The Natural runtime environment is enabled for Unicode support. Unicode
characters are converted to the default code page (value of the system variable
*CODEPAGE)
before they are displayed on the terminal. Unicode characters which have no
equivalent in the default code page are replaced by a substitution character.
With the Natural Web I/O Interface under SPoD, Unicode characters are
fully supported by the terminal emulation. In this case, U format fields are
displayed and can be entered correctly as Unicode. They are not converted to
the equivalent in the default code page. The Natural Web I/O Interface is
activated by the Natural Development Server configuration parameter
TERMINAL_EMULATION=WEBIO. The system variable
*DEVICE
contains BROWSER.
This document covers the following topics:
Notes:
If you run Natural via a terminal emulation or a mainframe terminal such
as IBM 3270/3279, the page will be converted to the default code page (value of
the system variable *CODEPAGE)
before displaying it, so that all characters which are not contained in the
default code page are replaced with the substitution character. Equally, input
is only possible in code page format and will be converted to Unicode format
before assigning it to a U format field. You have to regard that the
substitution character is defined by the ICU conversion tables. Depending on
this character, it is possible that garbage is displayed with a terminal
emulation. However, it is strongly recommended that you use the Natural Web I/O
Interface when displaying characters not contained in the default code page.
On code page oriented mainframe terminals, it is important to select the suitable code page. The default code page of Natural, the code page of the terminal and even the font used by the terminal determine the capability of displaying certain characters correctly.
Full Unicode I/O is only supported at runtime with the Natural Web I/O Interface. If an application is run in the terminal emulation and Unicode strings are displayed, some Unicode characters may not be displayed correctly.
The Natural Web I/O Interface client is used to display non-GUI information which contains Unicode characters. It can be used in the following environments:
The Natural Web I/O Interface client can be invoked when you use Natural for Windows and you are working with Natural Studio in a remote development environment (SPoD); see Natural Web I/O Interface Client in Remote Development Using SPoD which is part of the Natural for Windows documentation.
When the Natural Web I/O Interface client is used, the Web I/O window appears instead of the terminal emulation window which is not Unicode-enabled in mainframe environments.
The following graphic shows the SPoD environment for Unicode applications with Natural Development Servers (NDV) on mainframes:
So that the Natural Web I/O Interface client can be invoked, the Natural Development Server has to be configured as follows:
If you want to use the Natural Web I/O Interface client in a remote
mainframe environment, the NDV configuration parameter
TERMINAL_EMULATION must be set to WEBIO on
the NDV server. See NDV Configuration Parameters in the
Natural Development Server documentation. The Natural profile parameter
TMODEL can be used to determine the
user screen size.
The Natural Web I/O Interface client appears when running applications with Natural. It runs in a web/application server.
The following graphic shows the runtime environment for Unicode applications:
Natural recognizes automatically whether the session has been started from the Natural Web I/O Interface client or from the terminal emulation.
It is required that the Natural Web I/O Interface server has
been installed and configured. See
Natural Web I/O
Interface. Moreover, the Web I/O terminal converter
module NATWEB must be linked to the Natural nucleus. The Natural
profile parameter TMODEL can be used to determine the
user screen size.