Re: scripting tn5250 -- LINUX5250


Are you talking about this message?
 http://archive.midrange.com/linux5250/200205/msg00041.html

The link you provided just goes to the "search the Linux5250 archives"
box.

Yes, sorry I forgot I was in a frame.

Can you clarify this?   Are you expecting the TN5250 window to be
another Window on the users display, and your program just sends
keystrokes to it, and the data is displayed in the TN5250 window?

Just send keystrokes, and the data is displayed in the window.

Or are you expecting the resulting screens to be returned directly to
your program, and have it interpret them, and then work with the data?

That would be nice too, but having my program bring up a certain screen
in tn5250 and then allow the user to work from there.

And would this scripting feature support merely the input of keystrokes,
or would it be able to do more, like make decisions on what keystrokes
to type based on which responses come from the iSeries?

As above that would be nice for future work, however thats not what I'm
looking at in the short term.

I could forward them to you, and you could pick it up
where he left off.

If you could, that would be appreciated.

Personally, though, I'd like to either see the existing macro support be
extended, or I'd like to see a somewhat more external way of handling this
(such as opening up a telnet session in your program, and using that to
control in the input and output, or writing a separate terminal object for
the emulator that works similarly to the way the debug term works... etc)

Well thats why I'm asking for opinions, because I'd prefer this to be
general enough that it benefits everyone.

The specific problem I'm trying to solve is the following:  When we have
an incoming phone call the CRM software on the users computer pops up
the customer information for that incoming phone number.  I'd like
something similar to happen with tn5250; if my program gets the customer
from the CRM software (or the phone), then it starts a fresh tn5250
screen, signs in, and does the 5-8 keystrokes needed to bring up that
customer in our AS/400 software.  It then leaves the session for the
user to work with.

A more long term project I'd like to do is have my program  start a
session and "make decisions on what keystrokes to type based on which
responses come from the iSeries".  Whether these are two different
projects or not, I don't know offhand.

But, I don't have the time to do the work myself right now, so I'm just
able to be an advisor for the time being :)

All help is appreciated.  I'd like to work out the best way to proceed
and figure out a rough estimate for how long it should take.

--
Steven Kurylo