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NANFOR.LIB Working Group G. Scott [71620,1521]
Overview UCLA
Version 2.1 October, 1992
THE NANFORUM TOOLKIT (NANFOR.LIB)
PUBLIC DOMAIN USER SUPPORTED CA-CLIPPER FUNCTION LIBRARY
1 INTRODUCTION
This is a standard for establishing and maintaining NANFOR.LIB, a
public-domain, user-supported library of functions designed to
interface with Computer Associates CA-Clipper, version 5.01a, and
later. You are encouraged to read it over and forward comments
to Glenn Scott, CIS ID [71620,1521].
1.1 History
In October and November of 1990, a discussion on the
evolution of third-party products, vendors, and marketing
took place on the CompuServe Information Service's Nantucket
Forum (NANFORUM). During this discussion, a forum
subscriber named Alexander Santic suggested the idea of a
user-supported Clipper function library, available to all on
the CompuServe Information Service (CIS). A number of
subscribers, including several Clipper third party
developers, and some Nantucket employees, expressed their
support. This standard was a first step toward organizing
such an endeavor.
Release 1.0 of the toolkit was made available in April, 1991
and had nearly 150 functions. By the time version 2.0 was
released in August, 1991, the 1.0 library had been
downloaded nearly 700 times by CompuServe users. By October
of 1992, release 2.0 had been downloaded over 2100 times.
The source code had been downloaded nearly 1500 times. In
addition, release 2.0 was placed on the massive Internet
archive site called SIMTEL20 where it was downloaded by CA-
Clipper users worldwide. Over the course of the year that
release 2.0 was available, seven patches were issued, each
one gathering nearly 1000 downloads.
Computer Associates International, Inc. acquired Nantucket
in the summer of 1992 and subsequently renamed NANFORUM to
simply CLIPPER. In addition, the Clipper product itself was
renamed to CA-CLIPPER. Despite the name changes, forum
members decided to keep the toolkit's name as "The Nanforum
Toolkit," partly for nostalgia. References to NANFORUM in
this RFC have been replaced with CLIPPER.
1.2 Trademarks
CA-Clipper is a registered trademark of Computer Associates
International, Inc. Computer Associates will be referred to
as CA throughout this document.
1.3 Relationship to CA and third party
NANFOR.LIB is a project independent of any third party
developer or CA. There is no official "sanction" or "seal
of approval" from CA of any kind. In addition, NANFOR.LIB
routines will be accepted and included without regard for
whether or not routines performing a similar function are
included in a commercial third party or CA product.
It is desired that NANFOR.LIB not compete with third party
products but rather fill in the holes in CA-Clipper's
standard library. However, there will be some overlap into
commercial third-party library functions, so it would be
best if this is never taken into consideration when deciding
on including a particular function.
Developers submitting NANFOR.LIB routines can and will be
corporate developers, third party developers, independent
consultant / programmers, hobbyists, and other CA-Clipper
people. Perhaps even CA employees will contribute. No one
is excluded or included due to any particular affiliation.
CA employees submitting functions are doing so as
individuals, and are not making a policy of involving CA in
the project, nor are they committing CA to supporting the
public domain library.
1.4 CA-Clipper version supported
NANFOR.LIB functions, no matter what language they are
written in, will be designed to work with CA-Clipper version
5.01a and later. Many of the functions, particularly those
that use the EXTEND system, will be compatible with the
Summer 1987 version of CA-Clipper. However, ensuring Summer
87 compatibility will be the responsibility of the user. If
a user wants a function to work with Summer 87, she will
have to modify the code herself if necessary. In many
cases, this is a trivial task.
1.5 Queries from new users
Queries from new users interested in finding NANFOR.LIB
should be handled in a uniform and courteous way. A short
text file will be created that will briefly explain
NANFOR.LIB, who the current people maintaining it are, and
how to get a hold of it. This text message can be sent in
response to any query. TAPCIS users will find this method
very easy to implement.
2 DISTRIBUTION
2.1 Public Domain
NANFOR.LIB, its source code, and documentation will be
public-domain software. It is not for "sale", and shall not
be sold. No fee or contribution of any kind will be
required for anyone wanting a copy, other than what they
would normally pay to download it from CompuServe. Users
will be encouraged to submit functions via CompuServe.
2.2 Official repository
It is possible that copies of NANFOR.LIB will be downloaded
and distributed elsewhere. This is encouraged, but the only
copy of NANFOR.LIB and all associated documentation that
will be maintained by volunteers is in an appropriate
library on the CIS CLIPPER Forum.
2.2.1 Contents
The deliverables that make up the official posting
on CompuServe shall be:
2.2.1.1 NFLIB.ZIP
This will contain the files NANFOR.LIB
(library), and NANFOR.NG (Norton Guide).
2.2.1.2 NFSRC.ZIP
This will contain all the library source
code, makefile, and other source-code related
materials.
2.2.1.3 NFINQ.TXT
This is a short text file used as a response
to new user queries (see paragraph 1.5)
2.2.1.4 NFRFC.ZIP
This contains an ASCII format, as well as a
WordPerfect 5.1 format copy of NANFOR.RFC
named NFRFC.TXT (ASCII) and NFRFC.WP5
(WordPerfect 5.1).
2.2.1.5 NFHDRS.ZIP
This contains templates of the file and
documentation header blocks, including a
sample, for prospective authors (FTHDR.PRG,
FTHDR.ASM, FTHDR.SAM)
2.2.1.6 PATx.ZIP
These are patch files (see paragraph 4.5.1).
3 POLICY ON INCLUDING FUNCTIONS
3.1 "Best Function"
It is possible that more than one developer will submit a
function or package of functions that perform substantially
the same services. In that event, the referees will choose
one to be included based on power, functionality,
flexibility, and ease of use. Due to the cooperative,
non-commercial nature of the library, no one's feelings
should be hurt by excluding duplicate functions.
In addition, it is possible that two substantially
similar functions or packages will benefit from merging them
together to provide new functionality. This will be the
prerogative of the referees (see paragraph 6.3), in close
consultation with the authors.
3.2 Public Domain
Each author submitting source code must include as part of
that code a statement that this is an original work and that
he or she is placing the code into the public domain. The
librarian (see paragraph 6.1) and referees should make a
reasonable effort to be sure no copyrighted source code,
such as that supplied with some third party libraries, makes
it into NANFOR.LIB. However, under no circumstances will
the librarian, referees, or any other party other than the
submitter be responsible for copyrighted code making it into
the library accidentally.
3.3 Source code
Full source code must be provided by the author for every
routine to be included in NANFOR.LIB. No routine, no matter
what language, will be put into the library on the basis of
submitted object code.
3.4 Proper submission
Due to the volume of submissions expected, librarians and
referees may not have the time to fix inconsistencies in
documentation format, function naming, and other
requirements. Therefore, the librarian shall expect source
code to arrive in proper format before proceeding further
with it.
3.5 Quality and perceived usefulness
In a cooperative effort like this, it is very difficult to
enforce some standard of quality and/or usefulness. For
example, a package of functions to handle the military's
"Zulu time" may be very useful to some, and unnecessary to
others.
The Nanforum Toolkit will by its very nature be a hodgepodge
of routines, some of very high quality, some not so high.
It is up to the users to improve it. It will be complete in
some areas and vastly inadequate in others. It is up to the
users to fill in the holes.
We shall err on the side of including "questionable"
functions, provided they seem to work. Debates on the
quality of the library's source code shall be encouraged and
will take place in the proper message section of the
CompuServe CLIPPER forum.
4 LIBRARY MAINTENANCE PROCEDURE
4.1 Selection procedure
Source code will be submitted to the librarian, the
documenter (see paragraph 6.2), or one of the referees.
Code will be added if it has been reviewed, and approved by
at least one, but preferably two, referees.
Code not meeting the documentation or source code formatting
standards will generally be returned to the author with
instructions.
Referees will test the submitted code. When the referees
have finished evaluating a submission, they will report
their approval or disapproval to the librarian, with
comments.
Every effort should be made to make sure that the C and ASM
functions are reviewed by referees with suitable C and ASM
experience.
4.2 Update interval
As new functions are submitted, they will added to the
library, and the documentation updated. Because this is a
volunteer project, and because of the complexity involved in
coordinating testing, documentation, and delivery, there
will be no fixed interval for updates.
4.3 Version control
NANFOR.LIB will use a numeric version number as follows:
The major version will be numeric, starting from 1. This
will change with each quarterly update. The minor version
will change with each bug fix. This will start with zero
and continue until the next major update, at which point it
will revert to zero again.
Typical version numbers might be 1.1, 2.12, 15.2, etc.
The .LIB file, and all associated files, will carry a date
stamp corresponding to the day it is released on the CLIPPER
forum. The file time stamps shall correspond to the version
number (i.e., 1:03am is version 1.3).
4.4 Announcing updates
As the library and its associated documentation are updated,
simple announcements will be posted on the CLIPPER forum.
This is the only place where an update shall be announced.
An update will be announced after it has been successfully
uploaded to the appropriate library on CompuServe.
4.5 Bug reports and fixes
The librarian will correlate and verify all bug reports,
with the help of the referees. If the referees believe a
bug to be serious, they will fix it and the librarian will
release a maintenance upgrade immediately. If they consider
it a minor bug, they will fix it but wait for the next
scheduled upgrade to release it. In this case, a bug fix
may be released as a "Patch."
4.5.1 Patches
A "patch" is simply an ASCII text file containing
instructions for editing the source code to a
misbehaving function or group of functions.
Patches may appear in the CIS library before a
maintenance release or quarterly upgrade. A patch
file will have a name of the form
PATn.ZIP
where <n> is a number starting from 1. Patches
will be numbered sequentially. Patches will be
deleted every time a new version of NANFOR.LIB
goes on-line.
A patch zipfile may optionally contain .OBJ files
to be replaced in user libraries via a LIB
utility.
4.6 Technical Support
Technical support will work just as any technical subject on
the CompuServe CLIPPER forum works. Users will post
questions and suggestions to a particular message area or
thread, and anyone who knows the answer should respond. No
one is obliged to answer, but it is considered good form to
respond with something, even if one doesn't know the answer.
Support will include help on recompiling the routines or
modifying the source.
4.7 Linker Compatibility
In order to assist users of CA-Clipper third party linkers
(such as WarpLink or Blinker), NANFOR.LIB may need to broken
up into root and overlay sections. How this will be done
will be determined when splitting becomes necessary.
The librarian is not responsible for testing every possible
linker for NANFOR.LIB compatibility. It is hoped that
linker users will submit appropriate link scripts or other
documentation for posting in the appropriate section on the
CLIPPER forum.
4.8 Splitting NANFOR.LIB by functional category
It is possible that at some future date, it will make sense
to split NANFOR.LIB into separate functional areas (e.g.,
video routines vs. date routines, etc). This RFC will be
modified accordingly should that need arise.
(continued in part 2...)
See Also:
Overview, Part 2
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