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Status Not under consideration
Workspace IBM i
Created by Guest
Created on Feb 3, 2020

Improve Dynamic Screen Manager API Documentation

While the online documentation for DSM APIs (Dynamic Screen Manager for IBM i) are complete, they are completely without context. The goal of DSM was to simplify dynamic screen creation, however, the documentation does not provide enough context to utilize these APIs. We need more context-centric documentation with clear/working examples of how to actually use these APIs in context.


Use Case:

Difficult to write any application that uses DSM APIs to create windows with fields and another overlapping window and then return to original window and update the data in that original window. Using the Qry5050 API and many other "Retrieve" or "Query" DSM APIs is easy enough since IBM i developers have the background to comprehend what is being returned (screen size and mode, color enabled, etc.). However Referring to the 5250 Datastream manual as a reference, when that manual is out of print, is challenging at best.


Idea priority High
  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Apr 10, 2020

    The Dynamic Screen Manager support is no longer under active enhancements. Additionally, the Screen Designer support that is part of Rational Developer for i, can help solve this concern.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Feb 4, 2020

    Thomas Raddatz has made a great service program and encapsuled the system API calls into a nice API. See http://tools400.de/English/Freeware/Service_Programs/DSM/dsm.html .