This document covers the following topics:

• Changes in the Documentation

• New Features

• Changes and Enhancements

• Known Incompatibilities

• Removed Features

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Changes in the Documentation

The documentation for the SYSMAIN utility has been completely revised.

New Features

Application Programming Interfaces

The utility SYSEXT provides the following new application programming interface (API):

API	Description
USR4208N	Read or write shared resource.

Changes and Enhancements

International Support

Natural for UNIX now includes the international support which was previously only provided with the international version of Natural 6.1.1.

Bidirectional languages and double-byte characters are now supported. For detailed information on how to activate these features, see the sections Bidirectional Language Support and Double-Byte Character Support in the Unicode and Code Page Support documentation.

The following has changed (as compared with the international version of Natural 6.1.1):

• In the map editor, the Flip Map command has been renamed to Reverse Map.

• The environment variable RTL_BW_COMP is no longer supported. Natural no longer supports logical resorting of the characters during input; the characters are always displayed in the keying sequence for left-to-right fields and in the reversed keying sequence for right-to-left-fields.

• The environment variable NATLANG is no longer supported. For enabling the international support, the setting of the profile parameter CP is now used.

• The locale files (previously installed in etc/locale) which were delivered with the international version of Natural 6.1.1 are no longer supported.

  • Month and day names are now retrieved from the Natural text/error message files.

  • Character property information such as "is the character upper case" is retrieved from the ICU library which is used for the Unicode support.

  • Using the AM/PM strings from the locale files is no longer supported.

  • Using the year edit masks EC, EE, EV and EY is no longer supported.

  • Characters which are entered in a right-to-left field are no longer automatically converted according to the keymap defined in the locale files. Natural now uses the characters which are delivered from the operating system, which is compatible to the Windows behavior. Changing the input language has to be achieved by executing the appropriate operating system functions.

Utilities

Object Handler

The Object Handler now automatically recognizes the type of the load file for the load and scan functions. It is no longer necessary to specify the correct load file type. The user interface of the Object Handler has not been changed due to compatibility reasons, however, the Portable work file option will not be evaluated for the load and scan functions. See the description of WORKFILETYPE in Keyword Explanation of option-setting.

The DELETEALLOWED option can be used in an Object Handler direct command to specify that the delete instructions from work files created with NATUNLD (which is no longer installed by default) are processed. This option is also available as of Natural Version 6.1.

System Commands

CATALL

The system command CATALL can now be used in batch mode. The direct command syntax has been enhanced accordingly.

Known Incompatibilities

This section provides additional information that you should be aware of after having installed Natural.

Error Messages

The following error message is new for this version of Natural in order to improve the edit mask handling and the compatibility between Natural for Windows, Natural for UNIX and Natural for Mainframes.

Error Message	Description
NAT1145	Input does not match edit mask :1:. NAT1145 replaces NAT1143 in case of interactive input/output. This new error advises the user of the expected input format for the current field.

Removed Features

This section provides an overview of functionality no longer supported with this Natural version.

Natural Expert

Natural Expert models are no longer displayed in the list of object types.