Changes Affecting Version 4.3

Version 5.0 of ACUCOBOL-GT contains significant changes in the internal workings of both the compiler and runtime. The following paragraphs describe changes that can affect programs originally written with ACUCOBOL-GT Version 4.3.

Licensing Changes

With the Version 5.0 release, the licensing procedure for extendproducts has been changed. All products still require a license file, but you no longer need a separate license disk to install your products. Instead, you will receive a pair of alphanumeric strings (keys) that must be entered to activate your software. See Getting Started with ACUCOBOL-GT for more information.

Compiler Changes

Two compilation switches provide compatibility with Version 4.3:

-C43	Causes the compiler to generate code according to the rules used by Version 4.3.
-Z43	Creates object code that can be run with a Version 4.3 runtime.

Prior to Version 5.0, the width of a printer cell was based on the average width of the selected printer font. Now, the width of a printer cell is computed in the same way that cells are computed for the screen, based on the width of the "0" (zero) character. Note that proportional fonts may contain wider characters. This may affect the horizontal placement of a bitmap on the page, the width of bitmaps and margins if they are specified in cells, and the number of columns reported by the WINPRINT-GET-PAGE-LAYOUT call. See the WIN$PRINTERin Appendix I, Library Routines, for details.
The Arial font shipped with Windows 98 Version 2 is different from the Arial font shipped with earlier versions of Windows and Windows NT. The new font has a character width of 35 pixels, instead of the previous 23 pixel width. This can cause field overlap or screen distortions in programs that rely on the size of the Arial font. If you do not want to adjust your applications to accommodate the new wider version of the Arial font, a new configuration variable, OLD_ARIAL_DIMENSIONS will force the runtime to use the 23 pixel measurement. See Appendix H Configuration Variables for details.
In previous versions, the command-line option for the logutil utility date filter d had problems comparing dates when the specified 2-digit year was 00 or greater. Now, logutil requires that years be specified in a 4-digit format. If you enter a year less than 1900, logutil will report logutil: use 4 digit year specification.
Starting with ACUCOBOL-GT 5.0 release, the compiler no longer automatically assigns the "MULTILINE" style to an entry field with LINES value of 2 or greater. Although Version 5.0 correctly handles cases compiled with 4.x versions, in order for that to happen you need to specify an appropriate source-compatibility flag (such as -Z43). Note that the flag is not required if you had explicitly set the MULTILINE style in your 4.x-version program.

Runtime Changes

In previous versions, the UNIX runtime would use the name of the user that started a runtime process to identify the user to acushare and count the number of processes a user was executing simultaneously. In Version 5.0, the user is defined as a unique terminal name. Each terminal is counted as a unique user and requires one user license. Background processes adopt the name of the terminal which started them. There are 1024 processes per user allowed for each terminal name.
acushare 5.0 can be used with older runtimes and will report the maximum processes and processes per user settings for those runtimes as long as they have different serial numbers from the 5.0 runtime installed on the machine. If a Version 4.3 and a Version 5.0 runtimes on the same machine have the same serial number, acushare 5.0 supports both but does not report maximum processes or processes per user.
Microsoft has changed standard input stream handling in Internet Information Server 4.0. When you are running with the -f option or when the A_CGI environment variable is set, the runtime reads only the number of bytes set in the CONTENT_LENGTH environment variable by the web server. The runtime no longer waits for an end of file condition.
The runtime no longer differentiates between UNIX-4 and UNIX-V in the OPERATING-SYSTEM field of the SYSTEM-INFORMATION structure. Instead, it reports UNIX for all UNIX operating systems.