INFO-VAX Sun, 15 Jun 2008 Volume 2008 : Issue 333 Contents: Re: Does anyone know if and how VMS figured in this? Re: Interesting job ad from HP Re: PCL and PDF support in DCPS. Re: What happened to VAXeln after DEC stopped selling it ? Re: What happened to VAXeln after DEC stopped selling it ? Re: What is a Weendoze .CHM file? Re: What is a Weendoze .CHM file? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2008 02:38:20 -0700 (PDT) From: johnwallace4@gmail.com Subject: Re: Does anyone know if and how VMS figured in this? Message-ID: <8bfface5-2c5e-4c52-a278-a0efbdd67243@59g2000hsb.googlegroups.com> On Jun 13, 11:33 pm, "John Smith" wrote: > http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/147054/stock_exchange_r... > > Stock Exchange Risks Sanctions Over System Outages > > Mikael Rickn=E4s, IDG News Service > > Friday, June 13, 2008 7:50 AM PDT > > After two trade outages, financial regulators in Sweden and Norway are > taking a close look at stock exchanges operated by Nasdaq OMX in several > Nordic business hubs, and could impose fines if the company is found to be= > negligent. > > On the morning of June 2 trading did not open until 9:40 a.m. on the OMX > Nordic Exchange and the Oslo Stock Exchange. On June 3 the same problem > recurred, but trading didn't start until 2:30 p.m. Stock exchanges in > Stockholm, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Reykjavik and Oslo were all affected. > > "It was a series of events -- related to our operating system, network and= > the new version of our trading system Saxess, that collided, and resulted = in > the two outages," said Carl Norell, press officer at Nasdaq OMX Group, whi= ch > owns OMX Nordic Exchange. > > On Wednesday it turned over a report detailing the events that led up the > trade outages to Finansinspektionen, the financial supervisory authority i= n > Sweden. Its investigation, expected to take about a month, will see if > Nasdaq OMX handled everything by regulation, according to Annika Von > Haartman, who is in charge of market oversight at Finansinspektionen. > > If it concludes that Nasdaq OMX somehow failed, it has a number sanction > options. > > "We can give it a reprimand, have it pay a fine between 5,000 (US$820) and= > 50 million Swedish kronor or as a last resort revoke its license," said Vo= n > Haartman. > > She doesn't want to speculate on what a proportional sanction would be, bu= t > underscores that Finansinspektionen takes this matter very seriously. > > The Norwegian financial supervisory authority Kredittilsynet is waiting fo= r > a full report from the Oslo Stock Exchange, so it can launch its > investigation into the outages, according to special advisor Knut Godager.= > > Oslo Stock Exchange (Oslo B=F8rs) isn't a part of OMX Nordic Exchange, but= > uses the same trading system. "We will turn in full a report by the end of= > next week," said Tor Arne Olsen, spokesman at Oslo Stock Exchange. > > At the beginning of next week it receive a more detailed root cause analys= is > from Nasdaq OMX, according to Norell. > > Kredittilsynet can also dole out a reprimand, or demand system improvement= s, > but these things usually solve themselves, since it's also in the interest= > of the stock exchange that its systems work properly, according to Godager= . > > Finally there remains the question of whether the outages indicate a breac= h > of the service level agreement between Oslo Stock Exchange and OMX > Technology. Olsen doesn't believe so, but since uptime is measured over a > longer period that remains to seen. > > "We still have every confidence in the platform," said Olsen. This shouldn't surprise anyone: "SAXESS Trade is a trader application developed by OMX and delivered to banks and brokerage firms all over the world (though mainly within the Nordic and Baltic countries). SAXESS Trade is a client/server solution running on Windows platforms a utilizing a MS SQL Server database. The demands on performance and stability of the product are very high. Programming is done in C and C+ + in a Microsoft Visual Studio environment." found at http://www.jobbank.dk/job/index.asp?act=3Dvis%7C58652 Seems you can be hip, trendy, and cool, or you can be up 24x7. Put another way (one that every engineer should know): good, fast, cheap: which two do you want? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2008 02:57:17 -0700 (PDT) From: johnwallace4@gmail.com Subject: Re: Interesting job ad from HP Message-ID: <0363dc54-4ee6-442d-bc9b-3b6ca75b6d13@z72g2000hsb.googlegroups.com> On Jun 13, 11:05 pm, JF Mezei wrote: > Same with Windows. If you remove all the crud that runs in foreground > and background of windows, wouldn't its kernel behave properly ? Isn't > the kernel fairly similar to VMS in that a process with priority higher > than a certain number doesn't get interrupted ? No, it's not like that. There's no accepted requirement in Windows for processes (and, more importantly, drivers and other kernel mode code) to behave in a way which makes true realtime operation possible; if you want the processor for a while, it's yours, and sod the rest of the system, it's a timesharing box, who cares if something blocks for a few hundred milliseconds. Consider the comment relating to OSF/1 cleanup on process exit causing RT activity to block, mentioned earlier in this thread. There will be conceptually-similar hiccups in WIndows. DEC did lots of work to eliminate those hiccups from Tru64 and ended up with (imo) a nice RT Unix. There's no motivation or mechanism for those improvements to happen with Windows. Labview has already been mentioned. If you want Labview/RT, the really RT bit doesn't run under Windows. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2008 16:16:00 +0000 (UTC) From: david20@alpha1.mdx.ac.uk Subject: Re: PCL and PDF support in DCPS. Message-ID: In article , Paul Anderson writes: >In article , david20@alpha2.mdx.ac.uk >wrote: > >> It appears that Crawford Technologies disagree with you see >> >> http://www.crawfordtech.com/postscript_to_pcl_conversion.htm >> >> "This conversion process provides a smooth migration path for >> Postscript printer clients who want to move their applications to PCL >> printers without making costly application and architecture changes. >> >> PRO PS to PCL is a software product for Windows and Unix that >> interprets standard Postscript language print streams and resources >> and transforms them into PCL. This allows organizations to combine >> the advantages of the industry standard Postscript language with the >> low page cost, high quality and features of PCL printers. > >But there's a difference between re-writing DCPS to be able to talk to >PCL printers and using a product that converts the print job after the >fact to PCL. > Well in the case of LPD supported printers ( ie printers which don't send information back to DCPS) then a facility to convert the output of DCPS to PCL prior to printing ie an output filter/converter would be all that is required. I'm not even sure that PCL printers support sending the same type of status information as postscript printers hence rewriting DCPS to do that with PCL might well be impossible. But I'd be perfectly happy with just an output filter/converter to send DCPS jobs to PCL printers. In fact it might be possible to use ghostscript as such a filter if it could be called from DCPS prior to the job being sent to the printer. On my Alphas I have Alpha2:gs -v Aladdin Ghostscript 5.01 (1997-6-22) Copyright (C) 1997 Aladdin Enterprises, Menlo Park, CA. All rights reserved. and gs -help includes the following as output devices Available devices: x11 x11alpha x11cmyk x11mono deskjet djet500 laserjet ljetplus ljet2p ljet3 ljet4 cdeskjet cdjcolor cdjmono cdj550 pj pjxl pjxl300 bj10e bj200 bjc600 bjc800 faxg3 faxg32d faxg4 pcxmono pcxgray pcx16 pcx256 pcx24b pcxcmyk pbm pbmraw pgm pgmraw pgnm pgnmraw pnm pnmraw ppm ppmraw tiffcrle tiffg3 tiffg32d tiffg4 tifflzw tiffpack tiff12nc tiff24nc psmono psgray bit bitrgb bitcmyk pngmono pnggray png16 png256 png16m jpeg jpeggray pdfwrite pswrite epswrite pxlmono pxlcolor nullpage From http://www.gnu.org/software/ghostscript/devices.html it appears that pxlmono and pxlcolor are pcl devices (pxlmono) H-P black-and-white PCL XL printers (LaserJet 5 and 6 family) (pxlcolor) H-P color PCL XL printers (e.g. Color LaserJet 4500) I haven't tried this yet so can't say how well the conversions work if at all. David Webb Security team leader CCSS Middlesex University >It looks like an interesting product nonetheless, although as you note >it runs on Windows and UNIX only. > >Paul > >-- > Paul Anderson > OpenVMS Engineering > Hewlett-Packard Company ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2008 02:30:08 -0700 (PDT) From: johnwallace4@gmail.com Subject: Re: What happened to VAXeln after DEC stopped selling it ? Message-ID: <96d2b474-97d1-4d1c-812e-c23b6843fc82@79g2000hsk.googlegroups.com> On Jun 13, 8:16 pm, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP (Simon Clubley) wrote: > Does anyone know what happened to VAXeln ? > > Was it released into the community, just discontinued, or sold on to a > third party ? > > The reason I was asking is that I am curious to find out more about it. > I've found the Bookreader type manuals at > > http://www.sysworks.com.au/swadm_dat_root/cddoc04jan1/VAXELN_41.html > > and > http://www.sysworks.com.au/swadm_dat_root/vaxdocdec96/d33vza11.html > > Does anyone know if the manuals are available online in a more friendly > format ? > > In case anyone's curious, this is just for personal interest; I would like > to know more about it's internal design. > > Thanks, > > Simon. > > -- > Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP > Microsoft: Bringing you 1980's technology to a 21st century world How about "sold to a third party" *and* "discontinued" ? The products of the Embedded and Realtime Group, including VAXELN, were largely transferred out when the E+RT group was sold off. Some of the people went to the purchaser, some stayed at DEC. I don't know what happened to the good people in VAXELN Engineering, or the folks who were doing the PICMG/VME/cPCI hardware. The initial purchaser was (iirc) Smart Modular Technologies but since then they themselves have changed hands a couple of times and I've lost track of where the DEC bits eventually landed, and tbh I think the actual products have largely vanished. I don't know what happened to DEC's rights to sell VAXELN. Short version: It's dead Jim; not released into the community, not officially available. (Correction welcome). Most of the time the documentation was hardcopy or Bookreader only. I don't remember any useful online (eg PS) versions that didn't have "Internal Use Only" on them. The V41 stuff you linked to is relatively dated, V4.4 or later would be nicer (in later versions you get Ada support, and as a byproduct, get to use the standard VMS debugger). If you have a VAX (real or emulated) as host, and a VAX as target (dunno if emulated ones work, as VAXELN has hardware-specific boot and kernel requirements), and access to the VAXELN kit, you might find that there is no PAK required to use the toolkit on the host, and none on the target either. Obviously you could only legitimately do that if you had a licence. You might find techy writeups in an early Digital Technical Journal, not sure. The DTJ archive is now online (I forget where) but unless the contents/index has recently improved, it is not meaningfully searchable so you have to look at the contents page of every issue to see if what you want actually exists. The word VAXELN appears on every Trademarks page so Google gets lots of irrelevant hits. The hardcopy docs used to have a thin paperback book entitled Intro to VAXELN (or do I mean the Technical Summary, which isn't listed at sysworks?) that was really quite good (compare and contrast this with VAXman's recent thread about the useless CHM docs for his new widget). Relatively well known DEC products incorporating some flavour of VAXELN included some high end Printservers (LPS20/LPS40 families?) and some Xterminals eg the VT1300. This VAXELN Window Server Software (also known as EWS) was available on the Freeware, so you could freely use it to turn old VAXstations into usable Xterminals, see e.g. mvb.saic.com/freeware/freewarev50/ews/ews_v12_user_manual.ps I might have more info available, subject to varying amounts of latency. Real time response not guaranteed. Where are you geographically? There may be expertise available locally; e.g. Germany had several good VAXELN people inside and outside DEC. Hth John ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2008 11:17:47 GMT From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan-Erik_S=F6derholm?= Subject: Re: What happened to VAXeln after DEC stopped selling it ? Message-ID: johnwallace4@gmail.com wrote: > On Jun 13, 8:16 pm, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP > (Simon Clubley) wrote: >> Does anyone know what happened to VAXeln ? I do not know what "happend" to it, but I do know that it's still running a major production facility with a number of VAXeln servers. Each one controling one production line. Jan-Erik. ------------------------------ Date: 15 Jun 2008 06:21:57 GMT From: VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG Subject: Re: What is a Weendoze .CHM file? Message-ID: <4854b505$0$11604$607ed4bc@cv.net> In article <6bjcqcF3brg2aU1@mid.individual.net>, billg999@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes: >In article , > "Richard B. Gilbert" writes: >> VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote: >>> In article , Michael Kraemer writes: >>>> Robert Jarratt schrieb: >>>> >>>>> It is a Compiled HTML help file. I think any reasonably modern version of >>>>> Windows will include a reader for it. Wikipedia has some information here: >>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Compiled_HTML_Help >>>> Weird. As if plain HTML with an ordinary browser would not be >>>> good enough for displaying a help text. >>>> That's M$ at its best (or worst). >>> >>> I found a program called xCHM and installed it on my Linux box. It opened >>> the manual (which wasn't worth a shit anyway) and I can't see WHY this was >>> not just simple HTML or PDF other than to expand Billzebub's evil empire. >>> >> >> I don't know about HTML but generating PDF usually costs money. There >> MAY be freeware tools but I haven't heard of them! > >I make PDF's on my BSD boxes all the time and they don't cost a dime. >I just print to a PDF file. > >Just because it costs miney on Windows and can't be done on VMS doesn't >mean there aren't more than adequate free solutions. Can't be done on VMS?!? Pure fertilizer! Err... Umm... You're spreading manure. No! Let me be politically correct. You're slinging bullshit! I've been using those adequate *free* solutions on VMS for years and I've a number of customers using them too. Customers who are sending invoices and shipping receipts in email as PDFs. All, _ALL_, from VMS. -- VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)COM "Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?" http://tmesis.com/drat.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2008 11:11:29 GMT From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan-Erik_S=F6derholm?= Subject: Re: What is a Weendoze .CHM file? Message-ID: Bill Gunshannon wrote: > Just because it costs money on Windows... Of course it doesn't. http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator Works just OK. Jan-Erik. ------------------------------ End of INFO-VAX 2008.333 ************************