Sharing GDDM pages between APL2 and Fortran

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 86

In my department, it is usual to provide the users with a full-screen panel showing them the progress of the program currently being executed. This panel contains 20 lines of automatically scrolling text surrounded by a static header and trailer, so that they can see the latest progress message together with the previous ones. This means that they can leave a program running and go away to do something else, returning periodically to see how things are getting on.

In order to speed processing up, certain parts of most applications have been or are being rewritten in FORTRAN, and are being called using the Name Association facility. Of course it would be nice to have FORTRAN put its progress messages to the same screen as the APL messages. Looking through the manuals (APL and FORTRAN as well as GDDM), there is no documentation on how to do this seemingly simple thing. So,through our official company channels, I asked IBM to do it. In the interests of those other members of the BAA who may be thinking along the same lines as I am, I have decided to circulate their answer to a wider audience.

You can’t do it!

Yours sincerely

John Sullivan
IT Systems Support
National Westminster Bank plc
London EC3V 3NN