Inter-Platform Program Source Tool

Inter-Platform Program Source Tool

      Disclosed is a process that will allow an OS/2* user utilizing
a host editor facility through a session with an OS/2 remote editor
tool (RET) to execute one or more functions on that file by entering
a series of keystrokes that uniquely identify an action set required.
Functions can include operations such as text data generation and
placement within the edited file, and window create and pop-up.

      The name of this process is the Inter-Platform Program Source
Tool (IPST).  It consists of three components.  The first is an
interface component which allows the user to identify a series of
actions that are to occur when a specific user keystroke sequence is
detected.  This component receives this information from the user
through a series of user-friendly Presentation Manager* (PM) windows
and creates two tables.  The first table is a translate table which
is used to translate the keystrokes into a single action identifier.
Each entry in the table is named by a keystroke sequence and contains
one action identifier value.  The second table is the action table
whose entries use the action identifier value as their identifier and
contain an action-type code and action data.  The action code
indicates what type of action is to be performed (e.g., execute a
command, start a program) and the action data is the input of the
action (e.g., the command, program name).  The second component is a
daemon process that accesses the translate table when prompted by
keystroke data from an interface such as Communications Manager Mouse
(CM_mouse) which detects certain keystrokes and passes this
information to the daemon.  The IPST daemon uses the translate table
to extract an action identifier value which is then passed to the
third component, a dispatcher process.  The dispatcher process is an
asynchronous process that receives action identifier codes from the
IPST daemon and uses the action table created by the IPST interface
component to determine what action should occur.  The actions
specified in the action table are performed by the dispatcher.

The format of the translate table is illustrated below.

        TRANSLATE TABLE
           ---------------
         keystroke     action
         hex.  values     code
        ------------------------
        | '51C534'x   |  0001  |
        |-------------|--------|
        | 'D39F'x     |  0002  |
        |-------------|--------|
        | '8329CC'x   |  0003  |
        |-------------|--------|
        | 'FFEE'x     |  0004  |
        ------------------------

      The keystroke hexadecimal value field of the table will support
up to four keystr...