Re: WHY IS JCL ALLERGIC TO LOWER CASE?

Ted MacNEIL wrote:
If you want to enter only uppercase data while editing JCL, simply press your "Caps Lock" key. In a modern 3270 emulator, it works a whole lot better than it did on the old 3270 devices (only alphabetics are capitalized; numerics remain numeric). It's no big deal.

You're wrong!
It is a big deal!
ISPF will run CAPS off if there is one character in lower case in the member.

As a vendor, it may seem fine to you.
But, you should aim for the lowest common denominator.

All JCL members should be in upper.
You, as a vendor, don't get a vote.

No vote -- about our *own* products?! ROTFLMAO!!! (You're kidding. Right?) Excuse me, while I wipe away the tears ...

Every vendor in every business is someone else's customer. And mainframe ISVs are mainframe customers just like our customers are. We install/maintain systems and software from ourselves, IBM, other ISVs, etc. And, we definitely install our own software _way_ more often than any customer will.

When testing the install for a new release, we will easily install it dozens of times whereas the average customer installs it only once. If any inconveniences exist, they are magnified during that repetitive process. Our goal is make it as easy as possible for us to install our own software, and therefore easy for our customers to do the same.

The modern "Caps Lock" behavior is a welcome adaptation from the non-mainframe world. In the old days, what is now the "Caps Lock" key was the "Shift Lock" key. On old 3270 devices, pressing "Shift Lock" caused the numbers to be shifted such that '2', '3', '4' became '@', '#', '$', etc. It was not a key you could leave down for very long. But, that is no longer the case. Utilizing the modern "Caps Lock" key is no big deal.

The above notwithstanding, it sounds like you're real gripe is with the behavior of the ISPF editor. Why don't they provide an option -- stored with the member-type profile -- to retain CAPS ON regardless of the data content?

--
Edward E Jaffe
Phoenix Software International, Inc
5200 W Century Blvd, Suite 800
Los Angeles, CA 90045
310-338-0400 x318
edjaffe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.phoenixsoftware.com/

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