FAQ for Wachs Commander

Frequently Asked Question for Wachs Commander.

Q

 I am experience that the Push-buttons in Wachs Commander‘s windows displays correctly on our Client Access® emulators, however on the terminal emulator ‘tn5250J‘ the Push-buttons displays incorrectly and when pressing [ENTER] Wachs Commander crashes. What is the problem?

A

 Wachs Commander uses enhanced features in the 5250 data stream such as Bar-menu, Push-buttons, Single and Multiple selection fields and Pull-down menus. These features gives a very PC like user experience on emulators that supports the Enhanced 5250 data stream such as the emulator in Client Access®.

Unfortunately the terminal emulator tn5250J has a faulty implementation of the Push-button DDS keyword (PSHBTNFLD). This causes tn5250J to display Push-buttons wrongly and when the user presses [ENTER] the data sent to IBM i is not a correct 5250 data stream, causing OS/400 to stop the program. This is not a problem with Wachs Commander, it is a problem with tn5250J.

As a workaround do one of the following:

  • Change the setup in tn5250J (Properties -> Options -> Enhanced) to turn off the Enhanced checkbox.
  • Change the attribute ENHDSP from *YES to *NO on the display files WC1DF, WC2DF and WC3DF in library JWTOOLS.  This workaround will cause that users of the Client Access® emulator will see the character version of the screens of Wachs Commander.

Q

 Why do I have to press [F10] to exit Wachs Commander and not [F3] which is normal on IBM i?

A

 Wachs Commander is a tribute to Norton Commander®. Because of this, the F-keys have, to the extend possible, the same function as in Norton Commander®.

Q

 You have implemented features that I am curious about how you did. Can I have a copy of the source code for Wachs Commander?

A

 I am happy that you find Wachs Commander a source of inspiration. I do not give away copies of the source code. You can write in the forums what feature it is you would like to know about, and then I might write an article about that.

Q

 I get the error message ‘Object name is a library’ in Wachs Commander when I am trying to copy a IFS folder. Why is this?

A

 When you use [F5] to copy files or folders, the OS/400 command CPY is called. The CPY command cannot copy an IFS folder and this is the reason that you get this message.

In order to copy a IFS folder, you must create the folder in the target path and then copy the files.