___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ____ ___ \ \ \ October 10 / / / /| / / /_ /__/ / /__ \ \ 1994 /__ /__/ / |/ /__ /__ / / ___/ \ \ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ This newsletter / info-pack is generated by Tower Concepts, Inc., and is provided to our users and specific members of the net community. It is generated and distributed on a (roughly) monthly schedule. If you do not want to remain on this distribution list, please send a note to 'concepts@tower.com'. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents... Introduction User Survey: Thanks! Announcements Getting Razor by FTP - GlobalTrack CRISP Text Editor - Solaris & Motif on Suns Tips & Tricks - HP & SGI Releases - Controlling color under OpenLook - New Price Schedule - Controlling the icon & frame labels - Changes since 3.3c - Stupid UNIX tricks ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction... This newsletter / info pack is an experiment on our part. We expect that it will grow to become a significant element of our customer support effort. It's an excellent means for letting you know what's new with the product, as well as encouraging you all to trade infor- mation and give us feedback. If you'd rather not remain on this distribution list, please send a note to 'concepts@tower.com' and let us know. Similarly, if you think there may be other people at your site that could benefit from this type of newsletter, please forward it along, or have them write to the address above, and we'll put them on the distribution list. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Announcements... - GlobalTrack As was released to the trade press... > Tower Concepts Announces GlobalTrack > Software module provides new distributed capabilities for Razor > > NEW HARTFORD, N.Y., October 3: Tower Concepts, Inc. today announced > GlobalTrack, a new distributed processing software module for Razor, > the company's UNIX-based problem tracking and configuration management > tool suite. > > The new capability permits development teams in different geographic > locations to easily coordinate their activities, priorities and > objectives through synchronized issue tracking databases. > > "Typical software development projects require the team to do all of > their work using a single set of issues (problem reports)," said John > E. Ivory, president, Tower Concepts. "GlobalTrack provides a simple, > elegant solution for making the issues database geographically > independent." > > GlobalTrack uses existing electronic mail networks as the communication > vehicles between CPUs. The feature can be implemented using the > Internet or other X.400 compliant system. > > The new module is available immediately, and is provided free of charge > to registered Razor users. Tower Concepts is a privately-held software > company specializing in tools for managing the software development > process. - Solaris & Motif on Suns This news is actually a bit old, but it's worth mentioning anyway. Razor has been ported not only to Solaris (2.3), but re-written to provide a full Motif interface. Presently, all combinations of OpenLook/Motif on Solaris/SunOS 4.1.x are supported and available. All forms of the tool for the Sun Sparc platform can work together on the same net. - HP & SGI Releases As was released to the press... > NEW HARTFORD, N.Y., October 3: Tower Concepts, Inc. today announced > the availability of its Razor software product on two new platforms. > Razor now supports Hewlett-Packard's HPUX and Silicon Graphics Inc.'s > IRIX under the Motif graphical user interface (GUI). > > "There has been significant demand for these two platforms from > existing customers and large prospects ... We expect these new > platforms, and others to be announced later in 1994, to expand our > installed base significantly." > > Razor is priced at $495 for a single floating license. Both the > Hewlett-Packard and Silicon Graphics implementations are available for > customer shipment. The product also operates on Sun Microsystems > platforms under the Solaris and SunOS operating systems. - New Price Schedule Effective November 1, 1994, the price for a single seat of Razor will be $495, and will include the first year of customer support and product upgrades at no additional cost. Annual renewals of the service/upgrade contract will now be available for 15% of list price (as opposed to the present 25%). This change yields a cost savings for most of our low volume customers. We've also modified the discount schedule to eliminate some confusions surrounding the original scheme. 1 - 10 Full Price ($495/floating license) 11 - 20 Apply 5.0% discount to total | 21 - 30 " 7.5% " " " | Terms are net-30. 31 - 40 " 10.0% " " " | Rates for training and 41 - 50 " 12.5% " " " | consulting (both on and 51 - 99 " 15.0% " " " | off site) are available. 100+ Site License ($42,000) | Below is a price breakdown for the first 50 seats of Razor. For more than 50 seats, simply multiply the number you need by $495 and apply a straight 15% discount. 1 495.00 11 5,172.75 21 9,615.38 31 13,810.50 41 17,758.12 2 990.00 12 5,643.00 22 10,073.25 32 14,256.00 42 18,191.25 3 1,485.00 13 6,113.25 23 10,531.12 33 14,701.50 43 18,624.38 4 1,980.00 14 6,583.50 24 10,989.00 34 15,147.00 44 19,057.50 5 2,475.00 15 7,053.75 25 11,446.88 35 15,592.50 45 19,490.62 6 2,970.00 16 7,524.00 26 11,904.75 36 16,038.00 46 19,923.75 7 3,465.00 17 7,994.25 27 12,362.62 37 16,483.50 47 20,356.88 8 3,960.00 18 8,464.50 28 12,820.50 38 16,929.00 48 20,790.00 9 4,455.00 19 8,934.75 29 13,278.38 39 17,374.50 49 21,223.12 10 4,950.00 20 9,405.00 30 13,736.25 40 17,820.00 50 21,656.25 The first year of service is included FREE in the above price. Service consists of unlimited amounts of phone and e-mail support, as well as all product upgrades free of charge. Annual renewals of the service contract are available for 15% of the list price for the number of seats at your site. The term "floating license" means that the usage of Razor may "float" around your net; usage is not locked to particular clients or users. If you expect that 10 people will be using Razor, then buy 10 seats. If additional people want to use the tool at the same time, then some of the first 10 must leave the tool before the new people can get in. The e-mail interface counts as a single user. Note: most people tend to enter Razor and leave it running in iconic form all day, much as they would a mail-tool. This is the most convenient and therefore leads to more consistent utilization of Razor's power. - Changes since 3.3c (now at 3.3i for OpenLook version) During the past several months, we've made numerous minor changes and modifications to the OpenLook release. As we do so, we increment the letter portion of the release number. Our latest version is always available by by ftp, and we inform various customers of new releases as necessary. Since we try to be responsive to the needs of the user community, we tend to come out with these 'minor' releases pretty frequently, and it's not always necessary or important for people to always have 'the latest'. None the less, we've reached a nice break point with our OpenLook release, and it would be good for people to sync-up with the latest offering. If you're unsure which version is presently installed at your site, just check the footer bar of the programs as they come up on the screen. Below is a list of some of the key changes that have come about since release 3.3c. A full breakout of what was changed and when is available in the RELEASE_NOTES file in the distribution. - Added GlobalTrack (see above). - Issues may now be deleted from the database via the command line. Issue number are generated based on the current highest number Issue in the database. - A new LABEL attribute has been added for use with Issues. This attribute will simply provide a line of text on the Issue form. This can be used for instruction or as a delimiter on the form. - Users can now set attribute values in the body of an e-mail message through specially formed tab separated entries. - Improved the reporting of the 'razor info' command so that more accurate information about servers is provided. - Added before/after scripts to the Readonly.apply button. - The ability to generate scripts for multiple Threads is now aided by an addition to the 'razor' command line program. - It is no longer necessary to enter a in text fields where directory names can be entered to change the directory for the operation. If pulling a copy of our latest release off 'the net' via ftp is not an option for your site, please contact us so we may arrange for a shipment on diskettes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Getting Razor by FTP... As most of you already know, we've been making everything we have be available for ftp download for some time. Since we're now on so many different platforms, we've restructured the layout of what's being offered. The following notes should help you find whatever you are looking for... # ftp ftp.uu.net <=== [192.48.96.9] # login: ftp # password: # cd /vendor/tower-concepts # dir INDEX <== Text file describing what's here. Razor_info.ps.Z <== Postscript form of one sheet ad. Razor_manual.tar.Z <== User's Manual & Programmer's Guide. Razor_prices.ps.Z <== Postscript form of full price sheet. HPUX <== A directory for each of our IRIX <== supported platforms. Just 'cd' Solaris <== in and get the latest for what you SunOS <== need. # bin # get bye Note that the SunOS & Solaris directories contain separate files for both the Motif and OpenLook executables, where as the other platform directories contain only the Motif form of Razor. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- User Survey: Thanks!!! Our annual user survey forms have finally stopped coming back to us, and we've managed to get them all into a database for analysis (thanks to a summer student who joined us and undertook the tedious effort). Nearly all of the thank you mugs have been shipped and should have already been received. The frisbees and letter openers will follow shortly. We'll be posting some of the specifics in a future 'Concepts' newsletters since a detailed analysis will take a little while. In the mean time however, I'd like to thank you all again for your timely and enthusiastic responses. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CRISP Text Editor... We're please to announce that Tower Concepts is now also offering CRISP, a very powerful and versatile text editor. Below are some key points from the 4.1.12 Fact Sheet. A CPU locked license is $300, and a floating license is $500. CRISP is a state of the art graphical text editor on various Unix and Windows platforms. What makes Crisp different is that it tries to deliver its power in an intuitive point & click environment, _without_ taking away the keyboard. This kind of editing environment was unheard of under UNIX & WINDOWS before. It is seen to be believed. There is little that one can do with any other text editor that cannot be accomplished with CRISP. The difference is, that all of it plus a ton more is now available to people who have work other than just learning a text editor. Here are some of its crispy aspects: - Brief Compatibility CRISP is 100% compatible to BRIEF, the popular editor on DOS. CRISP can do a true keystroke emulation of BRIEF. It also has a superset of BRIEF compatible C / Lisp like macro language, giving the users the ability to run their existing BRIEF macros. - Hi Lighting / Color Support & Chroma Coding Chroma coding enables the user to dynamically see / print their code [comments, keywords, symbols, numbers etc etc] in different colors and fonts. Support for colorized syntax sensitive template coding is present for the following languages: Ada Awk Basic C & C++ Cobol Crunch Fortran Html Lisp Mail Pascal Perl Postscript Nroff/Troff Shell Sybase Tcl & Tex Verilog Ingres Win4gl - Direct Links to Third Party Applications Crisp has direct links to third party databases, such as Oracle / Sybase / Ingres / Informix / Unify giving you the capability to execute database specific commands in the editor and have the results show up in another X-buffer. - Complete Customizability Most of the user interface and features of Crisp are written in its powerful C like macro language and hence completely customizable. User can change the entire interface including buttons, scroll bars, mouse functionality, keystroke mappings etc. to their personal liking. - X Features The X version of Crisp is a true X window product with GUI dialog boxes, floating tool-palette bar having smart icons, dual scroll bars, pinnable menus, user definable buttons, drag & drop, mouse support, point & click, color palette mixer, interactive font changer etc., etc. True OPENLOOK and MOTIF versions ensure seamless copying/pasting between different X applications, a capability not achievable with generic X editors. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tips & Tricks... We have the benefit of seeing how all sorts of sites have come to use Razor for all sorts of different applications. This section of the newsletter is meant to be a forum for exchanging the little tricks related not only to the use of Razor, but UNIX and X as well. Feel free to make submissions back here for inclusion in the next issue. - Controlling color of OpenLook windows Although our Motif version of Razor has almost unlimited opportunities for controlling the appearance of the program (via Xdefaults), OpenLook users also have some options available to them. Try invoking Issues with the following command line... Issues -xrm 'OpenWindows.WindowColor:Yellow' & For a wider selection of colors, you may want to look at the file $OPENWINHOME/lib/rgb.txt. Have fun. - Controlling the icon & frame labels (OpenLook version only) For sites that have multiple Razor databases, it can be difficult for users to know which Razor icon belongs to which database. It turns out that you can control the label of the icon by the command line, as well as the text in the header bar. Try the following... Issues -WL "Icon" -Wl "Header can be longer" & - Stupid UNIX tricks These are the high-tech equivalent of the knock-knock joke. If you use the c-shell, just enter the following lines EXACTLY as you see them here to get a taste of UNIX's humor & wisdom. man: Why did you get a divorce? ...and... man: How's Tower Concepts support team? ============================================================================ concepts@tower.com Tower Concepts, Inc. 103 Sylvan Way Razor... New Hartford, NY 13413 A Problem Tracking System Voice: (315) 724-3540 with Integrated Configuration Management FAX: " " -3129 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------