Infoman

[HappyFace]

I'm clutching at straws here!!! What I want to do in Info/Man is to use wrap whereby when I update a record it wraps to the next line rather than overtyping the blips on the left hand side. Here's hoping that someone out there uses Info/Man.

[Fitzer]

Surely this a question for your tech support people, I can't imagine anyone using Infoman unless their employers insisted on it. As far as I am aware there is no way to do what you want, IBM's page editor (which is what the text entry part of Infoman is) is one of the most useless 'utilities' I have ever come across, it is exactly the same now as when I first used it in 1980!

[Pinotage]

There are a number of things that can be done. First the 'blips' (line command area) can be hidden (its easy but needs to be done by your administrator. Takes only afew minutes. Ask them to contact me if they don't know how).

Second, you can use the PDF editor. Go to your Profile and change your options.

Third, you can use any PC word processor (eg MS Word) to enter free form text, but administrator needs to enable a bit of software to make an automatic enablement. 

Alternatively, cut & paste text in. Or ask your site to move to the web front end.

I must say I never thought I'd find a question on dear old InfoMan on this site. Wonders will never cease.

  

[Pinotage]

Of course you're going to ask how you can get in touch with me since the rules of the site do not allow us to leave our email addresses.

How to do my first suggestion - an easy fix to avoid typing over the line command area, is explained here http://web.ukonline.co.uk/p.may/nandq1.htm#fft

If they have any questions - contact the website owner. He's a real InfoMan :)

  

[Fitzer]

Top answers Pinotage, I could have done with knowing this sort of stuff for years, mind you our sysadmins are so 'if it isn't official we're not doing it' I probably couldn't have got them to do anything about it. However we ditched IM 2 weeks ago, Yippee

[Pinotage]

Fitzer - Infoman user interface is meant to be changed, thats how it is sold. It is completely customisable, so changes to it are 'official', supported and expected. As supplied, its pretty unusable and certainly unfriendly, but then again its not expected that anyone would dump it on their poor suffering end users without first customising it to data centre standards and then making it as simple and easy to use as possible.

As you say, most of the basic 'shipped' panels haven't changed in 20 years, but since they're not meant to be used 'as is' that doesn't matter.

The focus in the past 5+ years has been on using a web interface to the Info database, rather than the old 3270 panels. There are a number of sites happily using web screens without their users realising that its still InfoMan underneath. And why should they care?