Re: [open-cobol-list] OC_GTK help

[David Essex]

If you have the screen extracts, then you can choose what ever toolkit
you wish (winForms, GTK, web-interface, ...).

However, I don't think that a platform-independent solution for the 
screen extracts is available.

Perhaps an alternate approach would be to use the screen extracts to 
generate platform-dependent code.
The rest of the COBOL code should be platform-independent, in theory.

BTW, I did find this Vala web-site 'Loading User Interface from XML 
File' [1] by chance.

On a side note, Vala looks very interesting.
No screen painter with the IDE, yet.
The Vala code looks like Java or C# and generates C/C++ for GTK/GTK+.
Add a Perl Parrot [2] like back-end and you would have a Mono replacement.


Michael wrote:
> Good info David, thanks again. I still think GTK maybe the path of least 
> resistance for HP3000 to Linux screens, even though Qt maybe more 
> portable. I guess I've chosen GNOME over KDE. I still need to look more 
> into Vala, as it generates C code for GTK, and intergrates with gedit, 
> and IDE's like Anjuta and Eclipse.
>
> As far as the HP3000; The HP3000 is cousin to the AS/400, I heard rumors 
> long ago that some of the same engineers worked on both machines prior 
> to their conception. I've already written the screen scraper for the  
> HP3000 screens. It does not technically scrape screens, what it does is 
> read the source forms files on the HP3000 and extracts the meta data 
> then exports it to various file formats, one being XML. What I need now 
> is an API that will be able to function like the API on the HP3000, 
> wrapping the new HP3000 forms API around the GTK (or whatever) API. The 
> only objects on these screens are data fields, static text, and function 
> keys (buttons). Besides blinking text, most of it should be very simple. 
> So I was thinking that I could make this XML file match the glade XML 
> namespaces, and then the GTK API would handle the rest....


1) Vala: 7:Loading User Interface from XML File
http://live.gnome.org/Vala/GTKSample

2) Parrot 1.3.0 - Home
http://docs.parrot.org/parrot/devel/html/index.html