Hi
I know that around here parentheses may not be appreciated, but it turns out I do.
Many people here seem to work on Linux/Mac/Windows using bad editors (yep!? I am wearing flame-retardant underwear :) ).?
I am using the Editor.
Once I started poking around this very nice part of the Internet I did what I usually do when I learn something new (i.e., some programming tool): I looked around for an ... Emacs mode to edit JCL.? The idea being to manage and edit jobs on my machine and submit them to the card reader, as Jay Moseley suggests and as it is possible to do on TK4- (have not checked how to do something similar on, say, VM).
Contrary to the common lore that "there is an Emacs command for that", I could not find a jcl-mode.el out there!? It then became a categorical imperative to write one.
The result is the IRON MAIN (iron-main) Emacs package which includes a jcl-mode.
For the two of you who may be interested, the link to the GitHub repository is the following:
If you want the long story and some explanations about how I wrote the package, you can read the longish blog entry right here:
There is one advantage that you gain using IRON MAIN w.r.t. using command line tools to interact with the socket card reader.? Recent versions of Windows flag netcat and derivatives as "bad guys".? IRON MAIN jcl-mode uses Emacs process-send-region to load the card reader, therefore you do not need netcat et al. anymore; plus everything is nicely integrated in Emacs.
I checked that the submission process works under TK4- and under a "Jay Moseley's build" I have on my machine by submitting a simple job that just allocates a PDS in the MVS instance. Check the file 'tests/testsubmit.jcl'; you just have to tweak the user, password and HLQ if needed.
I hope this will help somebody.? It has been fun and I am glad to make a minimal (if pointless) contribution to this community.
All the best
--
Marco Antoniotti
Somewhere over the rainbow
Marco Antoniotti