> I have _no_ desire to obtain SPF/PRO or any other Windows software. I was > just curious how much of ISPF it actually mirrors. Only the editor? > Editor+macros (what macro languages?)? Complete Display Manager?
SPF/SE is just an editor. The macro language is a C-like language (not Rexx). Further more, you can load self written DLLs from the macro language and invoke funtions of that DLL. Uni-spf tries to "emulate" (more or less) ISPF under UNIX. It contains an ispf-like environment (so you can write your own panels etc), a Rexx Interpreter and an ISPF-Like Editor. SPFLite is just an Editor. It has no macro language (but you can write a "filter" - you can pass the editor content to a filter and the output of the filter becomes the new editor content). This is far less powerfull as a real macro language from which you can access every single char/byte of the file in the editor. A free ISPF-like editor is Hybrid Editor XE (http://www.geocities.jp/sakachin2/index.htm). I tried it - and disliked it. :-( But: Impressive is the number of platforms it works on: DOS, OS/2, Windows, AIX, Linux and (no joke!) Android.... Do not even think about trying THE (http://hessling-editor.sourceforge.net/). Okay, it supports Rexx, but it does not really feel like the editor under ISPF (ok, to be fair, it is a XEDIT-like editor that can be configured like the ISPF-editor - but not really well).... My personal favorite is SPF/SE. I need no Rexx - and the C-Like maco language is ok! I use it a lot. There are some gotchas with the editor, the installation is far away from Windows standards and the author is sometimes a little bit picky about what is a bug and what is the expected behavior.... But mostly we find a solution for a problem that I've found... But hey, I'm waiting for customizable EBCDIC/ASCII Translation tables since Decembre 2008 ;-> German Umlauts are lost with the built in original IBM 370 EBCDIC-Codepage.... Bye, Michael ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
