Combo-box screen-value returns unknown value in PASOE Webspeed

Calling COMBO-BOX:SCREEN-VALUE always returns the UNKNOWN value when run with he compatibilityHandler in the PASOE.

This happens with either setting the LIST-ITEM-PAIRS or LIST-ITEMS attribute of a COMBO-BOX widget and then setting/reading the combo-box value.

E.g. following pseudo code snippet:

DEFINE VARIABLE combo-box-1 AS CHARACTER FORMAT "X(256)":U LABEL "Combo-box 1"
  VIEW-AS COMBO-BOX INNER-LINES 5
  LIST-ITEM-PAIRS "Item 1","Item 1"
  DROP-DOWN-LIST SIZE 51 BY 1 NO-UNDO.

MESSAGE "Value:" combo-box-1:SCREEN-VALUE.

will return the following:  "Value: ?".
 

This works fine with Classic WebSpeed.
The Classic Webspeed application is a conversion of a GUI application and relies on a "screen scraping" process.

This is expected behavior.
The Webspeed architecture is different in PASOE.

The PASOE uses the _mproapsv.exe process as the agent for Webspeed (the same agent PASOE uses for everything) which is running in batch mode.
Widgets can't be realized in batch mode, thus much of their functionality doesn't work, including SCREEN-VALUE for combo-boxes.

In Classic Webspeed the agent is NOT running in batch mode, even though it's a background process.
The Webspeed broker starts the _progres.exe process as the Webspeed agent, passing it the -web startup parameter.
This parameter sets up the definitions that turn an agent into a Webspeed agent.

The PASOE agent does not use the -web parameter.

It was determined that the Progress Product is functioning as designed.

An enhancement to the product can be requested through the Progress Community via an Ideas submission. Customer feedback is valuable and Idea submissions are monitored by our Product Management team. Enhancement requests are reviewed during the planning phase of each new product release and a list of the enhancements chosen for implementation can be found in the Release Notes documents that accompany each release. Once an Idea is submitted the Progress Software Community will have the opportunity to comment on and vote for the Idea.

For detailed information on how to submit an Idea, please refer to Knowledge Base article 000010839 .
 

Modify the Webspeed code to not rely on screen scraping.

References to Other Documentation:

Progress Article(s):
Article 000068084: What is the difference between Classic WebSpeed and Webspeed for PASOE ?
Article 000055222: MESSAGE "SESSION:BATCH-MODE" SESSION:BATCH-MODE. return "no" in a webspeed agent session.