Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!hubcap!gatech!rutgers!uwvax!dan@speedy.wisc.edu
From: dan@speedy.wisc.edu (Dan Frank)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: INFORMIX user interface
Message-ID: <6888@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Date: 17 Dec 88 03:20:16 GMT
References: <7600001@tasha>
Sender: news@spool.cs.wisc.edu
Reply-To: dan@cs.wisc.edu (Dan Frank)
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Lines: 49

In article <7600001@tasha> andy@tasha writes:
>I am looking for independent vendor products that replace 
>INFORMIX's forms and menu system.

   We have the latest release of the Informix 4GL for the IBM PC under
MS-DOS.  It has most or all of what you want:

>Some of the features I would like
>to see are:
>
>	- ability to use color in forms

   Color attributes of individual fields are controllable.  All prompts,
line drawing characters, etc. must be of the same color.

>	- pop up windows in forms

   The 4GL has windows.  You can pop up a window in the middle of a form,
and when you close it the windows underneath will be redrawn.  You may
bring a window to the top.

   This appears to be curses-based, and is s-l-o-w on the PC, but not
so you'd really hate it.

>	- pop up help menus

   Help isn't "pop-up" unless you put it in a window of its, own, but
you can associate help with individual bounce-bar menu items.

>	- pull down menus

   I don't think so, at least in the Mac sense.  You could pop up a
menu in a window, but that's a different animal, with a different feel
to it.

>	- scrolling lists in forms

   Absolutely.  You can do data entry in scrolling lists, insert and
delete members, have code called when you enter or leave any field,
etc.  The one hole it appears to have is that the object being scrolled
is an array, not a scroll cursor, and they haven't been able to tell
me if there is some "end of array" event I can trap to load up more
rows from the database.

   Hope this helps.  We like the 4GL a lot.  We've found it to have
some bugs and limitations, but it does most of what we need in terms
of user interface sophistication.

   -- Dan