Alpha Micro is pleased to announce the debut of a product to help you conveniently and rapidly add a Windows® appearance, behavior, and functionality to your text-based software.

The Challenge: Attaining A Windows Look

We all know we need to offer a GUI face for our text-based software. You are justifiably proud of your application. But right now, the wealth of advanced technology you have developed over the years is hidden behind screens that look dated to some. You need to put a fresh face on that technology so that people can see past the surface to the solid feature set underneath. It’s got to have “The Look.”

You may have over 20 years invested in your text-based solution. Years upon years of perfected business logic. Rewriting it all in a Windows programming language is an incomprehensibly enormous, expensive, and risky undertaking. You might lose important functionality in the process, and you are certain to experience problems with the new, unproven code. And you would lose the simplicity and easily understood power of your legacy operating system. In short, a rewrite into native Windows is not the answer. However, most legacy programming languages have no native way to create or drive Windows screens.

How "Not" To Move To Windows

Over the past decade, if you wanted to put a graphical front end on text-based software, you had one of three options:

You could write a Web front end: Several tools exist to link Web Forms with legacy programming languages. But while this approach is ideal for customer service functions for the outside world, it is not the best approach for the intensive data entry applications that constitute the bulk of text-based applications. You need record locking and prompt-by-prompt validation that just isn’t easy to do with HTML and its kin. Programming in Java can overcome some of these limitations, but it is complex and foreign to many legacy software programmers.

You could use Terminal Emulation software that can invoke a limited amount of GUI functions via Escape sequences. Most of these solutions provide a Windows 3.1 kind of appearance. Still other products provide an unattractive DOS GUI look. And, the designing process is cumbersome. You need to compil and run programs to test their appearance. Why invest time in such a laborious approach, only to attain a "Semi GUI" appearance in the end?

You could write a GUI front end in some third party development environment: One of the U.S.’s largest retail chains did just this: Backed by a generous development budget, they developed a Point of Sale application in Visual Basic® that communicated with a legacy BASIC application in the background, via manually initiated TCP/IP connections. It was attractive and reliable. But most of the business logic had to be transferred to VB, and all of the network handling had to be done manually. It took years to develop what was really a single program Order Entry screen.

None of this is what you really want. You want a solution that brings you a True GUI appearance. Not DOS graphics, not a Windows 3.1 look, and no, not even a web page look. You want something akin to Quicken®, something that every reasonably knowledgeable person off the street will recognize as a modern Windows application. You need a convenient, WYSIWYG screen design tool. It needs to work with absolutely any language out there, from FORTRAN to RPG to scripts. No one will need to know that a legacy language and operating system is behind the scenes. And when someone asks you if your software is “.NET® compliant”, you want to be able to say “YES!”

TrueGUI: The Faster, Easier Approach

Alpha Micro's TrueGUI™ is the solution to these needs. It lets you leverage your existing code, in the language of your choice, on the operating system of your choice, to drive modern Windows screens. Those screens are created using the Visual C#® Forms Editor, an easy-to-learn WYSIWYG screen design tool. You don't need to know anything about C# or Windows. What you need to know about the Forms Editor can be learned in one day. The only thing needed on the Host side is a TCP/IP server such as a Telnet or TN3270 server.

TrueGUI was designed to be simple, non-threatening, and easily understood by legacy language programmers. You should be able to have your first GUI screen up an running in two days. As you develop more familiarity with the product, you will be able to convert screens to GUI even quicker. As a result, you can typically produce a Windows version of your entire application in just a few months!

You also retain the host-centric control that you are accustomed to. When you update a screen, just send it to the host. TrueGUI automatically downloads updated screens to client PCs. You do not have to continually update users' PCs manually. This represents a significant time savings versus other Windows programming approaches, where new EXEs have to be manually downloaded and installed onto each user's PC.

How It Works

TrueGUI allows programs running on a host server to communicate with and control remote client applications using all the commonly available Windows forms and controls in the current .NET framework. It does this using simple text commands from the server to the client to control the entire .NET framework and all of its capabilities. For example, in BASIC, you use PRINT statements to send TrueGUI commands to the client. These commands download, invoke, and control screens created with the Visual C# Forms Editor. There are no complicated escape sequences or control codes to learn. All commands are done in an easy-to-read text format which encompasses most of the .NET framework's syntax.

The TrueGUI interface is not so much a newly defined programming specification as it is a unique way to directly interface to the extremely rich and clearly defined .NET framework with its Windows appearance. Since everything is done with standard text commands, no programming experience with Visual C# is required. Since these text commands are all that is required, the server application may be written in any language that can output and accepts lines of text.

Events which occur on the client-side as a result of user actions with the keyboard or mouse are translated from their .NET framework format back into ASCII text and sent back to the server application. Data returned from the client application as a result of data-harvesting commands received from the server application is also translated into ASCII text before being sent back to the server. On the host side, simple INPUT statements (using BASIC as the example) process this input.

With proper design, the same program can control both text-based and GUI screens. This helps you keep the number of programs you must maintain under control.

Supports All Third-Party Controls

There is a vast array of third party tools available for the .NET environment. As you become more familiar with Visual C#, you have to freedom to incorporate sophisticated third party controls, such as Word Processing and Medical Equipment Interface tools. While you don't need to know anything about Windows programming to get started with TrueGUI, those with more familiarity can do just about anything .NET can, from within your legacy application.

Transition to GUI At Your Own Pace

TrueGUI will work alongside any Terminal Emulation Software. Commands are provided to permit you to switch screen control between a Telnet or TN3270 session and a GUI session. This lets you transition your users to GUI screens at the pace of your choosing.

The TrueClient: A Thin Client Terminal For TrueGUI

Many environments need GUI, but don't want to put full-fledged PCs at every user station. To meet these requirements, Alpha Micro has introduced the AM-82 TrueClient, a Thin Client terminal based on Windows XP Embedded. It incorporates the TrueGUI client software, as well as Terminal Emulation software to run software that has not yet been converted to GUI.

TrueGUI: Your Best Solution For The Windows Transition

Simple, easy to develop for, easy to maintain, and inexpensive: TrueGUI is the "Fastest Path To GUI for your text-based application". Download the 30 day demo and see for yourself!

For a downloadable TrueGui Data Sheet Click below:

For a 30 day trial of TrueGui Data Click below: