Migration/Conversion Improvements

We at PVX Plus Technologies realize that application code is a valuable asset for you and your company. This version of PxPLUS contains a number of new features designed to ease migration of applications written for BBx®. These change help preserve the value of that asset and indeed increase its value by providing access to all the additional capabilities that PVX Plus Technologies make available to you.

The following is a list of some of the enhancements we have added to the system to make migration easier:

Improved Terminal Compatibility:

The terminal driver logic within the system has undergone extensive upgrading to simplify migration.

• The terminal drivers within PxPLUS have been enhanced to provide better emulation while using the 'ZX' system mnemonic. This includes corrections to line/column reporting and other FIN related information.
• In addition, the 'MODE' mnemonic has been extended to provide a "BBX" compatibility mode that will accept BBx® style colour and attribute codes. We now accept 'MODE'("BBX:"+z$) where z$ contains either a two byte colour compatible colour code or a one byte compatible attribute value. The conversion utilities will automatically replace your existing 'RGB' and 'ATTR' mnemonics with this new format.
• A new "BBXFIN" option has been added to the FIN function to return a fully compatible style FIN complete with the proper colour and attribute settings. Again, the conversion utility will convert your requests for FIN(0) with FIN(0,"BBXFIN").
• The 'FL' and 'EL' mnemonics have been enhanced to deal with a variety of compatibility issues.
• The inter-character delay (system parameter '+D') allows for the trapping of a single ESC character as well as ESC sequences on text mode devices.

Field Separator Enhancements:

The introduction of Dynamic Field Separators allows for better support of both $8A$ and $0A$ field separators. In addition, the KGN/KGEN function now supports the specification of which character to use as the field delimiter. These changes reduce the work involved to migration applications and data files.

Structured Strings:

Unlike the standard ProvideX composite strings, structured strings are fully compatible with string templates. The conversion utilities automatically convert string templates into structured strings minimizing the work involved in conversion.

Conversion Utilities:

A number of other changes have been made to the conversion utilities to ease the migration of applications including emulation of the 'ASK' and 'MOUSE' mnemonics for Windows based applications. A new %VP5 object has been created to provide these features.