Designing a display file

[DButler]

Do you need to have a working interactive program that can be called to edit screens in design mode? From everything I've seen that seems to be the case.

[Scott Klement]

Assuming you are referring to using Genie to reface a 5250 screen, the way it works is by drawing the 5250 screen, and then applying your changes to it.

So, no... you can't change a screen if you can't run it to bring it up where it's visible.

However, you could write JavaScript (such as the sign-on screen example in the custom.js file of the skins that Profound ships) that modifies a screen before it has been changed, if you know exactly what it'll look like.

If you are working with Rich Displays rather than 5250 screens (highly recommended) then you have an independent screen with source code, etc, that can be modified in the designer separately from running the program.

[DButler]

Is extra licensing required for Rich Displays or am I confusing that with Convert DDS Source module?

[Scott Klement]

That depends on which package you've bought. I'm no expert on licensing, but I can have a salesperson contact you if you like.

[DButler]

We're looking into the licensing. Thanks for your help.

[DButler]

Is the package for Rich Displays the only licensing we may need?

[Scott Klement]

If your goal is to create a Rich Display File, then you'd need to license both the development and deployment environments for Rich Display Files. Your sales rep can discuss your needs with you and tell you what the correct licensing should be.

[DButler]

We're scheduling a meeting with our sales rep in the next couple of days. Some questions we have are:

Is the designer that comes with Genie the same as the Visual Designer?
Can you achieve the same/similar results with only Genie compared to the DDS Conversion process?
Do you only get the Rich Display Files capabilities through the DDS conversion process?
Do companies usually purchase both?

These are kind of broad questions but your input is greatly appreciated.

[Scott Klement]

Is the designer that comes with Genie the same as the Visual Designer?
Can you achieve the same/similar results with only Genie compared to the DDS Conversion process?

The designers are similar in many ways, but... not the same.

The Genie designer is used to draw customizations on top of existing 5250 green-screens. Because of that, it is limited by the 5250 capabilities. For example, it's not possible for the program to have a subfile with 100 rows per page, since the 5250 screen can only have 27 rows maximum (and that's if there's absolutely nothing else.)

By contrast the Visual Designer is for Rich Displays. These are entirely built with HTML5 and our JavaScript framework, there is no underlying green-screen. So they have no such limits. These are much more powerful than 5250 screens, and also easier to work with because the program knows a lot more about the web application, so is much easier to integrate.

For example, a field containing a customer name on a 5250 screen will be known to Genie as something like I_5_20 -- because it doesn't know anything about the underlying RPG program, all it knows is the field is an input field in row 5, column 20. By contrast, in a Rich Display it may be called CUSTNAME (or whatever your RPG variable name is for the customer number.) So it is much nicer to work with Rich Displays, and they are much more powerful.

Do you only get the Rich Display Files capabilities through the DDS conversion process?

DDS Conversion is for when you have existing green-screens that you want to convert to a Rich Display. After converting it, it's a full-fledged web application, and you'll no longer need the 5250 screen (though you can opt to keep it if you want both 5250 and web.) So that's one way to get a Rich Display.

Another way is to build a new screen from scratch in the Visual Designer. This is what I do most of the time since all of our old green-screen stuff was converted years ago. It's a really nice tool for building new screens quickly and easily without needing much web programming knoweldge or experience, it's all just drag & drop. (Though, you can do some more advanced things if you also include some JavaScript coding.)

Do companies usually purchase both?

The disadvantage of Rich Displays is that they do require RPG programs (not Cobol, etc) and you need the source code, since small changes are needed to the RPG code.

So, yes... companies usually purchase both. They use Genie on top of the green screens for things like IBM tools (WRKSPLF for example), IBM menus, 3rd party software that they don't have the source for, etc. And they use Rich Displays for their own applications where they want all the power and capabilities of a modern development environment.

Note: You can use Genie to run Rich Displays as well as 5250 displays. You can just do CALL MYPGM as you normally would to run an RPG program, and if Genie sees a Rich Display it'll switch to Rich Display mode and show it, etc. If it sees a 5250 display, it'll switch to 5250 mode and show that. So they can be integrated together seamlessly.

[DButler]

Can a Rich Display program be called from a green screen application not running through Genie?