How the Terminal Manager Works

Terminal Manager is the name we give to the runtime system module that handles the input from the keyboard and the output to the screen. The Terminal Manager interprets the keys that the user presses, translating each keystroke into a function, such as a backspace. It also manages translation of attributes from your ACUCOBOL-GT application program to the screen.

The Terminal Manager provides a consistent interface between ACUCOBOL-GT programs and the particular machines on which they are running. The manager minimizes any differences among the various machines, operating systems, and terminals for which ACUCOBOL-GT is available.

The Terminal Manager also provides support for the emulation of graphical user interface components such as floating windows (modal and modeless) and controls on text-mode systems. For information regarding how to customize the characters used to emulate graphical components, see Graphical Window and Control Emulation.

This help section describes how the Terminal Manager handles your program's interaction with terminals, including both the screen display and the keyboard. It also explains how you can configure the Terminal Manager and how it interacts with end users.

For example, you'll see how to specify what terminal you have, and how to make choices like:

Sometimes features built into a COBOL program can override the effects of the values and variables described in this section. These situations can be important to application program developers and to end users, and are highlighted by notes at the appropriate places in this section.