RE: New RPG programmers

[James Rich <james@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 9 Nov 2004, James H H Lampert wrote:

> Modern 5250 and 3270 terminals aren't much less sophisticated than
> X-terminals, and they even have mouse support. And with products like
> HATS, you can "scrape" a 5250 screen into a remarkably sophisticated
> browser-based GUI.

I don't know if you've ever coded in X, but my experience shows that it is 
a lot more sophisticated than 5250.  Colormaps, fonts, bitmaps, planes, 
events, etc. are all things that 5250 doesn't have.  5250 has at most 7 
colors and 2 fonts (really only 1 font but the 5250 hardware may choose 
to use a second).  Of course 5250 does have some things that straight Xlib 
doesn't such as fields, cursor progression, and word wrap (though these 
are all done with widget sets on top of Xlib).  And don't forget that many 
X-terminals support OpenGL as well.  5250 has no 3D support.

James Rich

It's not the software that's free; it's you.
        - billyskank on Groklaw