Re: IBM is so confusing! -- WDSCI-L

Hi Edmund!

I wanted to take a little time to test before giving you my checklist.

Sort seems to work fine. Not sure whether you want to pop up a message telling the user that the fields have been sorted.

For Marquee actions:

Move: Works!
Delete: Only deletes one field.
Copy/Paste: Only pastes one field.
Resize: Works! (This, by the way, was most awesome!)

As an extension of Stuart's request (or maybe an alternative), how about a new action toggleMarquee. This action would toggle the cursor: if in Marquee mode to Select, and if in Select to Marquee. I could then assign that action to, say, the middle mouse button. Then I would never have to move my mouse over to the palette. I could click the middle button, select some fields, then click the middle button again to perform some other actions.

By the way, Shift works as a way to use Marquee while in Select mode. The problem is that it removes the current Marquee selection. In Marquee mode, you can use Shift to add more fields to the selection. If you're in Select mode, you can hit Shift to do a Marquee select but that removes the current selection.

It would be nice to have a group properties dialog. I know this is bigger than a bread-basket. You would have to modify the properties screen to only allow changes to attributes that make sense for all fields, and you'd have to have a way of showing when fields have different attributes. But the business reason for this would be the ability to mark a bunch of fields and change their color or attribute.

I've got more, but since I've already gone from fixes to enhancements, I'll leave this.

Joe

Hi Joe
We have field sorting as of 8.0.0.1 using the context menu of any field,
the fields for that record can be sorted. (we were restricted for adding
any translatable strings since this was a service pack, but we wanted to
get this out because of the feedback we got on this forum)
What kind of enhancements were you looking for with multiple fields. You
have to use the Marquee selection tool from the pallete to select multiple
fields, we allow alignment etc. We would have preferred to simply drag a
rectangle to select multiple fields, but the marquee tool was forced on us
by the GEF framework we were building on top of.

Edmund
IBM RD Power

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|Joe Pluta<joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> |
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|Rational Developer for IBM i / Websphere Development Studio Client for System i& iSeries<wdsci-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx> |
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|02/11/2011 01:23 PM |
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|Re: [WDSCI-L] IBM is so confusing! |
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|wdsci-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx |
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On 2/11/2011 11:57 AM, Tom Huff wrote:

I disagree. I think it is because it is not as good as SEU. It is a
wonderful tool, but they(IBM) went 90% of the way again. Without screen
design, report design, and debug done easily, why would people want to

use

it. You still have to use both.

Tom

I find the editor to be much better than SEU. I personally have never
been able to use RLU effectively, so the report designer is almost by
definition better. And I think the debugger is better than STRDBG for a
lot of things (STRDBG is still easier for interactive OPM programs).

I agree that the screen designer needs a couple of enhancements to beat
SDA at everything: better handling of multiple fields and a field sort
capability are my top two. I prefer the easy change between records in
RDP and the ability to design screens by grouping records together, as
well as the drag and drop field movement, so it's nearly a wash.
Moreover I do most of my screen changes using the text editor, I really
don't have to deal with the issues as much as you do.

So for folks who don't spend spend a lot of time in SDA (which I just
don't) and don't do a lot of debugging of non-ILE code, I think RDP is
more than 90% there. And the additional features sell it for that group
(just more real estate is worth the price of admission).

Joe
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