How to Hack at DCXP Displays

I have found that getting setup to hack away at DCXP displays can be a hassle. The hacking is another thing...Here I want to address getting setup to hack.

It seems the instructions in Ralph's "User's Guide to Summary and other User Defined Displays" ALWAYS leaves me unable to hack successfully.

The following works for me:

For starters you need to access the display from a touchpanel. I use a display call to HVSTESTD.DSP on my HVSPANEL. The panel code looks like this:

BUTTON: 2,6, HVS  TEMP  DISPLY,HVSTESTD,DCXPDNAM,DCXPTPIF,DEXEC
>                             ,COMPILE ,DCXPFUNC,

Before starting the SCP, some logicals need to be redefined. If you want to work from {whatever directory}, type;

  	MCC>define DSP_DATA   {whatever directory}, DSP_DATA_MCC
        MCC>define DSP_SOURCE {whatever directory}
 	MCC>scp
                              ...this will allow the SCP to use the 
                                 "hacked at" display.

To hack at the display code, some other logicals need to get redefined. This part needs to be done on a seperate terminal session on the development machine;

	MCCDEV>set def {whatever directory}
	MCCDEV>define DSP_SOURCE {whatever directory}
	MCCDEV>eve {whatever the file name is}
			...exit or write file when ready to look with the SCP
	MCCDEV>CMPDSP {whatever the filename is}
    			...will ask to distibute: say "yes"

Then back on SCP cycle to a different display to get SCP to forget previous version, then select display and see how you did.

My experience is that after about a hundred iterations of this process, one can be made happy with one's work.

Once happy, you can figure out how to get it into CMS as the production version.