Handling multiple inhibited screens

In some cases there may be more than one inhibited, or locked, screen, each with a different action needed to clear that condition. It may therefore be necessary to create and use more than one special screen customization to handle such cases. In addition to changing invertmatch to true on the OIA line on the Source tab, it may be necessary to add other criteria on the Screen Recognition Criteria tab, so that each screen customization is unique and will only be triggered when appropriate.

For example, a host screen may become locked if the user attempts to type text into a protected field. In this case, perhaps a Cursor in protected area of display message appears. To clear this condition, the user would have to move the cursor to a non-protected area. A special screen customization can be created to automate this. In addition to having invertmatch="true" for the OIA area, it would also look for the message text Cursor in protected area of display. If a match exists, the customization can have the action of running a macro to move the cursor out of the protected area and thus clear the OIA status.

On the same system, perhaps there is a second condition in which the screen may become locked if, for example, the user presses an invalid function key. In this case, the text on the error screen says Invalid function key pressed. To clear this condition, the user might have to press the Enter key. Another special screen customization could be created to automate this. It would also have invertmatch="true" for the OIA area, but it would match the text Invalid function key pressed. For the action, this screen customization would send the Enter key to the host.

Depending on the specific environment, it may be easiest to handle inhibited screens by simply setting the OIA criteria to DONTCARE and allowing the users to handle the situation just as they would with a terminal emulator. As shown above, however, you can also enable ZIETrans to automatically recognize and handle inhibited screens if you create one or more special screen customizations.