the runw.exe window

When debugging in Visual Cobol, if your program displays anything eg.

    display "result " some-var

this output ends up in the runw.exe window. How, for all that is holy, do you manage this window? Move it around, decide where it pops up, resize it, anything?

If your debuging session is active you just get a busy cursor when you move your pointer to it. If you stop debugging the window goes away. In Net Express you had some control over this window, in Visual Cobol it's just horrible. Case in point, like many others I'm working from home, at the office I have two displays, at home I have one. This is where my runw window ends up, at the edge of the screen, cut off, and I cannot move it. So if anyone has figured out some way to interact with this *thing* - care to share?

This problem only occurs when trying to debug .int or .gnt code as it uses the graphical trigger program runw.exe by default. If you compile to .exe it will use a true Windows console and the problem does not occur.

There is a way to change the attributes such as size, position and font of the runw window but the easiest fix is to rename the runw.exe trigger to runw.exe.sav and then rename the file run.exe to runw.exe in the Visual COBOL\\bin folder. It will then use the console trigger instead of the graphical one.

If you don't wish to rename the trigger program then you can still change the attributes of the runw.exe window as follows:

Add an application.config file to your project and then under Run-time Configuration tab change the console size option to the desired maximum size.

Create a test program that does an accept statement. When control is given to the accept statement you will be able to modify the window's size and position and then save it by clicking in the upper-left hand corner of the titlebar and selecting the  Settings option to save the size and position upon exit. This will then become the new default.

Yes, I believe this would be a lot easier if we allowed you to choose the trigger program that you wished to use but I currently do not see a way to do this. I will check with development.

Thanks.