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TFCS Replacement?
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<blockquote data-quote="curiousbrain" data-source="post: 962513" data-attributes="member: 31608"><p>I was looking for something to do, and this just happened to be what I worked on today; I was looking for an excuse to do something quasi-technical lately, so that didn't hurt, either. Forgive me for being longwinded, but when I am interested in something I tend to attack it with a certain vigor that others occasionally find ... annoying; you might say I inform them against their will. I apologize in advance for that, as well.</p><p></p><p>It is screen-scraping, but someone else has already done the dirty work; and in a good (portable) way. The link is <a href="http://www.h3270.org/" target="_blank">here</a>.</p><p></p><p>I first went at the problem with the 3270 terminal emulator we use at the building where I am employed, and I was going to try to do the Access/Automation thing I mentioned the other day, but it soon became apparent the functionality exported by the emulator lacked the precision required to extract the relevant data without a massive amount of string-fu, which seemed unacceptable.</p><p></p><p>Then, I thought I could maybe write my own 3270 terminal routines, that could provide the degree of control necessary; then, I really thought about what that would entail, and that UPS would probably never let me do that anyway, so I quickly moved on from that idea.</p><p></p><p>Then, I found the `s3270` script that h3270 uses under-the-hood, which led me to the program in question. Which, I have setup myself, and really is pretty nice.</p><p></p><p>The basic gist is that it passes the terminal screen through a filter of regular expressions, and the resulting text is considered as HTML, and rendered as such in the browser. For each screen of the terminal, it searches for a matching regex, and uses that to render the screen in question; go to another screen, it runs a different set of expressions. This way, you can tailor each menu screen as you want - which is nice, I would think, because you could have a regex that matches every menu, or just one. These regex expressions also have the ability to make calls to Java, if any truly special purpose mangling is needed.</p><p></p><p>I mean, the upshot here is that, from a complexity standpoint, once the basic foundation is setup, you only have to hire people to do basic HTML (a fairly cheap skill, I would imagine), and not write epic string-fu code that has to be completely reworked every time a character is moved or the terminal hiccups. And, the programs in question are entirely free, so that's nice.</p><p></p><p>The downside, obviously, is that nothing will ever become of this and this is nothing more than a mental exercise for me; but, I'm content because I feel like it could work.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="curiousbrain, post: 962513, member: 31608"] I was looking for something to do, and this just happened to be what I worked on today; I was looking for an excuse to do something quasi-technical lately, so that didn't hurt, either. Forgive me for being longwinded, but when I am interested in something I tend to attack it with a certain vigor that others occasionally find ... annoying; you might say I inform them against their will. I apologize in advance for that, as well. It is screen-scraping, but someone else has already done the dirty work; and in a good (portable) way. The link is [URL="http://www.h3270.org/"]here[/URL]. I first went at the problem with the 3270 terminal emulator we use at the building where I am employed, and I was going to try to do the Access/Automation thing I mentioned the other day, but it soon became apparent the functionality exported by the emulator lacked the precision required to extract the relevant data without a massive amount of string-fu, which seemed unacceptable. Then, I thought I could maybe write my own 3270 terminal routines, that could provide the degree of control necessary; then, I really thought about what that would entail, and that UPS would probably never let me do that anyway, so I quickly moved on from that idea. Then, I found the `s3270` script that h3270 uses under-the-hood, which led me to the program in question. Which, I have setup myself, and really is pretty nice. The basic gist is that it passes the terminal screen through a filter of regular expressions, and the resulting text is considered as HTML, and rendered as such in the browser. For each screen of the terminal, it searches for a matching regex, and uses that to render the screen in question; go to another screen, it runs a different set of expressions. This way, you can tailor each menu screen as you want - which is nice, I would think, because you could have a regex that matches every menu, or just one. These regex expressions also have the ability to make calls to Java, if any truly special purpose mangling is needed. I mean, the upshot here is that, from a complexity standpoint, once the basic foundation is setup, you only have to hire people to do basic HTML (a fairly cheap skill, I would imagine), and not write epic string-fu code that has to be completely reworked every time a character is moved or the terminal hiccups. And, the programs in question are entirely free, so that's nice. The downside, obviously, is that nothing will ever become of this and this is nothing more than a mental exercise for me; but, I'm content because I feel like it could work. [/QUOTE]
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