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 E-mail: support@robelle.com Date: May 16, 1994 From: Robert M. Green, CEO David J. Greer, President Michael Shumko, Editor To: Users of Robelle Software Re: News of the HP 3000 and HP-UX, 1994 #3 What You Will Find in This News Memo: News Tidbits SCRUG Report Maastricht Conference Remapping X-Terminal Keyboards on HP-UX Technical Tips Calendar of Events Robelle Products: Problems, Solutions, and Suggestions Robelle Mission Statement We deliver solutions to common data processing problems through quality software and outstanding service, in an environment that promotes personal satisfaction and growth. News Tidbits HP-UX 10.0 News. The March 1994 issue of What's Up, DOCumentation mentioned that HP is dropping NetIPC on HP-UX 10.0 and replacing it with BSD Sockets. It also suggested ordering the NetIPC to BSD Sockets and Dscopy to FTP Migration Guide available free from HP. Subsequently, we received the following information including the address from which the Migration Guide can be ordered. This guide is available as part number 98194-90045. You should order a copy if you will be upgrading to the next major release of HP-UX and... * your network environment includes NS/9000 services, * your network environment includes NetIPC applications on HP 9000 systems, * you rely on file transfers between HP 3000 systems and HP 9000 systems using DSCOPY, * you are planning to continue using vt3k for communication between HP 9000 and HP 3000 systems, * or you have HP 9000 systems that are proxy servers (the PROBE subsystem, including PROBE PROXY protocols, will no longer be available). The guide can be ordered by sending your name and mailing address in an e-mail request to: bsdguide@cup.hp.com or by mailing your request to: BSD Migration Guide, Mailstop 43LE Hewlett-Packard Company 19410 Homestead Road Cupertino, CA 95014 USA What's Up, DOCumentation on the Internet. Our newsletter is now available on the Internet, via anonymous FTP. Anybody with full Internet access can now get their own electronic copy of What's Up, DOCumentation. The latest issue will be posted for access a few days after we start mailing it to customers. Back issues are available from 1991 to the most recent. You can use the yearly indexes to locate specific articles of interest. The anonymous FTP address is ftp.robelle.com. A readme file gives details about the directory structure. In addition to the newsletters, a number of Robelle papers and information files are included. FTP-ing Without FTP Capability. If you only have e-mail access to the Internet, you can still retrieve files via FTP through a service called ftpmail. To retrieve the latest issue of What's Up, DOCumentation, first create a message with your own return message title as the subject. In the body of the message, write the following: connect ftp.robelle.com chdir newsletter/1994 get w1994-03.txt quit This message should be mailed to: ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com Your request will enter a queue. You will receive a message telling where your request is (when we tested this we were number 3030 in the queue). Eventually, the file you requested will be mailed to you. If your mailer chokes on large messages, ask ftpmail to break the file into "chunks" with the command: chunksize 20000 This example would ask ftpmail to break the file into 20,000-byte "chunks". All of this is described well on pages 125-126 of Ed Krol's "The Whole Internet Catalog & User's Guide" which I recommend for anyone using the Internet (even if you only have e-mail access). O'Reilly has just released the second edition of this book. According to O'Reilly's gopher service, you will get a 25 percent discount on the second edition if you send in the title page from your first edition. [David Greer] IPROF 1994. Robelle was at this year's IPROF, held at HP Cupertino. IPROF, the Interex Programmers Forum, is an opportunity for SIGs from Interex to discuss technical and programming issues. At the SIGSYSMAN meeting, many attendees expressed concern about HP's decision to add passwords to undocumented diagnostic utility programs. The spokesperson for HP said the decision was made to protect HP's investment in these programs, as well as to protect users from running software that can damage their systems. The attendees felt that many of them have more knowledge and HP experience than HP support personnel. By using these programs they can often diagnose problems themselves, or at least provide HP with enough information during a service call to significantly shorten the time required to fix a problem. Some suggested that HP should license the use of the diagnostics. After much discussion, the HP spokesperson said they will review their decision on this matter. She also mentioned that for special cases the Response Center can give out passwords to activate a diagnostic for up to six months. Hang on to ITOQ. In years past, PowerHouse distribution tapes included a program called ITOQ which created a PowerHouse schema from an Image root file. This was invaluable for loading a PowerHouse dictionary from an existing database. Recent versions of PowerHouse no longer include a copy of ITOQ, although rumor has it that Cognos will still supply it as a chargeable "extra". So be warned: if you still have ITOQ on your system, or on a backup somewhere, hang on to it. It'll cost you money to replace it. Congratulations Marie. Robelle marketing manager and VAR program administrator, Marie Froese, has changed her name to Marie Reimer, for the usual happy reason. Please update your rolodexes accordingly. SCRUG Report by Robyn Rennie and Ken Robertson Robelle attended the latest Southern California Regional Users Group Conference held May 3-5 at the Airport Hilton in Burbank, California. The conference this year included an Open Systems Forum sponsored by CONAM which showcased the latest in open systems/client-server technology. Also new for 1994 were the tutorials provided by Robelle and SRN, covering topics such as Overviews of the Nuggets Utilities, Introduction to Qedit for MPE and HP-UX, Advanced Debugging, Link Multiple Files/Datasets with Suprtool and Case Studies with Qedit Command Files. As usual, the vendor show generated a lot of interest and included Cognos, Speedware, WRQ, Bradmark, HP and many others. At Robelle's booth, techies Robyn and Ken met numerous customers, and enjoyed matching faces with familiar voices. They answered questions and demonstrated the latest pre-release versions of Suprtool, Qedit for MPE and Qedit for HP-UX. Also on hand was Mike Shumko who did an excellent job presenting the tutorials. This year Robelle held a "Wish for Fish Dish" draw which provided Oscar Martinez of Winston Tires, Burbank with a tasty box of B.C. smoked salmon. Being in Southern California, we got to experience the local attraction of an earthquake which measured 3.6 on the Richter scale, but was not nearly as exciting as the drive down Coldwater Canyon Drive at 30 mph. Maastricht Conference by Paul Gobes Early this month, the International HP Users Conference was held in Maastricht, Holland. The city is famous for its treaty that unified Europe, and this conference certainly continued that spirit of unification. Judging from the European press I read, as a vendor of MPE tools I half-expected to be treated as a "backward legacy-system" user, but found that not to be the case. HP heavies like Glenn Osaka, Rick Sevcik and Manuel Diaz were all making a point to include MPE in HP's strategic plans. I also saw an awful lot of people walking around with only HP 3000 stickers on their registration badges. UNIX is stronger in Europe but surprisingly about 30 percent of the papers at the conference were MPE-based. The opening keynote speaker was Jeff Tash of Database Decisions who spoke about client-server. A very good presentation, and the first talk using the word "paradigm" that I haven't walked out of. An excerpt: Why client-server? Answer: `Wintendo'. Users will give up functionality to get the pretty interface. In other talks, both Glenn Osaka and Pat Adamiak of HP spoke about HP 3000 directions. They were very positive and you could see that HP is excited about MPE/iX 5.0 and porting new UNIX vendors to the 3000. SIGIMAGE was interesting: Ken Paul of Adager and Denys Beauchemin of Hicomp hosted a lively session which highlighted the changes to IMAGE that come about when a SIG is active and HP is listening (kudos to Jim Sartain and his group). Jeff Vance of HP gave a great talk on "POSIX HP 3000" (too bad it was so short). One note: POSIX filenames can be 1023 characters long but the CI buffer is only 511 characters and calls the MYCOMMAND intrinsic that has a 255-character limit. So watch how deep you make your directories. On the UX side, Brian McCarthy, in a talk on "HP-UX Directions" said now that Novell has given COSE the right to use the name UNIX, look for HP-UX version 10.0 to be called HP-UNIX instead. The round table panel was interesting as usual. Some tidbits: The IHPUG survey showed strong expected sales figures for 1994 (9400 Series-700s, 400 Series-800s and 2200 Series-900s). So while workstations are hot, the MPE machines are going strong. The latest version of Oracle 7.0 will be available on MPE 5.0. "Windows NT is disappointing and adds no value to the customer," said Bernard Gudion of HP Europe, though other panel members thought NT would fly. Lots of client-service stuff but when Oracle asked who still has terminals to support, most of the room raised their hands. The conference's social event this year was held in a sandstone cave. The food was fantastic as was the entertainment, a singing group that really rocked the place. (Does every band in the world say, "You're a wonderful audience"?) All in all, the Dutch user group hosted a fine event. It was good to meet some of our European customers (Samhall, Shell, and Heineken). I want to thank our dealer Marius and the others at SAMCO for all their hospitality. Remapping X-Terminal Keyboards on HP-UX by Neil Armstrong I have been using Reflection-X lately and found that editing in Qedit's Visual mode in an Hpterm window was next to impossible. I am used to Reflection for Windows (and DOS) functionality, such as Alt-I being Insert Line and Alt-D being Delete Line. A utility program called /usr/bin/X11/xmodmap allows you to remap an X-terminal (or X-terminal emulator) keyboard. The xmodmap utility allows you to redefine any key on your keyboard. To print your current key definition table, execute the following command: /usr/bin/X11/xmodmap -pke |lp -o2 Sample output from this command is as follows: keycode 76 = d D Here we see that pressing keycode 76 (the D key on the keyboard) will generate the character that occurs in the first column. In this case it is "d". The character in the second column, "D", will be generated if the key is pressed in combination with Shift or when the Caps Lock key is down. If a character definition exists in the third column, it will be generated if the key is pressed in conjunction with what is known as the mod character. Since I want to generate a Delete Line when the Alt-Key is pressed in combination with the D key, my keycode definition would be as follows: keycode 76 = d D DeleteLine Now the only step is to define the mod character: clear mod1 add mod1 = Alt_R Alt_L Now I can make other key definitions: keycode 76 = d D DeleteLine keycode 81 = i I InsertLine keycode 82 = j J Clear keycode 83 = k K ClearLine keycode 53 = InsertChar InsertChar keycode 54 = DeleteChar DeleteChar You must put the above keycode definitions and the definitions for the mod keys into an ASCII text file. I called mine mymod. Then pass this file into xmodmap by doing the following: /usr/bin/X11/xmodmap mymod Now I can use the key sequences that I have come to know and love when using Reflection for Windows/Dos. Alt-D is Delete Line, Alt-I is Insert Line, Alt-J is Clear the Screen, and Alt-K is Clear the Line. On my PC keyboard using Reflection-X, I found that my Insert and Delete keys did not do what I expected. I determined that I needed to remap these keys to do an InsertChar and DeleteChar. The previous definition was Insert and Delete, so I remapped them to do a specific InsertChar and DeleteChar. On an X-terminal, it is important to note that for X to know that the Alt-Key has been pressed when using Reflection-X, the Alt-Key must be passed to X. You do this in the Reflection-X settings by selecting the keyboard icon. You can define which Alt-Key will be passed, whether it is the left, right or both. One advantage of just choosing either left or right is that the opposite Alt-Key will still be passed to Windows which will allow you to switch tasks with the Alt and Tab keys. Technical Tips PowerHouse UDCs Revisited. Qedit has always been an excellent workbench for PowerHouse programmers. The PowerHouse components read Qedit-format files directly, and PDL, QDD, Qdesign, QTP and Quiz can be suspended from Qedit for faster invocation. It is also possible within Qedit to use Qedit "shorthand" when invoking PowerHouse ("*" for current file, "$" for previous), provided the UDCs have been slightly modified. We therefore supply UDCs for the various PowerHouse versions in Catalog.Robelle. These UDCs are large, very complex, and differ from version to version. We have recently received some calls from customers who have installed PowerHouse version 7.09.E1 and discovered that our PH709UDC doesn't work with that version. Cognos has once again changed its program options and supplied UDCs. We would prefer not to have to keep supplying new UDCs, and believe that we may have a compromise. Here is a command file for invoking Quiz from within Qedit, which allows Qedit shorthand, and suspension on exit: parm auto=$null anyparm otherparms=ZZZ file qsource=!auto if "!otherparms" = "ZZZ" then /quiz "auto=qsource suspend" else /quiz "auto=qsource !otherparms suspend" endif file qsource = $null Note that this accepts one more parameter (at the beginning) than the Cognos UDC. It relies on the Cognos UDCs having been set, since they're invoked from within the command file. Note also that UDCs have precedence over command files, so the command file must have a different name. We suggest QZ for QUIZ, QP for QTP, QD for Qdesign, etc. If you create a command file for invoking Quick, remember to remove the "suspend" from the invocation of the UDC as this causes some versions of Quick to leave your terminal confused. NewFace/3000. While at Maastricht, Robelle's Paul Gobes saw a demo of HP's NewFace/3000. This product enables programmers to port VPLUS-based applications to GUIs without changing the original source code. Your files still reside on your HP 3000 but users can enter data via Windows (from a PC), X-Windows (from a HP 9000), and even via dumb non-block-mode terminals. The resulting client interface can have all the "bells and whistles" we associate with Windows, including images. Another nice feature is that the client portion has the communications software built-in so there is no need to purchase multiple copies of a terminal emulator or even separate run-time licenses. NewFace/3000 was developed by HP Europe and Denkart of Belgium, the people who developed Wingspan. It might be exactly the tool you need to put a Windows front-end on your existing VPLUS applications. For more information contact HP: Mike Yawn Stefan Seller CSY Cupertino USA CSO BĪblingen Germany (408) 447-4367 +49-7031-14-3144 myawn@cpu.hp.com Calendar of Events June 1994 * Bob Green will present three new tutorials at the NECRUG users conference being held June 1-2, 1994 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The tutorials are "Introduction to Qedit for MPE and HP-UX," "Suprtool Cookbook for Novices," and "Link Multiple Files/Datasets with Suprtool." Bob will also give the keynote speech at lunch on Thursday June 2, 1994. Take time to visit our booth and meet Jennifer Mollan. This is Jennifer's second conference and she is looking forward to meeting all of Robelle's friendly customers that she speaks with on the phone. * Robelle's Hans Hendriks will be giving two days of private Suprtool training in Tucson. If you are interested in having your own on-site training, please contact Rosemary Van Poelgeest who will be happy to arrange a session for your company. * David Greer will present his paper "Porting Qedit From MPE to HP-UX" at the UK user group meeting in Bournmouth, England on June 13-14. Robelle's UK distributors, Clive Oldfield and Gordon Miller, will have a booth. September 1994*The 1994 Interex conference is being held in Denver, Colorado on September 18-24. As always, Robelle will be there in full force, presenting numerous tutorials and papers. A tip to the wise traveler: staying over on a Saturday night can save a significant amount on air fare. Your company saves money and you get some time for sightseeing. Robelle Products: Problems, Solutions, and Suggestions Suprtool Version 3.6 Sorry About DAT. We recently released Suprtool 3.6 to our American customers. We quickly received reports of quite a few DAT tapes that were unreadable. Southern College, our tape maker for the U.S., has since had its DAT drive replaced. The HP CE said there was excessive wear on the DAT drive, although a full analysis of the drive still needs to be done. We will be analyzing various tape media to insure that our next distribution will be of the highest quality. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by these bad DAT tapes. Any users who received the Suprtool 3.6 update on DAT and have not yet installed the tape should verify that it is readable before attempting the installation. Use a store tape analyzer program such as STAN or TINDEX. Forthcoming Attractions. One of the most requested enhancements for Suprtool is the ability to select on calculated values. For instance, > if qty-ordered - qty-supplied <> 0 or > if (qty * sales-price) + ((qty * sales-price) * tax-rate) <> sales-total As the comparison generally includes numeric fields with differing storage types, programming this feature has meant many additional lines of source code for Suprtool. As always when adding major new features, there is the potential for affecting existing functionality in unpredictable ways. We have tested this new version on our in-house systems for some weeks now without problems, but would like to have more extensive testing done on other systems before distributing it as a pre-release. Specifically, the questions we need answered are these: Do the old features still work as before? Do the new features do what you want? If you are interested in becoming an "alpha" test site for Suprtool, please call us at (604) 582-1700 or e-mail us at support@robelle.com. Update Command. Suprtool 3.6 includes a new command which allows you to update fields in selected IMAGE records. This has always been available in Dbedit interactively, but now fields can be updated using "regular" Suprtool processing. This example updates a group of records with a new date: >get mailing-list >if date-mailed <> 0 >update >extract date-next-mailing = 19940601 >xeq The field(s) named in the Extract command will be updated with the value(s) specified, in all records that match the If criteria. Here, all the records will be updated with the same value, 19940601. Any fields may be updated, except critical items. Qedit Version 4.2 Quiz, Continued. A customer recently called to ask how he could clean up some of his Quiz code so that the ampersands for his continuation lines were always lined up in column 72. Following is a short command file which does this for you: /change 72/73 "&&" "& " /change "& " " " all /change "&&"(71/72) " &" all /change "& &"(70/72) " &" all The first Change command puts an && in columns 72/73 of all lines that contain an & followed by two spaces. I added the two spaces to the command so as not to touch lines that may have ampersands in the text of a title line. The second Change command changes all occurrences of an ampersand followed by two spaces to just three spaces. The final two Change commands handle the border cases of ampersands existing in columns 70 or 71 (which wouldn't have two spaces following them after the first Change command has executed). [Neil Armstrong] Cut & Paste Using the Mouse. Using Visual mode from a Reflection for Windows terminal, it is natural to use the mouse to copy part of the Visual screen to the Windows clipboard. However, the default copy includes the Qedit relative line indicators (e.g., -2 -1 * +1 +2), which we generally don't want to paste into the destination application. A user at the SCRUG meeting told us about a simple workaround: press CTRL while marking the area to be copied. This results in a rectangular area that does not include the line numbers.