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: December 19, 1991 From: Robert M. Green, CEO David J. Greer, President Michael Shumko, Customer Support To: Users of Robelle Software Re: News of the HP 3000, 1991 #7 What You Will Find in This News Memo: News Tidbits Xpress 2.8 Is Released New QLIB is Released Spelling Checker from Robelle Technical Tips About Robelle Robelle Products: Problems, Solutions, and Suggestions News Tidbits New Dealer in Central America. IPESA in Guatemala has recently joined the list of Robelle dealers worldwide. Founded in 1971, IPESA is the oldest Hewlett-Packard distributor. They purchased the first HP 3000 sold by HP outside the U.S., an HP 2115, serial number 0123, which is incidentally still in working condition. IPESA also sold the first HP 3000 in Latin America in 1973. With its installed base in Central America, mainly in El Salvador and Guatemala, IPESA is a long-time user and promoter of third party software developed for HP 3000s. The person to contact at IPESA is Alex Dengo. Phone: +502 2 314786. Fax: +502 2 316627. Xpress Links to MCI Mail, Easy Link. We have recently opened up the Xpress world to include outside e-mail networks. Working with another vendor, E-Mail Inc., we have used their Gateway/3000 to link Xpress to the MCI Mail public network. This gives HP 3000 users the capability of sending messages from their desk to anyone in the world. Users can send messages to any fax number or any MCI Mail user, send messages to software vendors, send orders to suppliers, even link two Xpress systems without NS/3000 or dedicated leased lines. If you prefer, you can use AT&T's Easy Link instead of MCI Mail, or you can use both. Xpress sells for $5000 US for a single cpu. We have arranged a special discount price on Gateway/3000 for Xpress users. The regular license fee of $10,000 has been reduced to $3500 when Gateway is used with Xpress. Call us for more information, or contact E-Mail directly at (818) 797-9152. A Rose By Any Other Name.... On December 1st HP changed the name of the HP 3000 HPPA operating system from MPE XL to MPE/iX. The name change is supposed to reflect the future capability of supporting both MPE and POSIX programs and file structures. The HP press release took great pains to stress that MPE is not dead. "Users will still get the same strong OLTP performance and commercial functionality of MPE, along with POSIX's advantages of application portability and open file system support. We are changing the name of MPE XL to MPE/iX to reflect the greater openness of the operating system. The iX suffix stands for `integrated POSIX'." Xpress 2.8 Is Released Xpress is an electronic mail system that is so easy to use that you can start exchanging mail the first day without formal training. Xpress works on any HP 3000 hardware, and on all versions of MPE (including MPE XL). Xpress has a streamlined design that keeps the load on your machine low, and still offers all the functions you need. The highlights of the new XPRESS mail are * Now in native-mode for greater speed. All Xpress programs are now available in native-mode. The installation job stream automatically installs the native-mode versions on MPE XL machines. You can import MPE XL native-mode spool files into Xpress using only the spool file number. * Xpress includes a Full-Screen Editor for non-programmers. Xpedit is a new bonus program that provides full-screen editing capabilities for users who are not experienced at using programmer-style editors (e.g., Qedit). Xpedit provides the ability to update, add, insert, and delete lines of text. You move through the document using clearly-labelled function keys. On-line help is available from the main edit screen. * Send messages to users by name, not number. Xpress now prompts for user names when you send messages. Of course, all previous options are still supported (e.g., sending a message to a user number). Sometimes you may not be able to remember a person's name. To search for matching user names, end a user name with a ? question mark. You do not have to enter an entire user name. Xpress accepts any partial name that uniquely matches a name. If a name partially matches several Xpress users, the list of users who match is shown. * Screen Display can be configured to suit yourself. You can configure what the Out Basket menu will display: user names, options, or nothing. Having three choices makes the new send-by-user-name feature of Xpress more flexible. Skilled users who want speed can configure Xpress not to show all the menus, and once-in-a-while users can set Xpress up so they always see all the choices. You will find a full description of these and all the other new features in our change notice. All Xpress owners covered by service receive a change notice and update tape automatically. The update tape contains revised user manuals, too. You can print copies or use the complete on-line help. If you haven't yet convinced yourself of the benefits of electronic mail, just call for your free demo. We think you'll like what you see. You will find an Xpress data sheet included with this news memo. New QLIB is Released Version 6.4 of Robelle's Contributed Library. The Robelle QLIB is a small library of contributed software, and other aids, for Robelle users. You receive the latest QLIB on each update tape. Some typical QLIB tools are: PROSE to format text, Pscreen to print the screen, Tapedir to analyze :STORE tapes, and Qhelp to provide an online help facility. The QLIB is continuously updated and improved. Version 6.4 (October, 1991) adds native-mode HowMessy (version 1.9), native-mode Prose text formatter (version 3.2), version 3.8 of Qcopy and Qeditaccess, a new file of Cookies, and a Xpedit 1.2 with a more intuitive Insert and Delete line capability. The new HowMessy has improved the calculation of inefficient pointers, shows the highwater mark of detail datasets, and no longer requires you to be logged on in the same group as the database, although you do still have to be logged on in the same account and as the creator. Version 6.3 (July, 1991) added two new bonus programs, Spell and Xpedit, and the new Printdoc utility for printing Robelle manuals. It also included an updated version of Qcopy (version 3.7) that includes on-line help. You will automatically receive the newest QLIB with your next product update tape. Spelling Checker from Robelle Spell is a spelling checker for the HP 3000. It is fast, and reads both Qedit and Editor files. Spell comes with an 80,000 word dictionary, and you can choose to incorporate British or American spellings. You can add additional words with either a global auxiliary dictionary or a local user dictionary. Spell consists of two parts: one, a program that serially reads a Qedit or Editor file and reports on all words not found in the dictionary; and two, a set of routines that user programs may call to check the spelling of individual words or lines of text. Qedit users will automatically receive Spell with the next Qedit update, which is due to be released in January. Technical Tips Still Waiting. Whatever happened to HP's promise of allowing multiple MPE XL commands on one command line? [Dennis Werner @ Laserscope] Adager Writes Qedit Files. Further to the notice in the last newsmemo about writing Qedit files, Alfredo points out that any place in Adager that lines are written to a file, you can specify a Qedit file. You can also append lines to an existing Qedit file. An example of where you would use this is when you get the layout of a specific dataset (and not the whole schema). Alfredo reports that Adager is now 100% read/write Qedit-compatible (except places where it wouldn't make any sense). Incredible Performance Degradation. One of our customers called to report an amazing slowdown on his Series 70 after installing the MICBV98 patch to Platform 1P. It seems that there was a bug in the CVDB and CVBD instructions which could cause them to occasionally produce incorrect results. The patch disabled these buggy firmware instructions and re-implemented them in software. Some applications suddenly ran anywhere from 2 - 7 times slower than before the patch. He said that his Series 70 was running at less than half the speed of his Series 37! The workaround was to install patch MICCV88, which is officially supported on the V-Delta releases, but seems to work on Platform 1P, too. Purge can be very slow. Stan Sieler gave us the following command file. For big files, this command file is much, much faster than HP's purge command. The reason is that when the purge command has write access to a file, it zeros out all blocks of the file (i.e., this is equivalent to making a copy of the file in terms of execution time). MPE XL doesn't need to do this, since blocks are always zeroed before use when re-allocated by MPE XL. If the purge command only has acc=in to a file, it still purges it, but it does not zero out all blocks. On Allegro's Series 932, Stan built two huge files (one per disc drive) to reserve some space. He purged one of these files with the purge command (about 15 minutes to execute) and the other with qpurge (a few seconds to execute). The MPE XL programming with finfo is to insure that you get the "correct" error message if the file does not exist. parm filename if finfo("!filename", 0) then file filename=!filename;acc=in purge *filename reset filename else purge !filename VPLUS Configuration File. Bill Shanks at Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health had problems with Vplus over modems until HP told him to build a file called Venvcnt.Pub.Sys. Apparently VPLUS will look for this file to set parameters for the hand-shaking of status request timing. He built it as rec=-80,,f,ascii;disc=1, and according to HP's instructions filled the first 20 characters with the following data: 11011101000000000001 {the data} 12345678901234567890 {columns} Fascinating. Now can anyone tell us what all those zeros and ones mean? Almost But No Cigar. In the June 91 issue of What's Up Doc we challenged our readers to find a way of detecting that a file name has been :File equated to tape, before opening the file. A successful answer would have meant that Qedit could detect a tape file before opening it and hanging on a console reply (i.e., text t with a forgotten :file t;dev=tape). Several of you suggested using the Flabelinfo Intrinsic to check some attribute of the file name such as device name, since this intrinsic does not require an Fopen and fails with Fserr 54 when faced with a File equation to tape or printer. However, it also fails with Fserr 54 when you have a File equation to a remote disk file, so Qedit can't really know whether the file is a tape file or a remote file. Qedit 4.0 will have this logic built into it and will warn you that the file you are trying to Text may be a tape file that will hang at the console, or it may be a remote file. Therefore, we re-challenge our readers to come up with another idea. SORT XL Scratch Files. On Classic HP 3000, it was easy to know how big a SORTSCR file would be required by SORT/3000. The rule of thumb was to reserve enough space for a second copy of your input file. If you needed to know the exact calculation you could always look in the SORT manual. To change the amount of space allocated to the scratch file you could issue a file command: :file sortscr;disc=100000 On MPE XL this file command does not work. That is because the native-mode sort does not use a file called Sortscr. Instead it uses two mapped scratch files called Hpsorts1 and Hpsorts2. The Sort-Merge XL manual does not document how space is allocated for these files, but the rule of thumb seems to be that Sort XL needs about twice as much scratch space as Sort V. The following sort scratch file information is from the HP Response Center. CM-Sort Scratch File scratch filename = SORTSCR scratch'file'size = ((scratch'rec'size * #RECORDS) / 128) + 1 scratch'rec'size = ((file'rec'size + 7) / 2 + 4 file'rec'size is input record size in bytes. scratch'rec'size is in words. NM-Sort Scratch File scratch filenames = HPSORTS1 , HPSORTS2 (both mapped files) Native-mode scratch files contain two types of records, WORK RECORDS and END-OF-SUBFILE records. Both types contain the same number of bytes. The number of bytes in one scratch file is: scratch'file'size = scratch'rec'size * (#RECORDS + eos'records) eos'records = #RECORDS / 50 {eos: end-of-subfile} scratch'rec'size = file'rec'size + expansion'bytes The value of expansion bytes depends on the number and type of keys that the user specifies: expansion'bytes = #type5'keys + #type9'keys + 2 * (#type4'keys + #type6'keys + #type7'keys + #type8'keys + #type12'keys) + 3 * (#type13'keys) + 3 The 3 at the end is used to pad the length to a 4-byte boundary, thus it is a worst case value (ranges from 0-3). To find the number of end-of-subfile records (eos'records) the number of records from the input file was divided by 50, a worst case number (the average case will be to divide by 100). Note that scratch'file'size is for one scratch file. The space required for a NM sort is 2*scratch'file'size. Key Types 0 byte 1 binary two's-complement (16 & 32 bit) 2 HP3000 floating point (real & long) 3 IEEE floating point (32-, 64-, 128-bit) 4 packed decimal with odd # of digits 5 packed decimal with even # of digits 6 display trailing sign 7 display leading sign 8 display trailing sign separate 9 display leading sign separate 10 character 11 reserved for MPE XL 12 short floating point decimal 13 floating point decimal Saving User Function Keys. If your terminal is an HP 70092, or a PC with Reflection configured as a 70092, there are escape sequences to save the current user function key information in an internal area in the terminal, and restore it later. &f0B {saves the function key information} &f1B {restores the function key labels} VPLUS does this automatically. You could put these escapes into your own command files or UDCs, before and after the run of a program that changes the function keys. [Michael Hensley @ VESoft] About Robelle Robelle Holidays. Robelle will be closed December 25th and 26th, and January 1st. Robelle Software Rentals Available. Robelle now offers quarterly software rentals which are easily converted to a full license at any time. If you want to try one or all of our software products for longer than our 30 day trial period, or feel you only need one of our tools for a short time, you can now rent. The price is a low $500 US per quarter on one CPU, and you can apply half of the rental fee towards up to half of the software purchase price on one machine. If you would like more information on how to get your rental copy of Robelle software, call us and ask for one of our sales representatives. Multi-Processor SPUs. Yes, it's true that the Series 980/200 has two cpus in it. But that doesn't mean that you have to purchase a license for an extra cpu if you upgrade from a regular machine to a dual processor machine. Interesting idea, though.... To reiterate our reasonable, generous upgrade policy: We do not charge based on how big and fast your computers are. We care only how many machines are running our software. So if you upgrade from one model of HP 3000 to another, you do not owe us any money. You pay only when your machine count goes up. The additional cpu charge is $1000 US for Qedit or Suprtool, and $1250 US for Xpress. Other charges apply in other countries. Shameless Plugs. "If I had known this shop didn't have Qedit I might not have taken the job." [E.A. Kilroy @ Orbit Software] {E.A. did talk his boss into getting Qedit.} "Suprtool comes through as usual as the best Image tool yet! I can't live without it. You were incredibly kind and supportive in my 'hour of need'." [Janine Scott @ M-Care] "Suprtool is the best money my company ever spent on third-party software." [Greg Fry @ IJ Companies] Contact Robelle Via MCI Mail. You can send messages to Robelle using MCI Mail. The MCI Mail user name is "Robelle Consulting Ltd.", and the number is 502-3800. Your messages will be treated with the same priority as telephone calls and faxes. Birmingham Meeting. Our UK dealer, Clive Oldfield, will be exhibiting Robelle products at the HP World one-day exhibition to be held at the National Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham on Thursday, 30 January 1992. Robelle Products: Problems, Solutions, and Suggestions Qedit Version 3.9.1 132-Column Mode on a PC. One of the most frequently-heard questions of the last few months has to be, "How can I get Reflection to go into 132-column mode, just like my 70092 terminals do?" The ability to put your screen into 132-column mode, where you see 132 tiny characters across the screen, is dependent on your PC's hardware. You must have a supported enhanced video adapter with a 132-column display. It's not enough to have a VGA card; it must be a 132-column card supported by Reflection. Assuming you have such a card, you tell Reflection about it on the Global Configuration screen (Alt-C f7). We have discovered that some Vectras can be configured into Reflection as PARADISE cards. Whenever you go into Visual mode in a file which has more than 76 columns, Qedit will send an escape sequence to Reflection telling it to widen its terminal memory. When Reflection is configured properly, this escape sequence invokes 132-column mode. P.S. We have heard rumors that a future version of Reflection will support 132 columns on SuperVGA cards, even if they aren't explicitly 132-column cards. P.P.S. All the above notes are for the DOS versions of Reflection. The Macintosh and Windows versions of Reflection handle 132-column mode in a totally different fashion than DOS Reflection. Qzmodify Trick. You can get the decimal value of an Ascii character on-line. When you modify a line in Qzmodify-mode (set modify qzmod), press control-W followed by a question mark (^W?) to see the Ascii character code for the character the cursor is on, in decimal and octal. Suprtool Version 3.3 Data types must match when loading tables from files. Suprtool's Table command lets you load tables of test values from a file or from the command line. When loading test values from a file using the File option, the data type and length of the test values must be the same as the field to which they will be compared. For example, you cannot load a table of byte values to be compared against an integer or packed-decimal field in a dataset. When loading test values from the command line with the Item option of the Table command, Suprtool converts the ASCII value that you enter to the appropriate data type: :run suprtool.pub.robelle >base sales,5,reader >table acct-table,acct-number,ITEM,2244 {acct-number is I1} If you have a file with a list of ASCII values that you want to compare against an integer or packed-decimal field in a dataset, for example, you could use an editor to convert this list of values into a Suprtool Use file containing a series of Table Item statements: :print acctfile {list of ASCII acct-numbers} 6220 1144 0982 2244 5633 :run qedit.pub.robelle /tq acctfile Qeditscr 5 lines in file /set lang job 'Language' is now JOB /c 1,"table acct-table,acct-number,ITEM," all 1 table acct-table,acct-number,ITEM,6220 2 table acct-table,acct-number,ITEM,1144 3 table acct-table,acct-number,ITEM,0982 4 table acct-table,acct-number,ITEM,2244 5 table acct-table,acct-number,ITEM,5633 5 lines changed /k tablecmd,temp 5 lines saved :run suprtool.pub.robelle >base sales,5,READER >get sales-detail >use tablecmd {load table with Use file created above} >if $lookup(acct-table,acct-number) >output tranfile >exit The Item option of the Table command is designed to be used interactively with a relatively small number of test values. When loading tables with this option, Suprtool uses a simple insertion sort. As the number of test values increases, the time required to load the table will increase dramatically. You should not use this technique if you have more than a few hundred entries to be loaded into the table. Xpress Version 2.8.1 Names With a Single Initial. Most North American Xpress customers were shipped version 2.8.1. This version has a bug in the new send-by-name feature. It is not possible to send a message to a user whose Xpress name starts with a single letter, e.g., M Shumko. You can still send to this user by specifying the user's number, but not the name. This is fixed in version 2.8.2, which is available to anybody who needs it. Customers outside North America were shipped the new version which does not have the bug. Catching Misspilled Words with a Spilling Checker As an extra addled service, I am going to put this column in the Spilling Checker, where I tryst it will sale through with flying colons. In this modern ear, it is simply inexplicable to ask readers to expose themselves to misspelled swords when they have bitter things to do. And with all the other timesaving features on my new work processor it is in realty very easy to pit together a colon like this one and get it tight. For instants, if there is a work that is wrong, I just put the curse on it, press Delete and its . Well sometimes it deletes to the end of the lion or worst yet the whole rage. Four bigger problems, there is the Cat and Paste option. If there is some test that is somewhere were you wish it where somewhere else you jest put the curse at both ends and wash it disappear. Where you want it to reappear simply bring four quarts of water to rotting boil and throw in 112 pound of dazed chicken. Sometimes it brings in the Cat that was Pasted yesterday. But usually it comes out as you planned, or better. And if it doesn't, there are lots of other easy to lose options .... [Reprinted from The View Amiga newsletter, edited by Ken Robertson]