Letters to Santa Bring New RDi Update

In a blog post a few weeks ago we mentioned that we had the opportunity to test the beta version of the new RDi support for fully free-form RPG and were impressed by it. We had originally thought it would be well into 2014 before this new support became publicly available, but apparently Santa--in the guise of IBM Rational--has delivered support for the new free format H, F and D specs now. We RPGers must have been very good this year!

The support was released as part of the latest fix pack for RDi. That takes it to version 9.0.1. You can get the details of the fixes and enhancements here  and the actual fix pack can be obtained here. Alternatively simply load the Installation Manager and tell it to update the product--that worked for us.

But it's not just about free-format RPG support. Much like letters to Santa, some RDi users have been asking Rational for usability enhancements. And at least four of those requests have been granted--early Christmas presents--as the features requested are included in this new fix pack. You see, we told you it pays to share your suggestions with the folks at Rational! This is done via Requests for Enhancements (RFEs) and we blogged about it quite some time ago. In case you missed it, take a look for the details of how to add your own suggestions to the list.

The RFE enhancements in this fix pack include improvements to the automatic removal of error messages after compiles and enhanced block nesting options. This includes the ability to set the color for the nesting indicators shown by Crtl-Shift-O. This is a small, but useful, change that we like because the old default of black just didn't show up that well.  

There are still a few missing features. For example the wizards for D-specs, Java method call and Subprocedures have not yet been released, but frankly we rarely use those so it is not a problem for us. Assumedly these features may be coming in subsequent fix packs. Considering the early indications were that we might have to wait until February for this new support, it is nice to get an early Christmas present! Thanks, Santa!

Editing the New TR7 Free Format RPG

Just a short blog this week as we know that all you really have time for right now is thoughts of turkey and Black Friday sales. Or at least that is true for our American readers. Our Canadian readers  already had Thanksgiving back in October (which, as usual, we missed because we were running the RPG & DB2 Summit at the time). Canadians still get Black Friday sales courtesy of Canadian retailers who are convinced we'll all do our Christmas shopping in the U.S. if they don't offer sales. They may be right!

The real point of today's post, however, is to give you a heads up on the upcoming support in RDi for the new free-form capabilities added to RPG in V7.1's TR 7. The more we use TR7's free-form coding style the more we like it. Jon has even started coding F specs again as opposed to cloning them! But it is not as easy to use as it should be when your editor insists that everything you key is an error! Of course, for SEU users it will go on being an error since SEU is not being updated.

Unfortunately the update to RDi was not available with TR7, but we were fortunate to have the opportunity to beta test the new support and we must admit we're impressed. Not only is the new RPG syntax fully supported, but the content assist feature (initiated by Control + Space) is even better than normal and will be a huge help to those trying to learn the new syntax. In essence what happens is that if you press Ctrl/Space after coding (say) Dcl-F to declare a file you will be told that a file name is needed, type a name and the assist will list the device types available, and so on. Perhaps even more importantly, we have found that this prompting works well even on existing lines and by simply moving the cursor along a line you can see the definitions for all of the keywords appear. Very useful.

We won't go into any more detail as we are aware that this is a beta version and so not everything is currently working fully, but it is promising and we're looking forward to getting our hands on the real thing when IBM releases it-whenever that is.