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What's Up DOCumentation
Robelle Consulting Ltd.
8648 Armstrong Rd., R.R.#6
Langley, B.C. Canada V3A 4P9
Telephone: (604) 888-3666 Telex: 04-352848
Fax: (604) 888-7731
Date: May 17, 1989
From: Robert M. Green, President
David J. Greer, Research & Development
Michael C. Shumko, Customer Support
To: Users of Robelle Software
Re: News of the HP 3000, 1989 #4
What You Will Find in This News Memo:
News Tidbits
QEDIT and SUPRTOOL Tutorials
Technical Tips
Need a Menu Program for Your Users?
Notes From European Meeting in Brussels
Better-Than-Ever SUPRTOOL
About Robelle
New Prices
Robelle Products: Problems, Solutions, and Suggestions
News Tidbits
APPIC. Michel Kohon has left Tymlabs and is marketing the software he
developed through a company named APPIC. One product, now named Magician,
intercepts the MPE Break key to bring up a menu of choices. Another product,
Windows/3000, provides PC-like windows on HP 3000s (amazing!). Telephone
(512) 346-0962 in Texas or (33) 1-64 54 87 37 in France.
Smoke and Fire. In a previous news memo, we reported on smoking 700 series
terminals due to faulty capacitors used in manufacturing. Now we hear from
John King of Cyanamid that one of his 700/92 terminals started smoking last
fall. Quick calls to HP confirmed that they knew nothing about the problem.
He had big hassles trying to get the faulty capacitors replaced. Since
Cyanamid is a chemical manufacturer, "Where there's smoke there's fire" is
their motto, the safety people were very concerned about the possibility of
smoke re-occurring. HP sold many of these low-cost terminals to third-party
vendors, and hence have no idea as to their whereabouts. Users should call
HP and ask for the free fix. Only 700/92s manufactured prior to April 1988
have this problem.
Tutorial Slide Packages. QEDIT and SUPRTOOL users should have received
printed packages of training material in the last few months. We are very
interested in hearing from anyone who has tried using these slides for
training. Were they worthwhile? How could they be better? Call us at (604)
888-3666 and let us know.
QEDIT & SUPRTOOL TUTORIALS
Location: Four Seasons Hotel
791 West Georgia Street
Vancouver, British Columbia
Dates: Monday, June 19th: 9:00am - 5:00 pm QEDIT
Tuesday, June 20th: 9:00am - 5:00 pm SUPRTOOL
Lunch: Included with registration both days.
Cost: $100/day US
$125/day CDN
Robelle is offering in-depth tutorials on the use of its QEDIT and SUPRTOOL
products, each tutorial lasting a full day. Come to one or both. Your
instructors will be Bob Green and David Greer, who created QEDIT and
SUPRTOOL. The tutorials will be helpful for existing users and for people
who are considering a purchase of the products (bring a friend). The
day-long format provides time to cover advanced features and to answer user
questions about specific problems. Each participant will receive reference
manuals, plus copies of the training material (give the course yourself at
home!).
Advanced topics. Interfacing QEDIT to COBOL, MPEX, Powerhouse, Reflection,
TDP, Command Files and UDCs. Selecting and extracting data from multiple
files and datasets using SUPRTOOL's new SUPRLINK option and improved TABLE
command. On-line editing of dataset entries and chains using SUPRTOOL's
DBEDIT option. Turbocharging COBOL programs with the Speed Demon intrinsics.
Class size is strictly limited, so call Robelle at (604) 888-3666 to reserve
your seats.
*c1950a1bP*c650b1aP*p+1950X*c650b1aP*p-1950x+650Y*c1950a1bP*p-650Y
Registration For Company:
*c1950a100b15g2P
Attendee Name Telephone Qedit Fee Suprtool Fee Total Fee
*c1950a1bP*c100b1aP*p+1950X*c100b1aP*p-1950x+100Y*c1950a1bP*p-100Y
1.
2.
*c1950a1bP*c100b1aP*p+1950X*c100b1aP*p-1950x+100Y*c1950a1bP*p-100Y
3.
4.
Deadline. Complete and return the registration form by June 14th, 1989. We
require either payment with registration (in US or CDN$) or a purchase order
number. Make checks payable to Robelle Consulting Ltd. If you have any
questions, please call Marie at (604) 888-3666.
For Out-Of-Towners. We have booked a block of rooms at the Four Seasons
Hotel at a special conference rate. Call (604) 689-9333 to reserve a room,
and remember to register under Robelle Consulting Ltd. to get the discounted
room rate. The easiest way to get from Vancouver International Airport to
the Four Seasons is by taxi. You probably won't need to rent a car, since
the hotel is within walking distance of many Vancouver attractions.
Technical Tips
Reflection Exit Key. I am a big fan of Reflection from Walker Richer and
Quinn. But there's one thing that's always bugged me: the ALT-X keystroke
for exiting from Reflection back to DOS. It's too close to the ALT-D key
which is used for deleting lines in QEDIT's VISUAL mode. Accidentally
pressing ALT-X and shutting down Reflection in the middle of a VISUAL screen
is pretty disastrous. WRQ has added a `remappable keyboard' in a recent
version of Reflection which allows the user to specify what keys perform
which functions. I changed the exit-to-dos function to be activated by a
different, harder-to-type key sequence. First I built a DOS file called
REMAP.KBM with the following lines:
KEYBOARD-ID = ENHANCED
TERM = HP
alt x = null
alt ctrl x = exit-to-dos
Then I activated the changes by typing C:> KEYMAP REMAP.KBM R1.CFG at the DOS
prompt. [Mike Shumko]
Splash Timings. The Native-Mode SPL compiler for Spectrum keeps improving -
latest timing test shows a 30% improvement in CPU time over the Object Code
Translator. Good work, guys. For SPLASH information, phone (206) 463-3030.
MPE XL Tidbits. One of our users, Dave Rochford, sent us the following
notes:
The measurement interface can only collect data on 639 processes, even
though we have 1100-1200. Rumored to be fixed in 1.2' (prime).
On our 950 system, no sessions or jobs can log on when we get above 750
spoolfiles. MPE XL limits are the same as MPE V and will not change
until a new HP spooler is available.
NBSPOOL from QUEST is terrific for saving jobs and spoolfiles on XL when
doing START NORECOVERY. It also allows you to view open spoolfiles and
waiting jobs. Couldn't do without it.
TRANSACT/XL is filled with bugs. We can't even use it yet. It spends
25-30% of its time in CM when it does work.
HELP!!! The latest version of QEDIT does terminal status requests when you
run it, unless it thinks you are in batch mode. Unfortunately, if you create
a REMOTE SESSION from a batch job on another machine, MPE will act as if you
are a session, even though there is no terminal at the end of the DSLINE.
QEDIT will eat the first two QEDIT commands from the batch job as
unsuccessful responses to status requests. We have tried finding some MPE
action that will act differently in this case, but most respond exactly the
same whether there is a batch job or a true session on the other machine
(this included checking the terminal speed, if you can believe that!). We
thought we had one, FdeviceControl 192/28 (block mode status); it worked on
MPE G.B3.04, but failed on G.A3.01. Any ideas? We're desperate. [Bob
Green]
Just for Laughs. If you have MPEX from VESOFT, try typing %!LISTF
fileset,1701. It's especially funny if any files in the fileset are being
accessed. Hint for Trekkers: 1701 is the registry number of the Enterprise.
Notes From European Meeting in Brussels
David Greer, Cub Reporter
Series 955. Currently in Beta-test (two months ahead of schedule). The
Series 955 is 50% faster than a Series 950, when both are using MPE XL
Version 1.2.
MPE XL 2.0. Scheduled for late 1989 or early 1990. Version 2.0 will include
DTC switching and Turbo Store.
MPE XL Performance. An OCT program is often 3-4 times faster than the
equivalent CM program. The speed of an NM program depends on the system/user
code ratio. The NM extra data segment intrinsics use mapped files. There
are two types of procedure calls: inter-procedure and intra-procedure.
Inter-procedure calls require three instructions; intra-procedure calls
require twenty-four instructions. Use Linkedit to rearrange procedures to
minimize intra-procedure calls.
The Tune command can have a tremendous impact on MPE XL system performance.
Start with the MPE V/E values, try playing with small changes to the Tune
command (while continuously monitoring overall response time). HP doesn't
have any guidelines, except to use trial-and-error.
Better-Than-Ever SUPRTOOL
SUPRTOOL is an HP 3000 utility for ultra-fast data extract from IMAGE, KSAM,
or MPE files. SUPRTOOL lets you restructure and print fields, and provides
convenient, interactive editing of databases. Robelle keeps making SUPRTOOL
better every year. Some of the enhancements for SUPRTOOL Version 3.1:
* SUPRLINK is a new program for high-speed, multiple-file linkage:
Robelle's solution to the problem of multiple datasets. With SUPRLINK,
your report program won't have to hunt all over the database to collect
your data. Instead, you stay inside SUPRTOOL, and extract and link
records from up to seven files, producing a composite record with all the
data needed for your report program. SUPRLINK uses fast serial extracts
plus efficient merges to give you multiple-file extracts with SUPRTOOL's
legendary speed.
* Vastly Improved Table Searching. SUPRTOOL provides table lookups for
doing searches on long lists of values. With the Table command, you can
use key-values from one dataset to select records from other datasets.
For example, you could create a file of parts-numbers for a product, then
match it against the datasets for inventory, parts-ordered, and
back-orders. The size of your table is limited only by the size of your
system. You can hold and re-use tables in several extract tasks.
* Speed Demon is a set of intrinsics that you install in the System SL. You
can make your own COBOL, FORTRAN, or Pascal programs run faster if you
call Speed Demon for serial reads through large datasets. Speed Demon
returns records to your programs five times faster than IMAGE, and doesn't
consume large chunks of your stack space. New this year: Speed Demon
supports partial field-lists.
* Exporting Data to a PC. If you have tools (like AdvanceLink or
Reflection) to send data down-line to your PC, perhaps SUPRTOOL can take
care of some of the formatting details. SUPRTOOL's new Output option can
convert your HP 3000 data into PRN-files that Lotus 1-2-3 can read.
SUPRTOOL will remove double quotes, convert binary to ascii, insert commas
between fields, and more, saving you a lot of data-twiddle.
You will find a complete description of all of this year's new features in
our change notice, or see the updated User Manual. You may print your own
copies of the User Manual for any of our products. The change notice
provides printing directions for lineprinter and LaserJet, or use SUPRTOOL's
Help command (type "help manual"). Our on-line help file comprises the
entire SUPRTOOL User Manual and Quick Reference Guide. This year, the update
tape includes course materials for an Introduction to SUPRTOOL class.
All users of SUPRTOOL covered by service will receive an update tape
automatically. SUPRTOOL is fully supported on MPE XL, and there is no
upgrade charge. For more information on SUPRTOOL, call Robelle at (604)
888-3666. Trial tapes are free.
Need a Menu Program for Your Users?
You Already Have One!
YES! and the name is SELECT.
Every user of QEDIT, SUPRTOOL, DBAUDIT, and XPRESS also receives SELECT, our
menu front-end program for users. Many sites use SELECT to connect all their
users to the appropriate applications and tools, without giving them access
to MPE directly. Each menu choice can execute a series of MPE commands for
the user including User-Defined Commands (UDCs) and Command Files, or pull up
another list of menu choices, or display help text. SELECT has the same MPE
simulator as QEDIT, so it can "Hold" programs suspended after you run them
once (up to 20 programs). Once the users access and suspend their favorite
menu choices, they can switch between them instantly: no waiting for the
program to load, then open the databases and the forms file.
SELECT will work on any type of CRT, but if you have HP terminals you get
display enhancements and, optionally, function keys. And, in version 3.1
(just released), the users can press either RETURN or ENTER after selecting
their menu choice -- important if your users are trained to press ENTER for
VPLUS.
Linking a user to his menu choices can be done by MPE user name, by user and
account name, by account name, by SESSION name, or through the INFO=
parameter. Configuration options control whether to display menu choices by
default (for beginners) or wait for user request (experienced users soon
memorize the choices), whether to clear display memory for each menu screen
(actually, it just does a Home Down and Next Page, but it looks like the
screen is cleared), whether to display relative numbers for menu choices
(1,2,3,...) or hard-coded numbers (they never change, so users don't need to
re-learn the menus each time you add or delete a choice!), whether to pause
before returning from a menu choice to re-display the menu, whether to use
system-defined UDCs or a specific UDC file, whether to display one or two
columns of menu choices per screen, whether to allow MPE commands to the
user, what title to display, and how many programs to hold.
For a demonstration of SELECT, enter this command:
:run select.pub.robelle,qlib
SELECT has a special entry point that brings up menus to define, edit and
test the user menus -- no need to write code or use QUERY. Other entry
points list the menu details for any (or all) users, dump menu choices to a
disc file, and load menu choices from a file.
And the investment to acquire SELECT is reasonable: no extra charge for
Robelle users.
About Robelle
Doing It Right With Electronic Mail. Marie Froese of Robelle is writing a
paper on electronic mail. If anyone has had interesting experiences with
E-mail on the HP 3000 (positive or negative), she would be interested to hear
about them and work them into her paper.
New Prices
Robelle prices haven't been revised in years -- QEDIT hasn't changed since it
was introduced in 1977 -- and it is finally time to adjust for inflation and
changing markets. Prices will be changing on January 1, 1990.
QEDIT. In the last ten years, the functionality of QEDIT has increased
tremendously, but not the price. Now we are changing the License fee to
$4000 US, the Right-to-Copy fee to $1000, and the yearly Maintenance fee to
$800. Remember, the license fee includes the first year of maintenance.
SUPRTOOL. This product now has the SUPRLINK module for linking
multiple-datasets, DBEDIT for on-line database editing, and Speed Demon for
enhancing 3GL programs. Accordingly, we are revising the prices as we did
for QEDIT: License fee $4000, Right-to-Copy $1000, and Maintenance $800.
DBAUDIT. This tool for reporting database transactions and extracting them
into regular MPE files will have a new License fee of $3000 US, with a
Right-to-Copy of $750 per cpu, and Maintenance at $600 per year.
XPRESS. Version 2.6 of our electronic mail package, due to be released this
year, will add a major new capability: transfer of MPE files with messages,
including across multi-machine networks. The License fee will be $5000 US,
Right-to-Copy fee will be $1250 per cpu, and Maintenance will be $1000 per
year after the first year.
Plenty of Time. We are giving you a six-month warning in case you were
contemplating obtaining any of these tools and would like to do so at the
lower price schedule. These changes are effective January 1, 1990, except
that maintenance renewals will be at the old rates until July 1, 1990. That
is, we are giving existing users a full year's notice of new maintenance
fees, so they can work that into their budgets.
Some things do not change. Maintenance for extra cpus is still free, as long
as only one person calls from the customer central site and you want only one
update tape. And machine size still doesn't matter: a Series 37 or a Series
950 uses our software for the same fee.
*c1950a550b5g2P*p-50Y
New US Prices New Canadian Prices
License ExtraCpu Maint. License ExtraCpu Maint.
DBAUDIT $3000 $750 $600 $3600 $900 $720
XPRESS $5000 $1250 $1000 $6000 $1500 $1200
SUPRTOOL $4000 $1000 $800 $4800 $1200 $960
QEDIT $4000 $1000 $800 $4800 $1200 $960
Robelle Products: Problems, Solutions, and Suggestions
SUPRTOOL Version 3.1.1
Lotus Files. The PRN output option will often produce invalid output for
display-type (Zoned) fields. All other data types work correctly. This will
be fixed in the next beta-test version.
QEDIT Version 3.7 and 3.7.1
STREAMX UDC. Here's a new STREAMX UDC which works inside QEDIT and from MPE.
It gets around a problem in QEDIT's parameter parsing code:
stream filename=$stdin, colonrepl=" ",sched=" ",questrepl="?"
comment
comment *****************************************************
comment this udc for streaming jobs. the file equate sets
comment file to be streamed when streamx is run with parm=1.
comment parameters are the same as in MPE.
comment
file strmfile=!filename
run streamx.pub.security;parm=1;&
info='!"colonrepl"!"questrepl"!"sched"'
reset strmfile
***
MPE XL 1.2 Typeahead. The newest release of MPE XL has typeahead, but you
cannot use this with block-mode applications like QEDIT. We are working on a
pre-release of QEDIT to automatically disable typeahead when you go into
VISUAL and re-enable it when you leave, but just avoid it (type-ahead, not
QEDIT) in the meantime. Typeahead only works up to a limit of 240 characters
(one packet), and it provides a "convenience" double-echo that many users
have found disruptive (Reflection and TypeAhead Engines only echo when the
data is actually transferred to the application program, but MPE XL echoes as
you type and again later). Here is a WARNING from the HP manual:
No attempt should be made to use typeahead mode at a terminal that is
running an application which has not been specifically coded for
typeahead processing.
For your information, here are the new FdeviceControl calls for typeahead:
Function P1 P2 Buf Action
Set Typeahead mode 192 51 0 Disables typeahead
1 Enables typeahead
Flush typeahead buffer 192 60 0 Cancel request
1 Flush buffer on next FREAD
Bypass typeahead buffer 192 61 0 Cancel request
1 Go direct to CRT on next FREAD
These three options are both Read and Write. That is, Buf can pass in a new
setting and/or read out the current setting. The Bypass function is useful
when you want to do a terminal status request.
Here is some more discussion from the HP documentation:
"By allowing typeahead mode you can make it possible for the user of the
application to enter data that the user knows will be required before the
application actually requests the data.
"Suppose, for example, that your program issues a series of questions
designed to allow an interactive user with the proper access codes to gain
entry to a database program. Without typeahead mode active, the program
writes each question on the user's terminal screen and waits for a reply.
Each replay may require some additional processing before the next question
is written to the screen. In some cases the delay between questions may be
quite noticeable.
"If typeahead mode is on, however, a user who is familiar with the series of
questions can type replies to all of the questions at once, without regard to
processing delays. As long as the replies are entered in the required
sequence for the application, and separated from each other by an EOR, they
will be accepted as valid replies.
"After all of the replies have been entered, the user will still have to wait
for the application to process the replies before being granted access to the
database. But now all of the waiting is at the end of the question sequence,
and the user is free to perform some other task instead of having to wait for
the next question.
"When data is entered from a terminal with typeahead mode active, the data is
staged in a special typeahead buffer before being sent through to the process
requesting the data. Any read posted against a terminal with typeahead mode
active will first access the typeahead buffer, rather than accepting data
directly from the device.
"The typeahead buffer is limited to 240 bytes; anything in excess of this
limit will cause an XOFF to be sent. You should be sure that XON/XOFF
transmission pacing is enabled for the terminal if typeahead mode is used.
You should avoid using typeahead mode if you anticipate that reads will
exceed 240 bytes, to avoid overflowing the typeahead buffer.
"If typeahead is on but the terminal user has not typed ahead, the system
will act in essentially the same way that it would if typeahead were not
enabled. A DC1 read trigger will be sent to the terminal any time the system
is ready to receive data, and there is no data in the typeahead buffer. If,
however, the user has typed ahead, and there is data in the buffer, the
system will simply accept the typed ahead data, and will not send a DC1 read
trigger to the terminal.
"When typeahead is in use the terminal user will, in most cases, see input
echoes to the terminal twice. The first echo is a "convenience echo", which
appears when the data is being typed. This echo allows the user to see the
characters that are typed, and to make corrections, if necessary, before
pressing enter.
"The second echo appears at the time the data in the typeahead buffer is
actually accepted by the system. This echo lets the user know that the read
is being processed.
"There are, however, certain cases in which the first echo will not be seen
at the terminal. For example, if the terminal user types ahead while the
system is displaying data (such as the output to a :LISTF command), the
convenience echo will not appear. Also, a user whose terminal is in
typeahead mode but who is not typing ahead will see the input echoed only
once."
Prose Version 2.7
You can use PROSE to print all our documentation on your LaserJet printer.
For some font cartridges, your output will include boldface, italics, and
proportional spacing. But this works on a LaserJet II only when your front
panel is configured to FONT SOURCE=I and FONT NUMBER=00. This is the factory
default setting, so you should be all right unless you've changed it.
*c1950a400b5g2P*p-50Y
Fortune Cookie of the Month.
Question: How much should you pay for a painting?
Answer: $2000.
Proof: A picture is worth a thousand words;
A word is 16 bits;
A quarter is two bits, so a word is two dollars;
Therefore, a picture is worth two thousand dollars. [Eugene]