Console user interface

The console user interface (ConsoleUI) is a technology for displaying data in a text-based format on a Windows® or UNIX® screen. This technology is available only in EGL-generated Java™ programs, not in PageHandlers.

The interface that you create with ConsoleUI can be displayed in Windows 2000/NT/XP or UNIX X-windows, either locally or by way of a remote terminal session.

ConsoleUI is distinct from Text user interface (TextUI), and the two cannot operate in the same program:

When you use consoleUI, you typically code a program as follows:
  1. Declare a set of variables that are based on the ConsoleUI parts, which are always available; you do not define the parts that are specific to ConsoleUI.
  2. Open a visual entity such as a form by including a consoleUI variable as an argument when you invoke the appropriate EGL function. Alternatively, you can open a visual entity by invoking an EGL function like displayFormByName, which accepts a name that is known at run time.
  3. Reference the visual entity in an EGL openUI statement, which allows for user interaction by tying particular events (such as user keystrokes) to particular logic.

The user of a consoleUI application can press keys to interact with the on-screen display, but mouse clicks have no effect.

ConsoleUI can accept user input into a field, but only if you have specified a binding, which is a correspondence between the input field and a variable of primitive type. The EGL runtime acts as follows:
ConsoleUI also allows you to interact with users in line mode, which is a mode of processing in which your code reads or writes only one line at a time. The implications of line mode are as follows:

ConsoleUI is equivalent to the user-interface technology in the Informix® 4GL product.

Related tasks
Creating an interface with ConsoleUI

Related reference
ConsoleUI parts and related variables
ConsoleUI screen options for UNIX
EGL library ConsoleLib
openUI
Use of new in ConsoleUI

Feedback
(C) Copyright IBM Corporation 2000, 2005. All Rights Reserved.