Enhancing the HP e3000 User Interface

1
Introduction
Until recently, the predominant user interface on the HP e3000 was a terminal-based
connection. Today, computer users require a more robust, user-friendly interface. Graphical
user interfaces (GUIs) now provide a low learning curve, better ease of use and a more
attractive interface than simple ASCII text. With the explosion of the Internet, a browser-based
user interface is often required.
The purpose of this paper is to explore the various types of enhanced user interfaces, in
particular GUIs, for the HP e3000. Also discussed are some of the concepts to consider when
selecting an approach to enhance the user interface. There are no graphics capabilities
available on the HP e3000 to provide native GUIs. However, third-party vendors offer a variety
of products that provide more up-to-date user interfaces. Information on these third-party
products is available in the paper's Appendices.
Background
The traditional interface to the HP e3000 has been through a simple terminal. Today, the three
basic types of terminal connections on the current MPE/iX version of the HP e3000 are:
• A distributed terminal controller (DTC) to connect a terminal or other serial device.
• NS-VT, a proprietary network protocol that runs over the TCP/IP stack. On a workstation, a
terminal emulator connects to the HP e3000 over the network.
• Using telnet, a standards-based network protocol that runs on the TCP/IP stack. Again, on a
workstation, a terminal emulator connects to the HP e3000 over the network.
Although most ASCII terminals can connect to the HP e3000, the majority of HP e3000 software
requires the support of a HP style of terminal for block mode, function keys and other unique
terminal functions. These terminals and terminal emulators also should support the ROMAN8
(or ROMAN9) character set, HP’s extension to the ASCII character set. Most desktop devices
support the Latin-1 character set (ISO 8859-1). Latin-1 and ROMAN8 are the same for English
characters, but non-English characters are mapped differently, and the terminal emulators
normally handle these conversions.
A session normally supports a terminal connection in which the user logs onto the HP e3000
and is provided his or her own environment. Sessions are a natural environment for the
HP e3000, and security and system management is designed to work with them.