9.S Panel chaining
Q.ERR Error messages file
ESSENTIAL INFORMATION
=====================
This section gives information you must know before you use the software.
V2.5.57
=======
o For users of UNIX mono screensets, from update 10 of COBOL 3.2 for
Unix, (and in subsequent versions of COBOL) a fix has been made to the
Run Time System which affects the appearance of Character Dialog
screensets on mono UNIX systems.
Dialog system uses the DOS palette when running, This allows
screensets to run identically on UNIX and DOS/OS2 systems. For color
systems all works fine. However, the mono palette set up by the Run
Time System was not a true match to the DOS palette.
The effect is that for Dialog System (UNIX) users running screensets
created using DSCHAR 2.0 or later, the mono screenset is not
interchangeable with DOS. The fix to the RTS now ensures that the
correct DOS mono palette is set up under UNIX at run time. This
change means that attributes used by panels in a screenset may now
appear different on UNIX when using a version of COBOL later than 3.2
update 10.
You can set an environment variable PC_MONO_PALETTE to 1 to cause the
RTS to revert to pre COBOL 3.2 update 10 behavior:
Advantage:
- No screenset editing is required.
Alternatively, you can convert affected screensets by running them
through the screenset translator SSTRAN using a MF-supplied
translation table bad2okm.trn:
Advantages:
- Screensets are now interchangeable between DOS/OS2 & UNIX on
mono systems. (Mono systems on DOS/OS2 are very unusual, and
so this advantage is of limited application generally).
- The new (corrected) palette may now be edited to include the
newly available underline attributes in the color palette.
For existing systems, it is sensible to simply enable the pre-fix
behavior via the environment variable.
For existing systems, where it is desired to add in newly available
attributes (underline), then the screensets will need to be
translated.
For new systems, the new palette should be used, since this is correct
behavior. Where a system is in progress of development, screensets
created so far can be converted to new palette by running them through
SSTRAN, using the supplied attribute translation file BAD2OKM.TRN.
o For client/server architectures, you can use Character Dialog System
for clients running on UNIX as well as on PC-based (DOS, OS/2, or
Windows NT) 16-bit or 32-bit environments.
ERRORS FIXED
============
This section lists errors fixed since the base release V2.5.42.
V2.5.64
=======
o When importing a field in the data block that had a name longer than 8
characters and was also defined as the error field, the error field
status was lost.
o When deleting an item from the middle of the data definition
screen, and then cursoring/paging past the last item, Dialog
System rearranges the items so that no blank entry appears at
the end of the screen. There was a problem, following this
rearrangement, when moving the cursor to a different item, as
sometimes the item description became corrupted.
o Date fields using the format MMDDYYYY were not being correctly
validated for leap year in years that were multiples of 100. The
format DDMMYYYY was functioning correctly.
V2.5.57
=======
o There was a problem when animating the application and making calls
to DSC instead of to DSCRUN/DSRUN in order to use the Trap on entry
to and exit from each screen display. On entry to each screen
display, the Trap was only visible on the initial entry: on
subsequent entries the animator screen was displayed - although the
Trap was in fact in control and required user keystrokes.
o When debugging using the Trap (calling DSC instead of DSRUN/DSCRUN),
Dialog System expects the screenset to be in the current directory:
it does not search along $COBDIR. The screenset should not be from
an old version of Dialog System. That is, you should load and save
the screenset using the current version of Dialog System before doing
the debug run.
o The character Dialog development system could crash if it encountered
the following conditions. A screenset was run via the Trap, where the
last field using user-formatting on the screen also referenced a data
block item with a name length greater than eight characters, the
screenset and Trap were immediately exited, and an attempt was made
to display local dialog. Since executing via the Trap always saves a
screenset, no development changes made to the screenset prior to
entry to the Trap were lost.
o When running Dialog System in batch mode, a failure occurred when
attempting an update with an export file (/UE parameter) if the
original input to the run had also been from an export file (/IE
parameter).
o When importing a screenset containing a signed decimal field, Dialog
System was pasting the decimal point character to the panel backdrop.
This unnecessarily slightly increased the size of the screenset.
o When importing a screenset containing a field that exceeded 255
characters in length, the offset of the following field in the data
block was not being correctly computed. This offset was computed as if
the field which exceeded 255 characters actually had a length of its
true size MOD 256.
o Importing signed decimal fields into signed or sign-suppressed panel
fields placed the decimal point character one position to the left of
where it should appear. The decimal portion of the field was therefore
extended by one digit. This misplacement occurred only when the screen
was displayed in the development system by the screen painter, or on a
screenset printout: it did not occur when the screenset was run. It
thus had no impact on end-users.
Importing a screenset which contained a repeating group holding more
than one date field with different delimiters caused the date fields
of occurrences following the first to all display the last delimiter
used on the first group line. This delimiter error occurred only when
the screen was displayed in the development system by the screen
painter, or on a screenset printout: it did not occur when the
screenset was run. It thus had no impact on end-users.
When a screenset was created by an import, subsequent exports of that
screenset contained additional panel text literals corresponding to
the decimal point positions of decimal fields displayed on the panels.
This made the screenset slightly larger than necessary, but had no
other adverse effect. This was caused by the import process, and is
now corrected.
Attempting to import an unsigned field into a signed panel field was
being rejected as an illegal import. However, Dialog System allows the
developer to define this at screenset paint time. The import
restriction has therefore been removed.
o When using the sort data name facility from the panel field painting
menu, only the first eight characters of the data name were treated
as significant. Also, in the displayed sorted list, names had been
truncated back to eight characters.
o The dialog tutorial was exiting immediately without clearing the
screen when Esc was pressed, instead of displaying a confirm Y/N
panel and taking the user-requested action.
RESTRICTIONS
============
This section lists restrictions in the current release.
V2.5.57
=======
o There is no mouse support under UNIX. However, you can create
screensets with mouse control, so that if screensets are used in DOS
or OS/2, the mouse will be effective.
o Error filenames must not exceed eight characters, plus a 3-character
extension. If no extension is supplied, .err is the default.
o The Field protection facility in Character Dialog System can only be
used on the first 255 fields in the user data block.
=========================================================================
Micro Focus and COBOL Workbench are registered trademarks, and Micro
Focus COBOL and Dialog System are trademarks, of Micro Focus Limited.
UNIX and X/Open are registered trademarks of X/Open Company Limited.
=========================================================================
@(#)Vrn/dialog.1/2.5.08/25Apr97/nrV
Copyright (C) 1992-97 Micro Focus Limited.