User interfaces

A user interface is the part of a software product that your customer actually sees.

A user interface may include the layout of display screens or printed output, displayed or printed text, commands, online help, and messages. A user interface is also the part of a software product that you must either translate or make cultural changes to for users in other countries or cultures.

The operating system provides specific software functions to help you organize text from your user interface and store that text in a library for easy translation. The operating system also provides you with a user interface manager that provides a consistent user interface. The user interface manager provides comprehensive support for defining and running panels such as displays and online help.

This section provides guidelines that you can follow when designing a user interface for an international application. You should apply these guidelines early in the design process.

• Checklist: User interface design
  When creating a user interface with globalized support, you should follow some rules and guidelines.
• Text translation design
  There are some general tips in this topic to help simplify the translation of your textual material.
• Textual data code design
  Application displays, printer file specifications, and user-created commands typically contain a large amount of constant text. Application displays, printer file specifications, and user-created commands also contain input and output fields such as headings, field prompts, instruction lines, and function key descriptions.
• User interface manager
  The i5/OS™ user interface manager (UIM) is a part of the system that allows you to define panels and dialogs for your application.
• Program message design
  A message can be predefined or immediate.
• Menu design
  Define your own menus on the system. There are three types of user-defined menus: display file menus, UIM (reference) menus, and program menus.
• Command design
  The i5/OS™ operating system allows users to define and create their own commands. To create a command, you must first define the command through command definition statements. Then use the Create Command (CRTCMD) command to process the command definition statements to create the command definition object.
• Cultural-dependent design
  Different countries have different standards that must be taken into account when developing an NLS-enabled application. This culturally sensitive information must be placed outside the program the same way as the textual data is handled.
• Display file design
  Application panels typically consist of the major elements in this topic.
• Printer file design and translation
  Program-described printer files and externally described printer files are two types of printer files.
• Source file design
  Database source files are implicitly assigned the CCSID of the job when they are created, unless they have been explicitly assigned a CCSID value using the CCSID parameter on the Create Physical File (CRTPF) or Create Source Physical File (CRTSRCPF) command.
• Character data representation architecture design
  To enable your application for a multilingual environment, consider the information in this topic.
• Handle languages with no NLV support
  If you need to support a language that does not have a supported national language version, follow the general steps in this topic.