Upgrade Guide - Prolifics

Converting an Applicationexpect these widgets for the most part to look and act as they did under JAM 5 controlin both character and GUI environments. This is what we call migration, since withsome subtle differences, your application remains the same.The fact is, not everything translates automatically to JAM 7 equivalents, and theappearance of certain fields/groups/messages will change under JAM 7. Since JAM 7is much more graphically oriented, you'll notice that many messages now appear indialog boxes rather than on the status line. In addition, the border surrounding mostwindows looks slightly different by default. The rules governing the tabbing orderbetween fields and groups have also changed slightly. Most of these differences can beresolved by either editing the screen or setting one or more of the option variablesthrough your SMVARS file or source code provided in sm5init.c.Users of JAM/Pi will immediately note that none of the extensions to JPL areinterpreted by default. Users of JAM/Reportwriter will find likewise. JAM/Piextensions and Reportwriter scripts have been fully integrated into widget propertiesfor JAM 7. They can only be activated by passing the screen through the f5upgconversion utility. The utility supports a -5 option which performs these and otherminor translations on the screen, avoiding a full conversion of the screen (f5upg canbe used to continue the conversion at a later time).Perhaps the most noticeable difference for GUI users is in widget positioning. Thepositioning algorithm in JAM 7 places widgets at approximately the same positionsthey held under JAM/Pi. For both migration and conversion, you will need to closelyexamine your screens under JAM 7 and, more than likely, touch up the positioning offields, boxes and lines. In most cases character users are spared this step.Biting the BulletMost users will find that a full conversion to JAM 7 is desirable. The f5upg utilitydefaults to performing a conversion and has many command line options available tohelp you in this process. Not all options are required for all screens and, indeed, someoptions are not desirable at all. We suggest that you look at all the available optionsand determine a set that most closely represents a conversion path for most of yourscreens. The remainder will need to be handled on an individual basis. The utility isbased on heuristics controlled by command line options, so you may want to assesseach screen and try different options.4-10 Upgrading to JAM 7 from JAM 5