386 user-agent review and plea

[~XT6561110~Frank McGee~C23~L25~6326~]

In article <389 at denwa.uucp> jimmy at denwa.info.com (Jim Gottlieb) writes:

>Someone has mentioned that AT&T's 'face' is identical to the 3B1.  We
>run Interactive so we don't have it.  Is is just for system
>administration, or can it be used by all users to manage their files
>and such?  I don't know if AT&T sells it separately.  I guess I could
>always buy the least-expensive AT&T Unix package and then move that
>command and support files to a 386.

FACE (the Framed Access Command Environment) is based upon a product
called FMLI (Form and Menu Language Interpreter), which is a product
that basically lets you write descriptions of what a window
(character-based graphics) should look like, what fields you can
enter data into, what the data should look like, what to do when an
item is selected, etc.  The only drawback is that it's interpretted,
which may make it appear to be slow at times.  It IS VERY similar to
the 7300 interface, but not identical.  For the most part though,
anyone that uses the 7300 interface could also use the FACE interface.
For that matter, just about anyone could use FACE, whether they've
used a computer or not.  FACE comes with the foundation set,
although it's a separate package.  If you install FACE, you can also
write your own additional menus or customize the ones that come with
the product.

Some other products you might want to know about are the Extended
Terminal Interface (ETI), and ETIP Designer.  ETI is part of the
software development set, and includes libraries that do most of
what FMLI does.  BUT the difference (and the advantage) is that they're
C libraries, and are thus compiled code (NOT interpretted).  This
would give you a significant performance increase over FMLI.
Unfortunately, FACE wasn't written using ETI.  ETIP Designer is a
product that allows you to do scripting similar to FMLI, but it
generates ETI source code instead.  Once again, the advantage is
performance.

For those that are wondering, the 7300 TAM library is also part of
the development set, so if you have applications that used TAM,
atleast your screen formatting code should move over to 386 UNIX
rather cleanly.

Hope this answers your question,

Frank McGee
Entry Level Systems Support
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"UNIX, Xwin, and OPEN LOOK are registered trademarks of UNIX
System Laboraties, Inc., in the U.S. and other countries."
-- 
Frank McGee, AT&T
Entry Level Systems Support
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