reducing the ISPF panel footprint.

Mickeydusaor · Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 8:02 pm

Pedro, my vote has been cast

don.leahy · Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 8:59 pm

Brilliant work, Pedro!

I have seen collapsible areas on panels before, but they were always in Dynamic panels. )INEXIT looks to be much easier.

I have had little success in convincing my colleagues to stop using 24x80 panels, so The need for this functionality is pretty clear. Scrollable panels help, but some folks have trouble with that too.

Pedro · Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 9:29 pm

Pedro · Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 9:30 pm

Don, thanks for the compliment!

Mark, thanks for your vote. (Vote for Pedro)

I apologize to all for the RFE link not working... I do not see what you see, but think it has to do with registering a userid prior to voting.

Bill Woodger · Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 9:42 pm

Pedro,

See my earlier problem here. Although I didn't try accessing on every day, I probably tried on most. I have no clue of what changed to allow me access.

I had tried lots of things, including pasting in the URL bar, searching, sneaking up on it, offering it bribes. I could access it from a Windows 7 machine, but didn't want to go to the hassle of getting a new password (and then changing it also on the other machine).

At the same time, I had no problem with accessing other parts of Developerworks.

I later had a further problem, with one of Prino's RFEs. Different message, but another "500". Later in the same day it was no problem.

This morning the link in your post did not work, but going to the main page and searching for the module-name did work. That link I then pasted, which was 100% identical to yours.

I already had an IBM Id, and had to enter it to view the RFE after the search had located it (in other parts of Developerworks I get logged-in automatically). At other times I've been able to view an RFE and then been told I have to log-in to vote.

Fix this, and you'll be a double star. A Binary Star, perhaps.

Pedro · Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2015 1:37 am

prino · Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2015 2:16 am

Marso · Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2015 10:10 pm

Excellent, I'm sure I'll find a few uses for this new feature!

Willy Jensen · Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2015 12:22 am

That ISPF exit works very nicely, it is easy to install and use. I also got so inspired reading about it, that I wrote another exit, allowing the entire panel definition, or parts of it, to be passed in a REXX stem. That brought the actual panel member potentially down to 3 lines

Pedro · Posted: Sat Oct 03, 2015 12:12 am

Earlier in this thread, I asked you to vote for my RFE to provide a load module for the sample exit. Several of you voted for it, Thanks! but they 'declined' it. It is easy to assemble and link it, so I will not pursue it further.

James Halley · New User Joined: 11 Apr 2012 Posts: 18 Location: USA

It has been a while since I visited this forum and I read Pedro's Share presentation with great interest since I write ISPF applications and regularly communicate with others who make presentations at Share on ISPF.

The way we address the issue that Pedro has with the "DSNB Table Spaces" panel shown in his Share presentation is to use substantially larger screen sizes.

ISPF officially supports screen sizes up to 62 rows by 160 characters although a far larger number of rows (100+) is actually supported. Of the ISPF applications we have, only one (CA-PanAPT) has been found not compliant with the official 62 row maximum. It has one function that is limited to a display maximum of 45 lines.

Using these larger screen sizes requires VTAM logmode D4C32XX3 and a terminal emulator that allows specifying custom screen sizes. Specifying Screen format "Max" in ISPF Settings is also necessary.

Pedro · Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 12:05 am

@James Halley,

The panel shown in my presentation was a table display, where you can scroll down and see more rows. There were a fixed number of screen lines, that did not scroll, above the scrolling table data.

It is not clear what you mean by 'row maximum'. From your description, it sounds like your panel is not a table display, but a data entry panel of a fixed size. In that situation, I recommend that you use a panel with a scrollable area, which would allow the user to scroll up and down and the panel would still work even in smaller screen configurations. Scrollable areas allow panels to be several hundred lines deep. And they are easy to implement.

Even with a scrollable area, there may be fixed areas of panel which would benefit from the panel exit.

Yeah, I know. I am likely giving advice to a competitor.

prino · Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 12:46 am

James Halley · New User Joined: 11 Apr 2012 Posts: 18 Location: USA

Pedro,

By "62 row maximum", I meant that ISPF now supports displaying 62 lines of information at a time on an ISPF panel regardless of whether the panel displays a table or fixed format data. ISPF users are no longer limited to standard obsolete terminal display types such as Model 2 (24x80) and Model 5 (27x132). I have read that the officially supported maximum number of rows for ISPF is now greater than 62 but I did not find information about that in the z/OS 2.1 ISPF manuals when I looked.

My default ISPF screen size is 45x132 which complies with our CA-PanAPT limitation and which also coincidentally allows all 45 lines and 132 columns of an ISPF panel to fit on my 22" display unit when running ISPF in GUI mode. Some of the users I support display far more that 45 lines at a time in ISPF but they have larger flat panel display units than I have.

I think your method of suppressing the display of fixed format lines at the top of an ISPF panel is most useful for those who are still using obsolete terminal display types like Model 2 and Model 5.

I usually make some or all of the ISPF panels I create scrollable regardless of whether table data is displayed - it's so easy to do that there is no reason not to.

Pedro · Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 6:26 am

James Halley · New User Joined: 11 Apr 2012 Posts: 18 Location: USA

Willy Jensen · Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2015 11:51 pm

@Prino, sure, here is a very scaled-down test:

Panel:
)INEXIT LOAD,ISPPX001
*ISPPX001 pl.
)END

REXX:
/* REXX */
address ispexec
pl.1 = ")ATTR "
pl.2 = ")BODY expand(\\) "
pl.3 = "%Test panel exit 1 "
pl.4 = "%Cmd =>_zcmd \ \ +"
pl.5 = "+ "
pl.6 = "Just some text "
pl.7 = "+ "
pl.8 = ")INIT "
pl.9 = ")PROC "
pl.0 = 9
"display panel(ISPPX01A)"
if rc >8 then say rc zerrlm