Tips and Techniques

To simplify your conversion process, consider performing the following steps before converting your text-based screens:

• Identify all character-based DISPLAY code in your application.
  Note: Character-based DISPLAY events include DISPLAYstatements and CLOSE WINDOW statements.
• If your screens are defined in a Screen section, print descriptions of your screens. These can be used to ensure consistency, particularly regarding screen name, control names, and variable names associated with controls.
• Create a screen flow diagram, that is, a list of the screens you are converting along with instructions on how to bring up those screens and conditions that need to be present in order to bring them up. This helps you determine whether you can capture all of the screen conditions contained in your application, or whether you must run the application again with another set of conditions to capture more screens. It also helps you associate the new screen forms with their host programs when you are ready to integrate the code back into your application.
• Print descriptions of your menu bars. Menu bars are not captured by the wizard and must be rebuilt manually in the Screen Designer.
• Print SELECT statements and file descriptors (FDs).
• Print your cblconfig file or the section of code that contains environment settings. KEYSTROKE settings are important if you want to replace function key (F-key) labels with push buttons.
• Back up your original application. The copy from which you are converting quickly becomes a work in progress, and you need to have the original system to verify that functionality has remained intact, as well as to serve as a reference point.
• Create an AcuBench project and copy the necessary source files, data file selects and descriptions, and other COPY files into the created folders. Add source files to the project using the Add/Remove Files function and parsing for COPY files. This creates a program structure file in the workspace Structure view. Note that only programs with screens that will be converted need to have program structure files created for them.
• If the application that you plan to convert has calls to ACUCOBOL-GT’s menubar.cbl program, replace these calls with calls to menubar2.cbl before capturing the screens. The menubar.cbl program creates a character-based menu bar and menubar2.cbl creates a graphical menu bar using the same input.
• If you think you may have trouble creating real conditions for a screen to appear, run your program with the debug option -d. In debug mode, you can set breakpoints where the program evaluates the state of certain fields and you can set them using the A (accept) function. In this manner, you can force the display of the screen you want to capture.

In addition, be careful not to distribute the wizard to your end users when you ship the run-time. Specifically, do not give them the file achr2gui.dll. This file is normally located in the same directory as the run-time (which defaults to the bin subdirectory where you installed ACUCOBOL-GT). This file is not needed except when running the wizard.