[jawsscripts] A last-gasp attempt at this 3270 problem of mine
- From: Steve Matzura <number6@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: jawsscripts <jawsscripts@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2012 08:34:35 -0400
Yesterday I spent a very productive three hours framing, labeling,
testing, triggering, and documenting a very busy screen on a
3270-emulation-based application. This thing was dancing on the
ceiling by the time I was finished with that screen. You could
hot-key-read any one of 35 fields on the screen, with or without field
names, which meant that I had to define two windows for each and every
field, and just in case you wanted to modify any of those fields, you
got a complimentary left-mouse-button click on that area of the screen
which would force the PC Cursor to that location so you could type
something in if so desired or if that area of the screen were even
designated as a field in the 3270 window definition back on the
application's home-base computer. Really neat stuff!
Then, the second part of my day came crashing in. A summary screen
consisting of eleven lines of what amounted to a history view of
account activity in reverse chronological order, displayed in a
spreadsheet type layout, which needed to be broken up into its
individual fields, of which there were six per line, and searchable
and/or filterable by certain criteria within the data, such as show
only payments, show only bills, show only meter readings, etc.
Ideally, this should be available from the application itself, but it
isn't. If JAWS had the capability to define frames within frames, and
I don't mean just define another separate frame that just so happens
to be a sub-area of another frame, or if the ability existed to load a
separate set of frames and hot-key triggers for different screens all
with the same window name or control ID, I'd be set! Anybody remember
old JFD and how you could do stuf like that back then? I was also
thinking of trying to write a script which could navigate these eleven
lines of data and read only those lines where certain information was
displayed, like the code or text to indicate a payment, for example,
so the end-user could press a key and have the eleven lines filtered
the way they needed, but I couldn't for the life of me figure a way to
do this and get it coded in an hour or two! Frames are great things,
but they're not smart in any way, shape or form. You can't tell a
frame "read this if you contain certain data, keep silent otherwise."
At least, I don't *think* you can. The only possible way I could think
of to do this was if the information was color-coded in some way, but
it isn't. Everything on the screen is the same color except the
modifiable fields, of which there turned out not to be all that many.
And I haven't even gotten to tell you about another data select screen
where you put a selection mark in front of a summary line, hit a
function key, and get one of half a dozen selectable new screens with
detailed information on the summary item you selected! An incredible
amount of data is available through this system. I've been in the
data-mining industry for years, but not since I worked on stuff for
the securities industry have I seen stuff like I saw yesterday. And
they want the customer rep who operates this thing to have access to
it all so that customers can check on any aspect of their account with
this company. The customer service industry has come a long way. The
reports this system produces must be real eye-openers!
... but I digress ...
Then there's the question of just how many key combinations can one
person be expected to remember for one little old application if I
were to define frames for every single field on every single screen,
most of which wouldn't even make sense to be used as such, not to
mention I'd run outa keys before I ran outa fields!
It was for this reason that I have prepared a report, not yet
submitted, that states that scripting for this application will not go
far enough to satisfy the access requirements of a JAWS user to work
with it and get the job done for which the application was originally
written in any kind of efficient manner. However, before I submit this
report, I thought I'd throw it out to you all for one last-gasp effort
to see if there's anything I haven't tried that I should, etc. Your
input greatly sought and appreciated.
__________�
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