After running a short piece in the last newsletter, I received many very instructive e-mails about customizing the PC5250 keyboard. The common theme from most of the messages is "don't edit the keyboard file, use the keyboard mapping facility." Thanks to all who wrote.

I have always found the keyboard mapping tool cumbersome and non-intuitive, kind of like IBM's RLU (Report Layout Utility), so I never spent much time on the keyboard mapper. Your e-mails have changed my attitude on this -- but not on RLU.

Here are some nice keyboard mapping tips from Guy Ross in Wellington, New Zealand:

• Copy, Cut, and Paste just scratches the surface! The iSeries Access customize keyboard function (Edit|Preferences|Keyboard|Customize) lets you map nearly any key combination to any script, function, or plain text (i.e., it's not limited to just a single character).
• My personal favorite tip is to include hex codes for easily inserting colors in your source code with SEU. For example, map Alt+R to "apl 28" for red fonts and Alt+Ctrl+R to "apl 29" for red backgrounds. When you use these codes while editing code in SEU, you can color your source code on the fly and color comment lines or other important lines. From what I've been able to work out:
  

  
  Color              APL Code 
                  Font    Background 
  Green           21         21 
  White           22         23 
  Red             28         29 
  Yellow          32         33 
  Pink            38         39 
  Blue            3a         3b 
  Turquoise       38         31 
  
  

• The font defaults to IBM3270, which doesn't resize all that well. Autosized Lucidia Console, on the other hand, stretches to fill the screen at many different sizes and resolutions.
  (Edit|Preferences|Appearance|Font. Note: For no readily apparent reason, you can't change the font when the window is maximized.)
• Sessions (Communication|Configure) default to 24x80 characters, when 27x132 shows so much more information on the right screens (WRKSPLF, SQL etc).
• Now that you have Cut, Copy, and Paste working, you probably want to click Edit|Preferences|Edit|Trim and clear the tick next to "Trim rectangle remains after edit function."
• Don't forget to add Edit Copy-Append into your keyboard shortcuts as well. It is definitely handy when copying 20 subfile screens.
• The handiest tool that comes with iSeries Access, and one that many people don't seem to know about, is the Excel toolbar for uploading and downloading data directly into your spreadsheet.
  (In Excel, go to Tools|Add-Ins|Browse|C:\program files\IBM\Client Access\Shared\cwbtfxla.xll.)

After you complete these steps and explore the scripting capabilities, iSeries Access becomes a pretty good emulator.

Thank you Guy.