Cobol - SCREEN SECTION structure.

Author

SCREEN SECTION structure.

John Culleton

2005-08-26, 7:55 am

The SCREEN SECTION is not well documented in the books I have access to. But
it seems that the custom is to put all the label statements in one
substructure and all the data fields in another. I can see some advantages,
but is this a requirement? For automatic generation of SCREEN SECTION code
it might be convenient to put the label next to the corresponding data
field e.g.:
LABEL
DATA
LABEL
DATA

instead of
LABEL
LABEL
DATA
DATA

--
John Culleton
Able Indexers and Typesetters

yogibear

2005-08-26, 6:55 pm

It depends on the compilers implementation of the screen section. With
ACUCOBOL-GT you can group items in the screen section in any fashion
that makes sense to you. Since the screen section in essence allows you
to specify how your user interface is presented, many developers lay
out the screen section based on where each item is to be positioned.

John Culleton wrote:
> The SCREEN SECTION is not well documented in the books I have access to. But
> it seems that the custom is to put all the label statements in one
> substructure and all the data fields in another. I can see some advantages,
> but is this a requirement? For automatic generation of SCREEN SECTION code
> it might be convenient to put the label next to the corresponding data
> field e.g.:
> LABEL
> DATA
> LABEL
> DATA
>
> instead of
> LABEL
> LABEL
> DATA
> DATA
>
> --
> John Culleton
> Able Indexers and Typesetters

Volker Englisch

2005-08-26, 6:55 pm

On Fri, 26 Aug 2005, John Culleton wrote:

> The SCREEN SECTION is not well documented in the books I have access to. But
> it seems that the custom is to put all the label statements in one
> substructure and all the data fields in another. I can see some advantages,
> but is this a requirement? For automatic generation of SCREEN SECTION code
> it might be convenient to put the label next to the corresponding data
> field e.g.:

I'm actually working with Cobol on VMS, where it's up to the programmer in
what sequence (s)he does the coding.

I for myself prefer the former approach, for I do not need to rebuild the
whole screen after a data entry is finished. Just a matter of speed when
working with slower serial terminals.

V.

Lueko Willms

2005-08-26, 6:55 pm

.. On 26.08.05
wrote john@wexfordpress.com (John Culleton)
on /COMP/LANG/COBOL
in MtqdneldkfcAlpLeRVn-rA@adelphia.com
about SCREEN SECTION structure.

JC> The SCREEN SECTION is not well documented in the books I have access
JC> to.

Are the X/Open COBOL specification and the 2002 COBOL standard
document among those documents?

You can download both as PDFs from the Web. The former is free, the
latter costs 18 USD.

See http://www.opengroup.org for X/Open and search the bookstore,
or enter directly
http://www.opengroup.org/online-pub...909799&FORM=PDF

And for the 2002 standard start at
http://www.cobolstandards.com and follow the link to the ANSI
webstore or enter directly
http://webstore.ansi.org/ansidocsto....asp?dept_id=10

Yours,
Lüko Willms http://www.willms-edv.de
/--------- L.WILLMS@jpberlin.de -- Alle Rechte vorbehalten --

Es gibt eine wahre und eine förmliche Orthographie. -G.C.Lichtenberg

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