HP 3000 Manuals

COMMUNICATOR 3000/XL

Introducing Hi-Li 

by Bob Fillhouer--Commercial Systems Division 

Hi-Li Increases Programmer Productivity 

The Hewlett-Packard High Level Screen Management Intrinsic Library
(Hi-Li) provides VPLUS users with an alternative.  Hi-Li (like VPLUS/V)
consists of a set of intrinsics programmers can use to develop the
terminal I/O portions of applications.  Hi-Li is a powerful set of
high-level, user interface intrinsics designed to simplify application
development by combining logical sets of low-level terminal I/O
operations into macro-like intrinsics.  Hi-Li greatly simplifies a
programmer's activities by taking the functions represented in
approximately 55 VPLUS/V intrinsics and condensing them into 12.  The
result is fewer intrinsics to learn, code, and maintain.

When to Use Hi-Li 

With the increased efficiency gains in programmer productivity in both
the coding and maintenance phase of applications, most programmers will
select Hi-Li when developing new applications.


NOTE  Note that Hi-Li and VPLUS/V intrinsics may not both be called from
      the same application.


When to Use VPLUS 

Programmers maintaining existing applications that call VPLUS/V
intrinsics will continue to support those applications using VPLUS/V. The
execution performance of Hi-Li and VPLUS/V is equivalent, therefore,
recoding existing VPLUS/V applications for performance gains is not
recommended.


Hi-Li and VPLUS/V Comparison 

The functions of Hi-Li compare almost identically to VPLUS/V. The
exceptions are:

 *  Hi-Li does not support terminal caching or batch I/O.

 *  Hi-Li does not support HP264x or Hewlett-Packard's industrial
    terminals (i.e., HP30xx).

Hi-Li may be thought of as a concentrated superset of VPLUS/V. It offers
the same functions but packs more power into a single intrinsic.  The
result is, Hi-Li facilitates greater programmer productivity.

Availability 

Hi-Li is bundled with the Fundamental Operating Software (FOS) on all HP
3000 computer systems.  Hi-Li is be released on MPE XL (A.01.01).

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