Ray writes:

> I was watching some testing being done on the latest in technology
>  <ahem>.  The new screens are GUI/Browser-based/add-latest-term-here
screens,
>  and as I watched, I saw a couple of interesting situations.  One was the
>  entry person using the mouse to ENTER the screen (remove hand from
keyboard,
>  grab mouse, move mouse to ENTER, and click), but the other was really a
>  gaping issue.  Since this is a new system, they are using some entry folks
>  that are very good at what they do on the old system...these folks however,
>  had issues with the drop-down menus for State, Dates, Company Codes fields
>  in the new screens.  They were flustered by the time it took to navigate
>  these pull-down menus because they were used to VIEW screens and heads-
>  down data entry.

<plug>

As you may know, we've been working on a very simple, very elegant
O/S-independent, language-independent method of creating forms in QCTerm for some time
now. We call the process QCForms. The forms have been designed to work on any
machine, using any language and are highly migratable.

We've redesigned the innards of QCForms four times now, in part because of
comments exactly like Ray's. We wholly agree that once you get your hands on the
keyboard, you don't want to take them off. This sentiment, especially among
high-speed data enterers, has been a good part of what has driven at least one
of the redesigns of QCForms. The last, and we believe final, redesign, based
on the comments of Frank Smith, caused us to add the function keys (F1 thru
F12) as definable input keys as well so that all VIEW screens can be replicated
with complete fidelity.

I will be giving a talk on QCForms at the Solutions Symposium at the end of
the month. If you can't make it to the meeting, I will be recording the talk
for playback over the internet using QCShow. QCShow is another project, much
like QCForms, that grew out of the QCTerm experiment. The talk should be up for
viewing within a month following the meeting (QCShow is also just now coming
on-line). If you're thinking about designing forms either for continuing use on
the HP3000 or for migrating, you might want to watch the talk.

Let me say at the outset that we're not complete fools. Although QCTerm has
been free and always will be, QCForms, which rides along with QCTerm now, will
be a charged-for product, $50 per end-user seat. Support for developers
however is free and support is unlimited.

</plug>

Wirt Atmar

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