GUI ScreenIO for Windows

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RM/COBOL (Liant)

Copy the file GS.CBL file from the RMCOBOL.ZIP (click to download, or look in the "For RM" subdirectory under the GUI ScreenIO installation directory) to wherever you keep your COBOL program source code.  For RM/COBOL, source code usually has a .cbl extension, but you may use any extension you have configured your RM compiler to handle.

Launch your favorite COBOL programming editor.

Open GS.CBL so that you can edit it.

Examine the source code (it's pretty simple). The comments at the beginning of the program explain what you need to know, and the section at the end provides a basic shutdown procedure for mandatory shutdown events (such as when the user forces the program to shut down).

This version is already properly set up for RM/COBOL.  You may need to make no changes at all.  If you later decide you want a more technically correct shutdown procedure, fix the last paragraph to do what is necessary.

Save GS.CBL. 

Compiling GS.COB

Compile GS.CBL program and put the resultant gs.cob in the directory where you intend to keep your executables.  Please take a moment to look at the RM configuration utility where you can designate a directory for all generated executables in order to keep your source code separate from your executables.

Setting up the CodeBridge module

 Also supplied in the same ZIP you will find a rmlibscrn.dll which you will need to run GUI ScreenIO.  This module was developed by Liant Tech support and is provided free for your use.  You must use one of these procedures to make your applications run with GUI ScreenIO:

  1. Add rmlibscrn.dll to your distributed application, and set up procedures to launch your applications with a command line that includes the L parameter.  This parameter specified rmlibscrn.dll by name (with a full path specification and file name if it is not in the working directory.
  2. Or, you can create a subdirectory named RmAutoLD under the directory containing the RM supplied RUNCOBOL.EXE.  Then you simply place rmlibscrn.dll in the RmAutoLd subdirectory.  (Upper/Lower case is not important in windows systems). See Appendix D of the RM/COBOL Users Guide for and explanation of the RmAutoLd directory and other topics related to packaging your application.

You will still need to make available all the DLLs supplied by us when you distribute your application.  These are documented here. These may be located anywhere in the path, or co-located with RUNCOBOL.EXE.

What's all this linking stuff?

Any mention of linking in this manual does not apply to RM/COBOL applications, because RM/COBOL is not a compiler but rather an interpreter, and therefore requires no linking.  You simply compile your .CBL programs to .COB modules, and place them and the RM/Runtime and our required DLLs in a common directory.  Then use RUNCOBOL to run the programs. 

GUI ScreenIO, like any called subroutine, is sensitive to the size of data elements. You should never modify the copybooks the Panel Editor generates by hand, always use our Panel Editor.  

Nor should you make any configuration change that affects the size of data in memory, especially COMP-5.  We need the RM/COBOL default setting for Binary-Allocation, namely:
      BINARY-ALLOCATION=RM.  See Chapter 10 of the RM/COBOL user's guide.

Also, be aware that most of the examples in this help document and the COPYBOOKS we supply come with an extension of .COB, which is something of an industry standard for all compilers except RM/COBOL, where that extension is the default extension for a executable module.  

Therefore REMEMBER to save all examples and API copybooks as .CBL files. 

NOTE also, that we occasionally save our source in tab-compressed format, using industry standard tab stops.  While we try to avoid this for our API copybooks,  you may occasionally find one, and will have to expand these tabs using your program editor to prevent compiler diagnostics.  Panels are not generated with tab compression.

The Editor allows you to set the extension that should be used for panels you generate.  See "Help, Application Profile, Edit" before you open any panels, and remember to save your profile changes.  (We keep one profile for each application).

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