NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #20/NN_1992_20.iso/spool/comp/sys/sgi/13336

Internet Message Format | 1992-09-08 | 2.6 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!dtix!mimsy!afterlife!adm!news
From: [e-mail] (Rob MacLeod)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: Accelr8 Conversion tools
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 5 Sep 92 20:06:13 GMT
Sender: [e-mail]
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>Does anyone have experience with the Accelr8 Tools (DCL9, EDT8, LIBR8,
>Transl8, Integer8) from Access Technology?  We are considering a purchase,
>and would appreciate any feedback (positive & negative) about the products.

We have used Transl8 for a couple of years and find it to be quite
functional, a real godsend when you need to get some files between VMS and
Unix systems with a minimum of fuss and pain.  It would be nice if the
mget/mput commands were implemented, but we can get around that with a VMS
script that sends a single file with each line.  The script can be
generated in a semi-automatic manner so that large sets of files can be
moved without too much fuss.  The thing that we find most inconvenient with
the package is the length of command-line argument strings we find we need
to get the file transfer to go, eg.,

put -s source_format_filename -t target_format_filename source_filename \
    target_filename.

with an occasional -r to clobber existing files at the target.

There are also some funky things with filenames that include underscores
(_), which took us a while to clue into.

A more significant problem is the limitation on record size that the
product will handle.  We had some image files stored as binary grey-scale
values on a 256 X 256 grid, which ended up being 64kByte in size, stored
under VMS as a single record.  This is too big a record for Transl8 (the
max is 65,500 Bytes < 65,536 = 64kB), and so I had to re-write the files in
a new format of smaller, more numerous records, then transfer them, and
re-pack at the other end.

For file types that we move often between system, we have moved to
converting the data ourselves and providing NFS access to get at the files.
And we have also used ASCII files, which provides the best in portability
and the worst in storage efficiency.  But for binary files we move only
occasionally, Transl8 works well.

Hope this helps,

Rob.


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Rob MacLeod, Ph.D.
Nora Eccles Harrison Cardiovascular Research and Training Institute (CVRTI)
Building 500, University of Utah
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