Standard Eclipse-based tooling assumes that bidirectional data
appear in pure standard logical layout (not including marks). The
only utilities for working with marks provided by Windows and Eclipse are "Insert Unicode control
character" and "Show Unicode control characters" available in text
editors. Though sufficient for simple text editing, these utilities
are unacceptable for program development, because search, compare,
compile, and other standard Eclipse features do not support correct
processing of marks. Using standard Eclipse tools for work with bidirectional
data that includes marks for certain tasks (such as standard search
or compare) may give wrong results (string not found in search, wrong
compare, wrong result of replace). In other cases, when bidirectional
data is edited, a user can accidentally remove invisible marks, which
in turn can lead to bidirectional data corruption.
To support correct processing of bidirectional data containing
marks, special handling has been added to the following Rational® Developer for System z® tools:
- System z LPEX Editor
- File Search windows
- Text Compare window
- Compilers
Rational Developer for System z bidirectional users
working on program development with remote visual files have the following
options:
- Use smart logical conversion for visual data (visual-to-logical
conversion with marks) and use special tools for handling smart logical
data. The advantage of this approach is that data display and editing
in System z LPEX editor
is identical to that on the visual zSeries® system.
Search and compare of smart logical files is supported as well. The
disadvantage of this approach is that not all tools have been adapted
to support smart logical data.
- Use standard visual-to-logical conversion (without marks) and
use standard Eclipse tools. The advantage of this approach is that
all standard Eclipse tools support logical data without marks. The
disadvantages of this approach are that in some cases logical data
is displayed differently from how it is displayed on visual system
and there is potential for data corruption when multiple conversions
are performed or data is edited on a logical system.
- Use files in visual layout. Visual layout, although sparsely supported
by Eclipse, may be useful for local syntax checking and other special
needs.
A special
Change bidirectional format conversion
utility is provided in Rational Developer
for System z to allow conversion
of files from one bidirectional layout to another inside the Eclipse
workspace.