Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!enea!sommar From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) Newsgroups: comp.os.vms Subject: FMS/TDMS vs SMG Message-ID: <2778@enea.se> Date: 28 Feb 88 22:36:05 GMT Reply-To: sommar@enea.UUCP(Erland Sommarskog) Followup-To: comp.os.vms Organization: ENEA DATA AB, Sweden Lines: 50 There was some discussion some days ago about whether one should use FMS for a menu system or SMG. News flow here is a little slow, so it haven't reached me until now, but I thought I should add my twopenny anyway. I know very little of FMS, but I attended a course about its cousin TDMS just the other week. I doubt that there is any im- portant difference between them in this issue. (The major difference is that FMS works with fields, where as TDMS works with entire records at a time.) Basically: If you want maximum freedoom, use SMG. (Or even more freedoom, do all terminal I/O by direct QIO. Also SMG enfroces resreictions, I'd guess.) On the other hand: If you want to save time and work, use FMS or TDMS. Both of them are sure intended for menus, so if you if don't want something very special, they should do. And as far as I know they use SMG in the bottom, so the foriegn- terminal problem doesn't count. This presumes of course that you want to pay extra from them. SMG comes for free with VMS. Now, it is not easy as that. Using a ready-made menu system, imposes restrictions on your application, which you may find unacceptable. They contain assumptions which you may strongly dislike. In TDMS you use the TAB key to move to the next field, whereas the return key completes the form. This was about to drive me crazy when I should use the form editor during the course. Filled in a field, pressed CR, and back much too early to next form. With the latest version of TDMS V1.7 you can at least save your own users from this. It is possible to define CR as goto next field, but you can't define it as: Goto to the next field, if no more fields, complete the form. So you must define another key as complete the form. My natural choice was Gold-CR. However, on the arrow keys are allowed with Gold prefix in this context! (There are three types of key definitions in TDMS, but only one applies here.) Another situation where TDMS may get dropped is the following: You may in TDMS define that a field must not be empty, only numbers are allowed etc. So if the user tries to deviate, he will get "input required", "numeric required" etc. Fine. Unless all your menus are in Swedish... As a whole, my impression from the course was that they have some more development to do with TDMS. -- Erland Sommarskog ENEA Data, Stockholm sommar@enea.UUCP "Souvent pour s'amuser les hommes d'equipages and it's like talking to a stranger" -- H&C.