Back to my MANMAN days (1986+) our ENGINEERING people wanted a full
screen
edit feature for Bills-of-materials; MANMAN provided only single item at
a time,
line mode prompting.

After getting some tips from ROBELLE about block mode, we wrote a
block-mode BOM
editor program. It sent complete BOM to screen (Oh, you had to be
running
reflection). Tabs were set for each column. User made changes, and sent
BOM back.
Users loved it. Editing 100+ lines of BOM.

The feature I liked most was using a mix of absolute screen and relative
screen
cursor positioning. I hate it when a block mode program clears screen
memory. So
ours save current absolute position, painted from there on. Upon exit,
user had
all his previous screen for scoll back if needed (Note some memory is
required
here).

(Didn't use memory lock though).
Keven
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