On 6/20/2011 7:05 PM, Paul Gilmartin wrote:
o What terminal emulators have a useful zoom function?
Some support the Windows Ctrl+ function to increase the font, others allow specifying the font size (or both).
o Does any terminal emulator provide dynamic geometry change during a session? ISPF wouldn't tolerate it; I know; disconnecting from an ISPF session and reconnecting with a different geometry results in an endless iterative "TERMINAL I/O ERROR". I can't even SAVE and END. But that's ISPF tunnel vision.
Apparently you're changing the screen size in your active session using the emulator; I know of no software that support this correctly. However, some packages (e.g., BlueZone) supports explicit partition sizes as set by the running program. While this doesn't work with ISPF either, it is quite handy for non-TSO applications (think 32180 and 3290 support).
OTOH:
o If I disconnect from a VM/CMS XEDIT session, then reconnect with a different terminal geometry, I merely press PA2 and XEDIT refreshes the screen correctly in the new geometry. Why can't ISPF be as smart? Increasingly relevant as TSO's "RECONNECT" becomes more sophisticated. Of course, if I did this in the midst of a complex XEDIT macro that depended on screen geometry and couldn't handle the SIGWINCH, I'd expect misbehavior.
ISPF wasn't written to handle that, presumably because IBM didn't want to spend resources on something that can't be justified - they sell more hardware if you have one real terminal for each size, and they didn't anticipate the almost total replacement by emulator.
o If I disconnect from a TSO READY prompt and reconnect with a different screen geometry, TSO continues in line mode savvy to the change. Why doesn't TSO pass notification of this change to ISPF if it's running, and/or why doesn't ISPF accommodate?
For ISPF, there are multiple programs that need to support the change, VTAM, TIOC, TSO (recall that TSO has multiple TCBs, even if not all of them are running), and ISPF (or SDSF). Proper support requires that some of them acquire differently sized buffers, communicate the change, etc.. It's not impossible, just costly.
Gerhard Postpischil Bradford, VT ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
