Welcome to
My name is Gary VanWinkle. The bridge crosses the perilous depths of the Ohio River. My mission is to help GnuCobol programmers across the depths of doubt.
Here you will find information and Cobol source code (.cbl/.cob) files of a tutorial nature or of a utility nature. Consider my page to be a bridge to productivity.
Everything here is absolutely free in the spirit and heritage of the GNU Project. No fees, no charges whatever!
Historic Beaver- Monaca Bridge built 1910, still used daily by CSX
Recent Photo by Rebecca Finch
No warranties stated or implied
The first downloadable file is GnuCOBOL-Programmers-Guide-V3.1-Dev-0.pdf. It’s nearly 800 pages and it covers most of what you need to know about the subject. But it isn’t a powerful tutorial. At this writing, the remaining files are source code files which you can compile and run on your platform. All .cbl files are Free Format. Be sure to set your editor accordingly. I strongly urge you to instal an Integrated Development Environment if you don’t have one. See the Link List for one.
Second file:
This file compiles a .dll file. Be sure to set yourcobc controls or your IDE accordingly. This .dll is used by virtually every GVW program.
Third file:
If you find the Guide’s description of the SCREEN SECTION to be a bit daunting, this tutorial is for you. Within a few hours from start to finish you’ll have a solid base upon which you can build your own style of screen management.
No warranties stated or implied
Arnold Trembley’s page is a treasure trove of info. He has worked diligently to produce superb download-install files for several configurations of the GnuCOBOL compiler system. You’ll find many interesting files at his site.
Source Forge is the home of info on GNU projects. You can get answers to your questions within a couple of days if you are a member. It’s free. There are no annoying requirements.
I use OpenConbolIDE on my Windows PC. It installs MinGW and an old version of the GnuCOBOL compiler. But you can install a later version of the compiler from Arnold Trembley. It’s pretty easy to re-configure OCIDE to use the later compiler version
E-mail me if you have questions or problems with any files I’ve listed. Please put the file name on the subject line of your message. I check my e-mail at least Monday, Wednesday and Friday every week. I’ll acknowledge your message as soon as I read it.
If you would like me to display a link to your GNU COBOL info page e-mail me.
If you would like to put one of my files on your web page e-mail me.
If you would like to put one of your files on my web page e-mail me and we’ll discuss it.
My Email :
GVWCOBOL@YAHOO.COM
When I started my career in August, 1954 I was fresh out of high school and I knew high school stuff, but nothing that would earn a living. Luckily, my school had endowed me with a decent work ethic anda lot of experience studying. I developed a strong arm toting a load of books to and from school every day. I had also learned to be patient. A lot. And they had taught me to admit my errors and to learn from them. In short, they had unwittingly turned out a future programmer.
Throughout my career I benefited from the advice and help offered freely by experienced fellowtechies. They were not hoarding information fearful of losing their jobs. I never encountered that virus until quite a few years later. And so it was my obligation to pass on to others the useful tidbits we pick
up so often in the world of Information Technology.
I retired in 2002, closing out a career which had been mostly fun, and sometimes grueling effort to penetrate that stone wall we sometimes hit. But the payoff was always the elation we experience when we’ve worked with a team and produced a successful, and sometimes elegant, product. I loved my job.
Some years into retirement I decided to re-visit programming. I have this beautiful machine on my desk and I could use it only through the applications developed by someone else. All these specification tools, and script generators are fine, but I wanted to work with a procedural language once again. I had
used Turbo Pascal back in the DOS PC days. And I did some fun things with it. But now C is the language, I gather. I don’t have time to devote to learning another low level language, let alone to develop a library of .dll’s to make it fly. And so I finally found a COBOL dialect with no strings attached. I worked with IBM COBOL for over 20 years, as well as similar languages such as Natural.
So, as I learn more about this beast I plan to pass on my experience to others by way of documentational and tutorial products. I don’t have to protect my job.
