Display enhancements (was: OFF Topic)

From: Lueko Willms (l.willms_at_jpberlin.de)
Date: 10/11/04 

Date: 11 Oct 2004 07:24:00 GMT

. Am 10.10.04
schrieb dashwood@nospam.enternet.co.nz (Pete Dashwood)
    auf /COMP/LANG/COBOL
     in 1097451657.l73HNxSpbWhQW1bn1eZe7g@teranews
  ueber Re: OFF Topic

>> Extend the picture code to include
>> font, size, bold,

PD> Now THAT makes a lot of sense to me, provided you are dealing with an
PD> edited picture (which, by definition originally, had to be an OUTPUT
PD> field.)

   And it would need to be only in the REPORT WRITER and SCREEN
sections, nowhere else.

   But not as an extension to the PICTURE clause, but as an additional
clause like PRINT-FORMAT or CHARACTER-TYPE.

   And for the REPORT SECTION I would like to see the ability to
specify the printing position of groups and elements by tenths of
millimeter or hundreths of inch.

PD> It would be pretty horrendous to implement though.

   I don't think so. One would use the rendering engines, the printing
system supplied by the operating system, its printer drivers etc.

PD> There are so many attributes for screens and printers

   Four of them would be sufficient:

   - Font family name, e.g. "Arial", "Times Roman", "OCR B"
   - Font size in typographic points
   - One of the four font variants
      (how does one say that in English? Font decoration?):
      normal, bold, italic, bold-italic which are provided by the
        basic rendering systems in e.g. Windows, Postscript etc.
   - Colour

PD> you would probably have to define the required devices
PD> in the ENVIRONMENT DIVISION

   Yes, the SPECIAL-NAMES paragraph is the place to specify special
names for the combination of those four attributes mentioned above

   but not the actual printer or other display device.

PD> and then your program would be locked in to those specific
devices. Not good.

>> Specify left justify for text, or center, or right.
>>

PD> This is more hopeful because it need not necessarily be device
PD> dependent.

   JUSTIFIED LEFT is the default, and JUST[IFIED] RIGHT is available
since generations. JUST CENTER might be a nice addition to the next
standard.

   But the 2002 standard already has the COLUMN CENTER clause for the
REPORT WRITER enabling to center a given item around a column.

   So I don't see any need to duplicate this.

   Except perhaps by providing an alternative to the COLUMN clause
with a PRINTING-POSITION (Fujitsu) which could be specified in tenths
of millimeter resp. hundreths of inch; whereby it would probably be
good to specify a unit in the ENVIRONMENT DIVISION which could be a
multiple of one of the two basic measurements. I hope I have not
misunderstund Fujitsu's PRINTING-POSITION clause...

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

"Die Interessen der Nation lassen sich nicht anders formulieren als unter
dem Gesichtspunkt der herrschenden Klasse oder der Klasse, die die
Herrschaft anstrebt." - Leo Trotzki (27. Januar 1932)

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