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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 Fax: (604) 888-7731 Date: February 19, 1990 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, 1990 #1 What You Will Find in This News Memo: News Tidbits Technical Tips Thoughts and Discourses on HP 3000 Software Forward to 4th Edition by Robert Green Introducing... Robelle Technical Support, by Jennifer Mollan Electronic Mail in the 1990's (Part II), by Marie Froese MPE XL Development Robelle Products: Problems, Solutions, and Suggestions Swimsuit Edition page 9 News Tidbits New Prices. Just a reminder that new prices have gone into effect for the Right-to-Copy a Robelle product onto an extra Cpu: Qedit $1000 US $1200 Canadian Suprtool $1000 US $1200 Canadian Xpress $1250 US $1500 Canadian Dbaudit $750 US $900 Canadian Technical Tips THISCPU Codes. MPE and MPE XL contain an undocumented Integer function THISCPU that returns a code indicating the type of HP 3000 CPU you are executing on. Here are some codes that THISCPU returns: 0 Series I 1 Series II 2 Series 3x 3 Series III 4 Series 4x 5x 5 Series 6x 7x 6 Series 37 7 Micro XE 8 LX / GX 16 Spectrum Creating a File with Today's Date. Here is a Qedit command file that uses Suprtool to build a file whose name is today's date preceded by a prefix and file equated to a formal designator. We find this helpful for saving output files from daily programs without having name collisions. parm filename = "filename", prefix = "A" :comment :comment DATEFILE Command File (Qedit use only). :comment :comment Builds a file in the David group whose name is :comment today's date and a passed prefix, then does a :comment :File Command to it. :comment :purge tempsupr,temp :purge tempdate,temp :beginfile tempsupr :define date-field,1,6 :item date-field,date,yymmdd :input catalog.pub.sys :numrecs 3 :extract "!prefix" :extract date-field=$today :output tempdate,temp :exit :endfile :run suprtool.pub.robhome;parm=36;info="use tempsupr" /text tempdate /set language = job /appq ".david" all {add group name} /cq 1 ":purge " 1 {create mpe commands} /cq 1 ":build " 2 /appq ";rec=-80,16,f,ascii" 2 /cq 1 ":file !filename=" 3 /appq ",old;dev=disc" 3 /use * For example, if today is February 11, 1990, /datefile input,m would end up executing these three commands: :purge m900211.david :build m900211.david;rec=-80,16,f,ascii :file input=m900211.david,old;dev=disc Thoughts and Discourses on HP 3000 Software by Eugene Volokh Forward to the 4th Edition by Robert Green In the HP 3000 world, Eugene Volokh is one of the few people who are instantly recognized by all. He is so well known that you need only use his first name: "Have you heard the news? Eugene has written a new paper on MPE XL disc files... Be sure to come to the meeting, because Eugene is going to speak... I called Eugene and he suggests trying..." My first encounter with the Volokh family was a memorable one. During one of my 1980 training seminars, Eugene extracted from me the bulk of what I knew about the externals and internals of the MPE operating system. To celebrate surviving this ordeal, the Volokhs invited me home for a traditional Russian feast. This consisted of numerous delicious courses of food consumed over an entire evening in their backyard. (Anne Volokh, Eugene's mother, was in the midst of writing her now-famous cookbook at the time.) Between each course, Vladimir and I tossed down a shot of flavored vodka from the freezer. And, somewhere between the borscht and the pirozhki, I expounded my theory on how to succeed in the software business without capital or connections. "Just find a small, practical, ignored niche, write a good piece of software, then hit the road to promote it at users' groups. Write papers that contain tips on using the computer and you will gain user attention, and credibility for your software." Well, I didn't say it quite so concisely after so much vodka. Eugene must have been taking notes. Soon I was running into him regularly at meetings, as he presented his latest papers on the HP 3000. I can still remember the stir he caused with "The Truth About Disc Files" and "Burn Before Reading." Eugene regularly uncovers useful (and alarming) secrets of the HP 3000, and does it in an eminently readable way. Although I regret that this Fourth Edition had to drop a few of Eugene's older papers, I can strongly recommend the new: "The Truth (Almost) About MPE XL Disc Files" and "MPE XL Programming." Thank goodness Vesoft did not choose to include Eugene's monster paper comparing the SPL, Pascal, and C programming languages; that would have meant dropping the rest of the book! The story of Vesoft is an exciting and inspiring one: Russian immigrants start over in Los Angeles, father and son playing "entrepreneur" as comfortably as others play catch with a baseball (Eugene does the RD and Vladimir does the marketing). They develop MPEX and SECURITY from simple, novel tools into essential complements of HP's operating system, and build from nothing a successful software firm with 30 employees and with products installed on 6000 sites world-wide. If this were a story and not fact, critics would call it "far-fetched and hopelessly unrealistic." What makes it believable? Eugene. Introducing... Robelle Technical Support by Jennifer Mollan, Robelle You may have noticed over the past few years that different people have been answering your calls at Robelle. This is because we have grown! Up until 1986, either Bob Green or David Greer provided phone support at Robelle. Mike Shumko joined Robelle in May 1986 and became the main technical support voice with Bob and David on back-up support. In 1989, Ken Robertson started doing technical support part-time, spending the remainder of his time programming our in-house systems. Jim Bird joined Robelle in January 1990 to increase our technical support depth even more. We would like to introduce you to the people behind the voices. Heeeeeeeeere's Mike. This prominent figure in the company is the most well known in tech support. You might hear him answer the phone with "Robelle Consulting...Hi...this is Mike". By this time you have to decide - is it real, or is it Memorex? (He is often mistaken for an answering machine.) Jim is our newest voice in tech support. For the past year, Jim travelled Asia and North Africa. Lucky for us he escaped being trampled by three runaway baby elephants (being chased by their keepers) on his way to a restaurant in Thailand. Ken is our real-life cartoon techie. We discovered his double identity when we heard ACK! BLETCH! and GRR! around the office. The other side of Ken (out-of-the-office Ken) enjoys playing the guitar, keyboards, and drums. Bob and David are other pieces of the Robelle puzzle who address technical support on a more part-time basis. Most of their work day is dedicated to programming your favourite software tools. Bob and David spend a couple of weeks a year doing technical support to keep up with what's going on in the "real" world. When you call in for technical help, we encourage you to ask for Technical Support, instead of a specific person, unless you are already working with someone on a specific problem. In the past, asking for Mike was the same as asking for technical support since he was pretty much the entire technical support staff. As you can see, this is no longer true. So, the next time you call Robelle for technical support, just ask for "tech support for Qedit" (or Suprtool, etc.) and we will make sure you talk to the right person. Doing It Right--Electronic Mail in the 1990's (Part II) by Marie Froese Problem Solving with Electronic Mail Electronic mail makes it easy for other people to become involved in problem solving. Recently, we have incorporated our technical-support call database with electronic mail. The calls originate in Xpress, then are sent to an Xpress user who is really an application program. The application program loads the entry into the database, and a copy of the call is sent to each programmer automatically. Message from the IN Basket of BOB.GREEN KARNAK B 21 APR89 08:30 415:Terminal Status Check Company: Telamon, Inc. Name: Randy Medd Phone: (415) 987-7700 Serial#: Z Subject: Terminal Status Check Product: LQ 3.7 Date: 18 APR89 Ref: 415 Status: Open Techie: MIKE SHUMKO Comment: Message loaded into the KB data base as ref # 415 Randy was running Qedit on a really dumb terminal emulator on his Mac. Qedit, of course, figured out that it was a dumb terminal and set the RCRTMODEL jcw to 1. Qedit did not set the RPCVERSION jcw at all, so one of Randy's intialization commands in his Qeditmgr file didn't work because it tried to check the value of RPCVERSION. Please always set both jcws, regardless of the kind of terminal being used. Thanks. The programmers can append their comments to the original call, and copies of their comments go to every other technical person. Message from the IN Basket of MIKE SHUMKO KARNAK B 21 APR89 10:00 415:okay, rpcversion Company: Telamon, Inc. Name: Randy Medd Phone: (415) 987-7700 Serial#: Z Subject: Terminal Status Check Product: LQ 3.7 Date: 18 APR89 Ref: 415 Status: Closed Techie: BOB.GREEN Comment: Message loaded into KB db; appended to ref # 415 * Note: BOB.GREEN okay, rpcversion 21 APR89 09:58 * Good point. I was working on Qedit today, so I fixed RPCVERSION in version 3.7.3. Please send Randy a pre-release tape for testing. In the tech support database, we have a complete history of the call, with everyone's thoughts and actions recorded. Electronic mail is the glue that holds this application together. Electronic Mail as an Order Interface Finnigan Corporation in San Jose, California has an order system which controls their parts inventory and invoices. They found that order processing needed to communicate to the expeditors, but telephone communication was not working. They devised a system where the expeditors wore beepers, but they found that the telephone calls piled up, and they were still playing telephone tag. They decided to use electronic mail to solve the problem. Now, if a person in order processing needs to communicate with an expeditor, a message is sent electronically, eliminating telephone tag. The expeditor can print the messages, process requests, and send a reply without picking up a telephone. Using Electronic Mail with Fax and Telex Machines Christopher Hart at BTS discovered a way to link Xpress mail to the Easylink public mail network, using Xpress's "alternate machine" concept. The users define a mailbox# or fax# in the first line of their message to make the linkage work. When a user sends a message to the Easylink "user", Xpress dumps the message into a standard disc file. A BTS program reformats the message for Easylink and a Telamon Network Engine box dials out of the HP 3000 to Easylink and passes on the message. This gives the users the ability to send faxes and telexes. The BTS sales agents don't have PCs or dial-up lines at home, but they do have fax machines. With electronic mail and Easylink, they are able to receive fax messages from the office for $0.50 per page. Each has an XPESSS user ID that is defined to pass messages to Easylink as just described. Non-Disruptive Messages Mean More Communication Have you ever wanted to ask a co-worker a simple question and didn't because it would mean an interruption or a long- distance phone call? With electronic mail, we find that we are able to ask those questions and receive answers quickly. You can try a simple test the next time you go to make a phone call. See how long it takes to exchange one idea. It will probably take at least five minutes from beginning to end. The reason for this is that you can't very well call the person, say what you have to say and then hang up. You have to ask them how they are, if they are busy, say what you are going to say, ask how their dog Fido is, wait for a reply, and then go into your hanging up sequence. Telephone Tag!! How much time can you afford to spend leaving messages to another person in your office? When you do finally connect on the phone, is it convenient for both parties? Using electronic mail, you can receive a fast reply from the person you need to speak with at his convenience and yours without delaying your work. This keeps interruptions to a minimum. Ed McGonagle of Finnigan in San Jose uses electronic mail to set up long distance telephone call appointments with Finnigan's office in Germany. He can send a quick memo via electronic mail, give the subjects to be discussed and have his party prepared and waiting for the phone call. Electronic Mail While You Travel Bob Andrews of D.I.S.C. doesn't like to carry a PC with him while he travels, but he does like to get his electronic mail. He stays in hotels with fax machines so he can receive and reply to his electronic mail by fax while on the road. Ed McGonagle of Finnigan Corp. likes to take a PC on business trips so he can send and receive mail from sites in California and Germany using Telenet. He has successfully used this system from Japan sending messages to California and Germany. He likes the fact that you can deliver and receive messages without having to worry about time zones. The staff at Finnigan also uses electronic mail to communicate with its German office. Messages are saved, then sent a couple of times a day. Finnigan finds that this saves money on faxes and phone calls. Robelle takes a PC to the North American Interex meeting to help with the volume of requests received each day. Instead of being buried under paper when we get home, we send requests to the office each night via electronic mail. By the time we come home, they have all been handled! Electronic Mail Doesn't Do Everything Some questions are so urgent that they warrant interrupting a person. In those cases, we still use the telephone instead of electronic mail. There are things that are best saved for a face-to-face meeting. For example, we have a staff meeting once every two weeks, so that everyone can meet in person. Word of caution: if the subject of your message is a sensitive one, or you feel that it can be misconstrued due to the limits of the printed word, a face-to-face meeting or telephone conversation is perhaps a better choice. [...to be continued next issue...] MPE XL Development We continue to receive many calls asking about our MPE XL development plans, especially for Suprtool. We are actively doing research on MPE XL, but we don't have an expected delivery date for Native-Mode versions of our products. There are several reasons why we have taken a long time to deliver Native-Mode versions: 1. We were more concerned with reliability than performance. The first few releases of MPE XL have been shaky. Having Qedit and Suprtool in Compatibility-Mode has made it much easier to get bugs in MPE XL reported and fixed. 2. Robelle products are written in SPL and total over 100,000 lines of code. Because HP chose not to support SPL, we have had to wait for the development of SPLash! 3. Everything is not faster in Native-Mode. In some cases, Native-Mode code is more than twice as slow as code from Octcomp. 4. For performance tools such as Suprtool, you cannot assume anything about Native-Mode. This means that we must do extensive testing and performance measurements for every unit. If performance is your number one priority, use Octcomp on our products. To produce an Octcomp version of Suprtool, use the following commands: :hello mgr.robelle,pub :purge suproct :octcomp suprtool,suproct :rename suprtool,suprcm :rename suproct,suprtool We have developed Native-Mode versions of the Qeditaccess and Suprtool2 interface procedures. They are installed in Nmrl.Qlib.Robelle and Xl.Qlib.Robelle; call our office if you need them. For the next year at least, the majority of our development effort will be focused on MPE XL. Here is the list of programs we are working on converting to Native-Mode in order: Suprlink, Speed Demon, Suprtool, and Qedit. During 1990, we don't plan to work on Native-Mode versions of Dbaudit or Xpress. We are hopeful that a Native-Mode version of Suprtool will be shipped as version 3.3 in February 1991. If you are interested in being a pre-release test site for MPE XL, please call the office and let us know. Robelle Products: Problems, Solutions, and Suggestions Suprtool Version 3.1.1 Can Suprtool Improve the Speed of Query Reports? In the past, we always answered this question negatively: "Sorry. The output from Suprtool is an MPE file. Query can't produce a report from an MPE file." Now a customer has shown us the answer is "Yes, it is possible to improve the speed of Query reports, if you select a small percentage of records." This requires three simple steps: 1. You build an empty copy of your database. 2. Suprtool extracts the records and Puts them to the copy of the database. 3. Query could then be used to report on all the entries in the copy database. Although this is a bit tricky, it could speed up the Query report. Vesoft reported an impressive performance improvement in one of their batch jobs using this technique. [Jim Bird] Qedit Version 3.8.1/3.8.2 MPEXhooking Qedit. When you install MPEX, the Vesoft installation job makes a copy of Qedit in pub.vesoft and "hooks" it for closer cooperation with MPEX. Starting with version 3.8, the hooked Qedit requires some new Set commands in order to compile or get help. :run qedit.pub.vesoft;lib=p The new Qedit looks for compilers, help files, and other supporting files in the same account where the program resides. If you run the standard qedit.pub.robelle, it looks in the Robelle account. But when you run a copy of Qedit in the Vesoft account, Qedit looks for its files in Vesoft instead. If you don't want to make copies of the files in Vesoft, put the following Set Commands in a configuration file named qeditmgr.pub.vesoft (Qedit looks for Qeditmgr in the same account as the program as well): /set account robelle {e.g., cobol.q.robelle} /set filename help qedit.help.robelle /set filename hint qedhint.help.robelle /set filename qzmodhlp qzmodhlp.help.robelle /set extprog mpex.pub.vesoft com on The Set Extprog Command assumes that you want Qedit to explicitly pass % commands to MPEX, rather than have the "hook" intercept all % lines at every prompt in Qedit. It is desirable to handle % commands within Qedit this way, rather than through the hook, because it ensures that your current workfile is properly posted to the disc, and it allows you to Add % commands into a file as data without executing them. To achieve this result, you must rehook Qedit with the Nopercent option: :run mpex.pub.vesoft %hook qedit.pub.robelle;nopercent {SM or Vesoft logon} One final note: you may find that you don't need to use a hooked Qedit as often, now that Qedit has a :Listredo stack. Some remaining benefits of hooking Qedit: System Manager can Keep across account boundaries (but watch out for Creator name) and ACD information is retained from Text to Keep. New Configuration File. Qedit now looks for Qeditmgr in the same group where the Qedit program resides (usually pub.robelle), as well as qeditmgr.pub.sys, every time it runs. So you can put your system-wide configuration commands in the Robelle account now, and leave your Sys account untouched. (If you run Qedit in Vesoft or some other account, put Qeditmgr there.) Qedit Installation Manual Errors. If you tried to print the latest Qedit Installation Manual, you probably discovered that it was full of hyphenation warnings. The final document is still quite readable, though, so don't worry about it. Replace $Hold Fails on MPE XL. This new Replace command feature doesn't work on MPE XL. If you run into this problem, call us for version 3.8.2. Xpress Version 2.6 [Barbara Janicki] The Xpress Experience: Editing Mail Messages. If you use Qedit as your editor in Xpress, you can configure it to go straight into full-screen (Visual mode) for editing mail messages. This may be a good idea if you have users who are comfortable with PC-style screen editors, and who may be confused by the Qedit / prompt. Configure your Xpress editor with the info string "OPEN !;VI;EXIT". This puts the user directly into Visual mode. When finished editing, the user presses the f8 function key to exit from Qedit. The user will never see Qedit's line-editing mode (slash prompt). For a Help Screen in Visual mode that lists cut-and-paste and some of the fancier editing commands, type ? on the homeline (top line) of the Visual mode screen, and press f7.