Pathmaker Programming Guide

Creating Requesters for Kanji Terminals
Creating Requesters
5–50 067868 Tandem Computers Incorporated
(If you do not have write access to PATHTCP2, you must make a copy of
PATHTCP2. Then, when adding the SET TCP program parameter to the
PATHTCPS file for the target application, name the volume and subvolume where
you copied PATHTCP2.)
Considerations for the IBM
5550 Family of Terminals
The IBM model 5551 terminal supports Kanji and is compatible with the 3270 family of
terminals. The 5551 uses shift-in/shift-out control characters to separate ASCII text
from Kanji text.
Each shift-in and shift-out character occupies a single-byte character position on the
application screen, causing spaces to appear around each string of Kanji text.
Consequently, screen fields which display Kanji text might truncate mixed text on a
5551 terminal. The number of characters lost equals the number of transitions that
occur between ASCII and Kanji.
(This problem will not be apparent during application development because 5551
terminals are not used during development. The screen will not show the truncation
on the Screen Painter or during simulation.)
To avoid this problem, pad each decoration on a requester screen with trailing, non-
blank characters. The number of characters that must be added is equal to the number
of transitions between the text type. Use the Screen Painter to pad the decorations.
The length of each PIC X or PIC A data field that accepts Kanji characters must be long
enough to accept shift-in and shift-out characters. (For example, if a PIC x field is to
accept two Kanji characters, it must be six bytes or greater in length.)