On Mon, 12 Aug 2019 17:59:45 +0000, Seymour J Metz wrote: >> It should be intuitive: add blanks by positioning the cursor at the end of >> the >> line and pressing the spacebar. > >Be careful what you ask for; you might get it. At which point IBM will get >mobs armed with pitchforks and torches. > Future shock. But nowadays most of them would be more used to the similar behavior of the echoplex terminals on their desktops.
>What you are asking for might make sense on an echoplex terminal; it doesn't >make sense on a 3270 terminal or TN3270 session. > Why not? The host should transmit characters counted by the RDW, then NULs to the end of the field. Characters typed over those NULs would be returned to the host on Read Modified; the NULs ignored. Very close to the behavior of the echoplex terminal. >OTOH, it might be viable to enhance the 3270 data stream to include a >collapsing blank (significant null) that would be deleted by an insert but >otherwise treated as a space. > Already, some competitors' terminals and emulators make trailing blanks collapsible and/or convert NULs followed by non-null characters to blanks on Read Modified. I wanted a pitchfork and torch. (But I believe the behavior was optional.) And some silly history: Circa MVS/370, Data Management ref. stated that the minimum count supported in an RDW was 5, and SPF Edit obligingly padded any empty line with a single blank. Nowadays, z/OS Using Data Sets states the minimum is 4. ISPF Edit continues to pad empty lines. I can assume only that this supports users who need to Edit on z/OS and run on MVS/370. And any 8-character line was padded to 9 with a blank. I know no explanation for this; I don't know that the behavior persists. -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
