This guide is directed to application developers who want to develop a menu- and form-based interface that operates on ASCII character terminals running on UNIX System V Release 4.0. Existing applications can be adapted to a character user interface front-end, and new applications can be designed from the start to take advantage of the screen management capabilities of FMLI and ETI.
FMLI is a high-level programmer interface for creating menus, forms, and text frames that enforce a well-defined look and feel policy. An application developer, having defined frames (menus, forms, and text) in files, is free from having to program their display and user interactions. The shell-like language is processed by an interpreter and allows the developer to specify menu and form placement. FMLI allows application developers to customize specific applications easily and quickly without writing in C language code.
ETI is a set of screen management library subroutines (built on curses) that promote fast development of application programs that manipulate windows, panels, menus, and forms. ETI also includes functions to define help, error and other types of messages, and to display, and change messages quickly and easily. It is a C language toolkit used to build user interfaces for applications. ETI allows the developer to design a unique/customized user interface.
This guide tells you how to use the Form and Menu Language Interpreter (FMLI) and the Extended Terminal Interface (ETI) software development tools to write such user interfaces for your applications. It assumes the reader has a working knowledge of the UNIX System V Operating System, shell programming, and/or C Language programming.