ACUCOBOL-GT allows you to run programs on a wide variety of host systems. Because of its machine-independent object code, many programmers use ACUCOBOL-GT to write programs that will run under several different host systems. However, it can be challenging to write a program that looks good and functions well under both character-based systems and graphical systems because of the vastly different nature of these systems. This is especially true if you include graphical controls in your programs.
This section discusses various strategies for writing programs that are intended to run under both graphical and character systems. Because many developers use ACUCOBOL-GT to convert existing character-based programs into graphical programs, this section adopts the point of view that you are doing such a conversion. However, most of the comments apply to writing new programs as well.
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1.6.1 Incompatibilities Between Graphical and Character Systems