LegionZero

Hi, im' pretty much new here would like to first say hi to all.

There is an application at work that works great, is very stable and gets the job done, however it is a DOS based application you have to run it on a DOS terminal screen and for that reason it is not very user-friendly, is there a way or is it possible at all to somehow have a GUI connect to the program and maybe have the program run in the background while the end-user uses the GUI.

Is it at all possible? if it is can someone recommend literature or how to go about it.

Thank you all in advance

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War cannot be avoided until the physical cause
for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis,
is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. ~ Nikola Tesla

Sane

Correct me if I'm wrong.

But if the program is closed-source (you can not view the code), then you would not be able to accomplish said task. However, if it was open-sourced. You would learn the language used to make the application, and fix whatever is messed up about it. Or learn a powerful language like C++ and write a GUI for it referring to the open-sourced code.

I think that's right?

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LegionZero

hmm... Yes that does seem to be our only option.

The original piece of software was developed in Clipper and the developers (our main office) created a set of external libraries that they incorporated as a sort of pseudo-code and as versions grew they attached various flavors of "C" objects, making it a mess of diferent patches .ovl's and .dlls. The software now runs great but the only problem is the DOS-text interface that makes it very un-user friendly. They (our main office) has tried to develop a Win32 version with a GUI, this new version is so volatile, crashes and performs a vast array of clitches and quirks.

The application is a company management software that tracks inventory, invoices, receipts and even has a POS interface, so re-writting is no small task.

Thanks so much for your help.

__________________
War cannot be avoided until the physical cause
for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis,
is the vast extent of the planet on which we live. ~ Nikola Tesla