SPRING 1984 VAX SYSTEMS SIG SYMPOSIUM TAPE (CINCINNATI) assembled by: Joe Bingham VAX Systems SIG Librarian ManTech International 2320 Mill Road Alexandria, VA 22314 (703) 838 5600 Someone asked me in Cincinnati what I did to the tape and why it took so long to get it out. I am afraid I did not give a very satisfactory answer, partly because what I do does not seem like very much when you look at each submission individually. It is a little more impressive when you realize that this tape comprises 42 submissions in 299 directories, a total of 5629 files with a total size of 109703 blocks. I must admit that when you log on the computer to work on something that size it is intimidating - it's easy to decide that EMPIRE is a better way to spend the evening. First a little about what I do not do. . I do not reword the authors remarks about his submission. I may occasionally correct a spelling error if I have to edit the file for something else, but I do not look for spelling errors to correct. If I have to construct the AAAREADME.TXT file I try to extract the author's words from a documentation file or from program comments. . I do not try to verify that the programs will run on a VAX, much less try to verify that they do what the author says they do. I may try something that strikes my fancy as I go through the material and, if I have problems I will say so in the AAAREADME.TXT. . As a rule I do not restructure the submissions. On the Fall 1983 tape I did bring games out to there own directory tree and I put the command procedures/programs used to do the "SET DEFAULT" command into their own structure. I did not do anything like that with this tape. Now for a little more about what I do do in constructing the tape: Page 2 . First we consolidate the submissions by copying them to disk and back to the tapes I take home with me. We usually get the bulk of this work done Tuesday evening, leaving some time to resolve problems and plenty of time for people to pick up their tapes before the exhibition hall closes on Friday afternoon. This time I was assisted by Tom Gerhard of Advanced Data Management and Al Zirkle of the Naval Surface Weapons Center. Everything else is done after the symposium. . I try to find a name for the subdirectory which I think will be meaningful to most of the people using the tape. This is usually the company name or an abbreviation of it, especially for large, multi-category submissions. (Examples are FORDAERO, BATTELLE, GEMEC.) If I can find one name to describe the submission, usually a name provided by the author, I use it. (Examples are RMTPRT, PLOTS, SLIDES.) One name used this time is a combination of these methods - SAOSTOIC. Usually a resubmission will have the same name as the submission it replaces, but that is violated three times (that I am aware of) on this tape - SAO used the name SAOSTOIC in their submission and I went along with it, the LBLTOOLS submittor requested a name change to SWTOOLS, and Glenn Everhart's PORTACALC spreadsheet is under SHEET. . I do what I can to reduce the size of the tape by deleting listing files, compressing libraries and truncating files. I do not generally delete things which appear to be redundant because it is hard to be sure that they really are. I did delete an entire subdirectory this time - PSDI submitted a directory of KERMIT material which as far as I could tell was also in the KERMIT submissions. . I make sure that each first level subdirectory has a AAAREADME.TXT file which briefly describes the contents of the submission. If there is a suitable file by another name I rename it. If there is no suitable file I construct one. This is where submittors can help the most about making their submission easy to integrate into the tape. It is suggested that you use runoff to produce this file. [VAX000]TEMPLATE.RNO contains the suggested runnoff skeleton. The [VAX000]BUILDREAD command procedure will concatenate these files into a very nice summary of the tape. Page 3 . I try to identify other documentation files and ensure that they have a .DOC extension, renaming as necessary. DIRECTORY [VAX84A...]*.DOC will give you a pretty good idea what documentation is on the tape. However, look for comments inside programs and watch out for the cases I have overlooked or chosen not to rename. . Tom Gerhard then generates a new composite index of the VAX SIG tapes and of this tape. We are changing the algorithm for generating the indexes this time and hope to have shorter, but just as useful, index files. At the Tapecopy User's Forum session in Cincinnati the submissions were referred to by submission number. For the benefit of those of you who were there or have the audio tape of the session here is a table which can be used to cross submission number to the directory name used on the SIG tape. An X next to the submission number means that the author was at the Forum and made some comments about his submission. SUBMISSION SUBMITTOR ORGANIZATION SUBDIRECTORY NAME NUMBER 1 Thurston Carleton NASA/GSFC GODDRD 3 Glenn Everhart RCA SPREAD 4 Frank Nagy Fermilab FERMILAB 5 Erick Husby Project Software PSDI 6 John Beasley Westinghouse RMTPRT 8 X Louis Krupp Univ of Denver UDENVER 9 Walter Schmeichel NWSC Crane PLOTS 10 Kathleen Morse DEC SLIDES 17 X Ted Frohling Mountain States DIGITIZER 19 X Scott Sibley Ford Aerospace FORDAERO 20 Eric Ogren DEC DTRWHIZ 21 X Allen Watson Bergen Record RECORD 25 James Downward KMS Fusion KMSKIT 27 John Briggs SPACECOM LOGINDATE Page 4 28 X Richard Garland Columbia University VAXDIAL 29 X Richard Garland Columbia University KERMIT (partialy replaced by 58 and 78. 31 Mark Oakley Battelle Columbus BATTELLE 32 Thomas Hahaney Naval Air Propulsion DISASTER Center 33 Eric Scott Jet Propulsion Lab JPLVLSI 34 Mark Vevle Univ of Alabama in RMDEMO Birmingham 35 X Robert Harris Leeds & Northrup LN 39 Dennis Jensen Ames Labortory HGRAPH ISU/USDOE 41 Peter George DEC DEALLOC 43 Robert L. Boyd GE Microelectronics GEMEC Center 48 X Alan Zirkle Naval Serface Weapons NSWC Center 50 X Dennis Fitzgerald Computer Sciences CSC Corporation 52 X Mark Frank Washington Univ Med RMS School 53 Tom Gerhard Advanced Data ADM Management 56 Keven Mallory Texas Inst TI 57 Robert Wells TDC DFWLUG 58 Nick Bush Stevens Institute KERMIT.KERMIT10 KERMIT.PROKERMIT KERMIT.VMSKERMIT 59 X David Johnson Synertek Inc ARGUS 61 Larry Kilgallen PAGESWP 63 John Heffernan RCA/AS PASCALUSE 64 Roger Hauck Smithsonian Astro- SAOSTOIC physical Observatory 65 Fredrick Knight Smithsonian Astro- NAMELIST Page 5 physical Observertory 66 X Steve Swenson Harris Farinon HARRIS 67 Kevin Carosso Hughes Aircraft Co HUGHESSCG 70 X Scott Smith Telex Computer HEX Products 71 X John Clement Bonner Lab BONNER 72 X Frank Roberson System Dev Corp SDC 78 Brian Nelson Univ of Toledo KERMIT.PDP11 David Martin Hughes Aircraft Co SWTOOLS Frank Borger Reese Medical Center RSXSIG