What's Up DOCumentation Robelle Consulting Ltd. Unit 201, 15399-102A Ave. Surrey, B.C. Canada V3R 7K1 Phone: (604) 582-1700 Fax: (604) 582-1799 Date: September 14, 1992 From: Robert M. Green, CEO David J. Greer, President Michael Shumko, Editor To: Users of Robelle Software Re: News of the HP 3000, 1992 #4 What You Will Find in This News Memo: Interex News Tidbits Technical Tips Shameless Plugs Department Calendar of Events Using Qedit Inside HPDESK Suprtool and MPE/iX Programming Robelle Products: Problems, Solutions, and Suggestions Interex News Tidbits Interex '92 - By the Bayou. [by Ken Robertson] This year's Interex Conference was held in exciting New Orleans, located at the mouth of the mighty Mississippi river, in Louisiana. The high heat and humidity were not enough to deter Interex attendees. Luckily, New Orleans was going through a "cool spell", and the temperature merely reached the high nineties with ninety-five percent humidity. Air conditioning is a must-have in New Orleans, so the conference center had no problem keeping the nearly four thousand people cool. The Robelle fifteenth-anniversary party, held on the Monday evening of the conference week, was a huge success. About five hundred Robelle customers attended, eating up the Bayou Buffet and dancing to the tunes of a Cajun band. More people showed up than expected - we had to order more food halfway through the party! Bob Green gave a short speech on how Robelle was started, followed by Denise Girard of Tymlabs, performing a hilarious, lip-sync rendition of Patsy Cline's "She's Got You." During the party, people wandered out into the hall to watch the television monitors, which had the latest news regarding the whereabouts of Hurricane Andrew. By all indications, it would hit New Orleans dead on. We weren't too worried though, since the conference hotel and center were both designated shelters, built to withstand high winds and rain. The next day, workers were busy taping windows, removing outdoor signs and breakables, and generally battening down the hatches. The edge of the hurricane hit New Orleans Tuesday afternoon, causing Interex to wrap up an hour early. The winds were gusting up to 60 miles per hour and the rain was falling sideways. Unfortunately, some water leaked through closed air vents in the conference center, dripping onto the main Interex computer and a few workstations. It was dangerous to move about the city, so Interex canceled its planned party at the Aquarium of the Americas and held hurricane parties at each of the three hotels where attendees were staying. "Hurricane drinks," food, dancing and Karaoke were the highlights, topped off by the now-traditional sing-along with Orly Larson and the Sequels. The conference continued with business as usual on Wednesday. According to the local news sources, if Hurricane Andrew had hit New Orleans directly, the city would have been under eighteen feet of water. The number of attendees did drop however, since about eight hundred people were able to get out of the city before the airport closed. Everyone who remained was in good spirits, and the sun was shining once more. The rest of the conference continued without a hitch, and people could once again enjoy the festive atmosphere of the city, with the outdoor partying, cool jazz, the French Quarter, and, of course, the Interex sessions. Robelle held a total of seven sessions, including talks and tutorials. Anyone passing by our booth could vote in the Robelle Coloring Contest. We gave away hundreds of boxes of crayons! All in all, Interex '92 was a very successful conference. With both the Robelle party and Hurricane Andrew, it was a show that many will remember for years to come. Coloring Contest Winners. Thanks to everyone who entered our coloring contest in New Orleans. We had more than 75 pictures at our booth in the Robelle Gallery. Some were colored by children (Amy: "I'm almost four!"), others by their parents. Voting was by popular ballot. The winners of the grand prize limited-edition Robelle shirt and mug were Ruth and Winston Kriger of Tymlabs. The most popular picture in each category won a Robelle coffee mug, and all children automatically won a small prize. Craig Lansing - your child won a prize but we don't know how to contact you. Give us a call. Robelle Door Prize Winners. Customers who attended our Qedit and Suprtool tutorials at Interex received valuable free training about our products. One person stayed despite the hurricane, just so he could attend all of our training classes. If free training wasn't enough, at the end of each session we picked names out of a hat to receive door prizes. The following people will be receiving Robelle polo shirts in the mail: James Johnson - Martin Marietta, Ellen Heidenreich - Overton's Sports Center, Ranjit Dhillon - Bio-Rad Laboratories, Jan Battin - United Video, Carl Moore - Interagency Data Processing Co., Kathy McCormack - Boehringer Ingelheim, Dr. David Tomaja - Phillips 66, Phil Panas - Westinghouse Emp., Rob Ginder - American United Life Ins., Randy Davis - US Windpower, Mary Keating - General Mills Inc., Tina Younger - Brethren Mutual Ins. Co., Steve Cooper - Allegro Consultants, Sue Pacut - Shure Brothers Inc., Art Bori - Hewlett-Packard, Vinny Sansone - Estee Lauder, Frannie Casella - Northern Calif. Cancer Center, Becky Schwartz - United Video, Bill Fox - Cosmair, Tim Hoefner - El Paso Community College. We have no address or phone number for one winner: Tuomo Uddstrom - Raha-Automaattiyhdistys, please give us a call. HP-UX Roundtable. The Interex New Orleans Daily newspaper reported on the HP-UX roundtable discussion. One notable quote was from Bill Hassell, Support Center Senior CE, responding to a comment regarding response services. He noted that UNIX is a difficult operating system in itself. Various tools will be rolling out within the next few months to ease system management, but, "if you want friendly, buy a dog." Popular Questions Answered. Two questions that we heard frequently at the New Orleans conference concerned how to use Qedit as the editor within HPDESK, and how to do variable substitution within Suprtool commands. These are answered in this newsletter. Technical Tips TurboSTORE/XL II Serious Bug. SIGSYSMAN, the special interest group for system managers, reported a defect in HP's TurboSTORE/XL II High data compression algorithm. A few sites have reported that a small number of files cannot be restored. HP is preparing patches which will be sent to TurboSTORE/XL II users. In the meantime, HP recommends that customers do not use the data compression feature. Identifying a DTC Terminal. In response to our recent request for help in identifying LAN sessions, a number of users called to tell us how they identify terminals on a DTC and on TELNET. There is a standard MPE/iX variable called HPDTCPORTID, which is set at logon time to an alphanumeric string indicating the exact address of the DTC or TELNET port. In general, it seems that it has a value when you're on a DTC, and is blank for the console or NS sessions. Activate Intrinsic Bug. When calling the activate intrinsic with a second parameter of 2 or 3, the calling process should suspend. On MPE XL 3.0, 3.1 and MPE/iX 4.0, the father process does not always suspend, leaving both processes executing. The problem is random and may be related to a previous call to the kill intrinsic. Apparently the patch MPEFX10 is in beta test for 3.0 and 3.1, but there is no news for a patch to MPE/iX 4.0. [Ken Paul, Adager] Shameless Plugs Department "I look forward to going to work every day so that I can use Qedit. It makes me 4 to 5 times more productive." [Frank Kelly, Manager Info Resources, ROA] "I'm a Suprtool and Suprlink user and I love it! I use it in my development and investigation all the time. Against Image, the speed is unbelievable." [Scott Jorgenson, HP Response Center Lab, Mountain View, CA] "Your support is phenomenal. You've never let us down." [George L. Gee III, Martin Marietta Energy Systems] Calendar of Events October 1992 * Suprtool training at Software Research Northwest, October 13, Vashon Island, WA. * Bob Green will be in London, England on October 12-13, and in Athens, Greece on October 19-20. Look for him at user group meetings. November 1992* Qedit training in Sacramento on November 3. Qedit training in Santa Clara on November 4. Suprtool two-day training in Santa Clara on November 5-6. Space is limited for these classes, so book early. Call Rosemary for details. &f0S*p+0x-765Y&f0S*p+4a+4B*c1950a765b10g2P&f1S *c1950a4B*c0P*c4a765B*c0P*p+1950X*c0P *p-1950x+765Y*c1954a4B*c0P *p+1X*c1950a1B*c50g2P*p-765y-1X*p+1y+1950X *c1a765B*c2P&f1S Using Qedit Inside HPDESK While Qedit has been usable as the editor within HPDESK for five years, the documentation was so well hidden that few users seem to have discovered this capability. DeskQed is described in the Qlib User Manual, not the Qedit manual. HPDESK users can configure an external editor. Unfortunately, HPDESK allows only one option for this editor. It must be invoked by passing the filename to edit via the Info= string. Qedit does not support this method of invocation. Instead, we have implemented a separate program that acts as an interface between HPDESK and Qedit. To change the default editor in HPDESK, you need to modify your individual Profile. To do this, enter HPDESK as you usually would. From the main menu (choice 0), select option 10 (Admin.). From the administration menu, select f2 (Profile). From the profile menu, select f2 again (Next Options). You should see a screen similar to the following: Edit and Create Options Entry method for creating messages/comments ... [ ] Entry method for creating text items ... [ ] Editor for editing text items [ ] Values can be: 1. Line by line text entry 2. Screen text entry 3. Slate editor 4. HPWORD or screen for non-HP terminals 5. External editor &f0S*p+0x-810Y&f0S*p+4a+4B*c1950a810b10g2P&f1S *c1950a4B*c0P*c4a810B*c0P*p+1950X*c0P *p-1950x+810Y*c1954a4B*c0P *p+1X*c1950a1B*c50g2P*p-810y-1X*p+1y+1950X *c1a810B*c2P&f1S You must make two sets of changes to this menu. First, you must enter "DeskQed.Qlib.Robelle" for the external editor (option 5). Second, change the editor option to 5 for the first three items, then press Enter. After your changes, the screen should look like the following: Edit and Create Options Entry method for creating messages/comments ... [5] Entry method for creating text items ... [5] Editor for editing text items [5] Values can be: 1. Line by line text entry 2. Screen text entry 3. Slate editor 4. HPWORD or screen for non-HP terminals 5. External editor DeskQed.Qlib.Robelle &f0S*p+0x-810Y&f0S*p+4a+4B*c1950a810b10g2P&f1S *c1950a4B*c0P*c4a810B*c0P*p+1950X*c0P *p-1950x+810Y*c1954a4B*c0P *p+1X*c1950a1B*c50g2P*p-810y-1X*p+1y+1950X *c1a810B*c2P&f1S Configuring Qedit and DeskQed Because HPDESK does not provide any Parm= or Info= options, the DeskQed interface uses two JCWs, DeskQedParm JCW and DeskQedVisual JCW, and a default command file, to configure Qedit for editing from HPDESK. DeskQedParm JCW Qedit always uses a configuration file named QeditMgr.Pub.Sys. If you want a QeditMgr file for your logon account or your logon group, you must run Qedit with Parm=1 or Parm=2. Parm=1 executes QeditMgr.Pub.logon while Parm=2 executes QeditMgr.logon.logon. To execute both, use Parm=3. To execute a group or pub QeditMgr file, set the DeskQedParm JCW with the appropriate Parm= value: :setjcw deskqedparm=1 {Use QeditMgr.Pub} :setjcw deskqedparm=2 {Use QeditMgr.Logon group} :setjcw deskqedparm=3 {Use both pub and group} DeskQedVisual JCW DeskQed assumes that you do not have an HP terminal and that you would like to edit messages in line-mode. Setting the DeskQedVisual JCW to any non-zero value places Qedit directly into Visual mode when editing an HPDESK message: :setjcw deskqedvisual=1 Default Use File When DeskQed creates Qedit, it executes an optional Use file: DeskQed.Qlibdata.Robelle. You can add default configuration values to this file (e.g., set limits MPE off). Version Entry Point DeskQed does not print any banner or version number when it is run. To find the DeskQed version number and the status of the two configuration JCWs, use the version entry point: :run deskqed.qlib.robelle,version DESKQED/QLIB/Copyright Robelle Consulting Ltd. 1988 (Version 0.4) DESKQEDPARM = 0 DESKQEDVISUAL = 1 Notes: DeskQed requires the temporary file DeskQscr. If you have this file open in Qedit, invoke HPDESK, and then try to edit a message, DeskQed will fail. A special message is printed in this case, warning you to return to Qedit and close DeskQscr before invoking HPDESK. Your original message will remain unchanged in HPDESK. DeskQed always runs the program file Qedit.Pub.Robelle. This cannot be changed. Deleting all of the lines in an HPDESK message will have a different effect, depending on which version of Qedit you are using. With Qedit version 3.6, it will leave your HPDESK message unchanged. With Qedit version 3.6.2 or later, it will result in an empty HPDESK message. Suprtool and MPE/iX Programming Suprtool does not contain any features to prompt for input values and it has limited support for MPE/iX variables. Instead, users should use MPE/iX to create a file of Suprtool commands and then run Suprtool with this file as input. The following example demonstrates an MPE/iX command file that prompts for product numbers. After the example, each of the major steps in the command file is described for you. This example will only work on MPE XL 3.0 or later, since it uses file redirection (the > and >> operators). This example also works inside MPEX from Vesoft. Example comment Step 1: setvar prodval "none" setvar first_time true setvar prodnum_count 0 setvar prodnum_maxlen 8 comment Step 2: purge tempin,temp build tempin;rec=-80,16,f,ascii;temp file tempin;temp purge salesout,temp comment Step 3: echo Base Store.Pub > tempin echo Get D-Sales >> tempin echo Out salesout,temp >> tempin comment Step 4: while len(prodval) <> 0 and prodval <> "//" do echo Enter product number (press return when done) setvar prodval "" input prodval,- if len(prodval) > prodnum_maxlen then echo Product number longer than !prodnum_maxlen elseif len(prodval) <> 0 and prodval <> "//" then if first_time then echo If $Read >> tempin echo product-no = !prodval >> tempin setvar first_time false setvar prodnum_count prodnum_count + 1 else echo ,!prodval >> tempin endif endif endwhile comment Step 5: if prodnum_count > 0 then echo // >> tempin echo Exit >> tempin run suprtool.pub.robhome;stdin=tempin else echo No product numbers requested endif comment Step 6: deletevar prodval deletevar first_time deletevar prodnum_count deletevar prodnum_maxlen purge tempin,temp Description of Steps Here is a description of each step listed in the preceding example: 1. We start by initializing all MPE/iX variables that we will use. 2. There are two temporary files used in this example. The tempin file is used as input to Suprtool. The salesout file is the file we want Suprtool to produce. 3. We initialize the tempin file with Suprtool commands. We use the redirection feature introduced in MPE XL 3.0 to initialize and append lines to the tempin file. 4. At the next step the user is prompted for product numbers. A production example would likely include more editing of what the user typed. In our example, we insure that the user has not typed a product number longer than the maximum. The $Read feature of the If Command is used to make the programming easier. We also use the "," operator of the If Command to specify more than one key value. We could have used a table instead. The user terminates the list of product numbers by pressing Return or entering //. 5. If the user entered one or more product numbers, we run Suprtool with the tempin file of Suprtool commands to create the salesout file. In a real example, the salesout file would be used as input to some other user program. 6. In the last step, we clean up. Variables and temporary files are deleted and purged. Operation of the Command File There are two possibilities for this example command file. The user may enter no product numbers, one product number, or more than one product number. Here are some examples: No Product Numbers :getprod.cmd Enter product number (press return when done) -{Return} No product numbers requested One or More Product Numbers :getprod.cmd Enter product number (press return when done) -2001001 -0105391 -{Return} In this example, the tempin file will contain the following commands: Base Store.Pub Get D-Sales Out salesout,temp If $Read product-no = 2001001 ,0105391 // Exit Robelle Products: Problems, Solutions, and Suggestions Qedit Version 4.0 X-Windows and Visual Mode. For the past year we have been getting reports that running Qedit in Visual mode from Unix X-Windows terminals results in major problems. Blocks of lines from the screen are sometimes deleted after pressing Enter. This has also occurred in the HPEDIT and FORMSPEC programs. The cause of the problem lies in the terminal emulation program VT3K provided on these Unix machines. HP has come up with a patch that seems to work. You can ask them for the following patches depending on which Unix machines you have: PHNE_0125 is for the S300 and S400 systems. PHNE_0126 is for the S700 systems. PHNE_0127 is for the S800 systems. Suprtool Version 3.4 MPE/iX 4.0 Requires New Suprtool. The new MPE/iX 4.0 requires a new version of Suprtool if you read KSAM/XL files. On MPE/iX 4.0, if you try to read a KSAM/XL file using Suprtool 3.4 or earlier, you will get garbled text. This does not happen on older-style KSAM/CM files or on earlier versions of MPE. If you are upgrading to MPE/iX 4.0, call Robelle for a new version of Suprtool. Fortune Cookie of the Month This is your computer: 01001000 01000001 01010000 01010000 01011001 00100000 This is your computer on drugs: 01001000 01003001 01010300 01333000 31011001 33333333 &f0S*p+0x-420Y&f0S*p+4a+4B*c1950a420b10g2P&f1S *c1950a4B*c0P*c4a420B*c0P*p+1950X*c0P *p-1950x+420Y*c1954a4B*c0P *p+1X*c1950a1B*c50g2P*p-420y-1X*p+1y+1950X *c1a420B*c2P&f1S