Chaos Corner V01 N09 29Nov91


Those little nasty details ....

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Correction on weather talk list

In issue 8, we said that to subscribe to the weather-talk discussion 
list from a VM/CMS machine you could 'tell listserv@uiucvmd ...'.  The 
proper command is:

        tell listserv at uiucvmd subscribe wx-talk <your-name>

Note that the CMS tell command requires that you use the word 'at' 
rather than using the @ symbol.  Thanks to Caroline Hecht at the Cornell 
Theory Center for catching this.



Mailbag

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Chaos Corner Feedback

Gary Buhrmaster of CIT's Computer Resources, ever the watchdog for Dr. 
Chaos, observed the end result of the battle Dr. Chaos had with the word 
processor in the last issue.  The word processor seemed very happy to 
put either 80 or 60 characters per line and to absolutely refuse to 
consider something like 72 characters per line.  Out of frustration, Dr. 
Chaos finally resorted to using the fairly primitive 'para' macro under 
VM/CMS XEDIT to get the lines formatted the proper length.  
Unfortunately, the macro thinks that 'Dr.' ends a sentence and inserts 
two blanks rather than one.  Thanks to Gary for catching this error.  
Gary has also observed that this issue is several days late and asks for 
a definition of "timely" from the good Dr. Chaos.  In return, Dr. Chaos 
has suggested that Gary should occupy himself more with eating turkey 
(doesn't IBM provide a free one with each MVS release?) and giving 
thanks (das Erntedankfest) that this issue got out at all.

Bill Turner, Cornell University Libraries, asks about the formatting of 
many documents he finds around the network.  They seem to be in the 
worst possible format ("print to disk") and they have clearly never seen 
a spelling checker.  He asks if there is some way to print these 
documents so that they don't look terrible.  Dr. Chaos might initially 
suggest that Bill look at the 'man' pages on his system, but then, the 
'man' pages appear to be formatted in the same way.  Does someone with a 
longer background in Unix want to jump in here?  Is there some way for 
Bill to easily reprocess the text (removing the existing formatting 
information) thereby allowing him to run it through a spelling checker, 
pretty it up, and print it so it looks nice?

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Info on recreational vehicles wanted

Dave Gomberg at UCSF is desperate to find a LISTSERV or NetNews list 
that concentrates on recreational vehicles.  (Surely something of this 
national importance cannot have been overlooked!)  Dave asks Dr. Chaos 
to consult his readers for any information they can provide.  Before you 
suggest it, Dr. Chaos already thought of 'rec.bicycles' but thinks that 
that might not be the kind of recreational vehicle that Dave was 
referring to.

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Distributrion problems with long mail headers

Rob Vaughn at Cornell's Materials Science Center thanks Dr. Chaos for 
Chaos Corner.  "It is an invaluable collection of information, and a 
blast to read as well."  Dr. Chaos and Rob were communicating because 
Rob's machine (and several others) seem to choke on the long mail header 
at the start of each Chaos Corner.  We hope to reduce that down to a 
more reasonable size Real Soon Now.

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OSF/Motif

Reaching farther down in the mailbag, we find a letter from John 
Guckenheimer of the Cornell Mathematics Department (among other places), 
who asks for information about who on campus is using and/or programming 
in OSF/Motif today?  Dr. Chaos is planning on ordering Motif 1.2 (the 
version that works with X11R5) as soon as its availability and pricing 
are announced.  That will give Cornell a site license for the Motif 
source code.  Contact Steve Lasala (lasala@trumpet.cit.cornell.edu) if 
you are interested in getting on the Motif mailing list.

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Macintosh Editor

Mark Bodenstein, of CIT's Computer Resources, pointed Dr. Chaos to an 
interesting editor for those of you with Macintosh computers.  Called 
'prep', the editor:

    allows parallel columns of prose that are linked together.  
    Using these columns as content plus annotation is a particularly 
    common example use of the PREP editor.  In addition, columns 
    (which are the unit of exchange in the PREP editor) are movable, 
    hideable, resizeable, and you can have as many columns as you 
    want.  This allows for multiple sets of annotations to be viewed 
    together which leads to easier integration of group-wide changes.

This editor has been in development for over a year, and is available 
for anonymous FTP from gnome.cs.cmu.edu.  Look for file prepv39.sit.hqx 
in the /usr/chandhok/public/prep directory.  Once you 'get' the file 
(ascii mode), use binhex or StuffIt to un-binhex it.  The resulting 
application, when you double click on it, will unpack itself into the 
documentation and the application.  Has anyone tried this editor?  It 
sounds like it might be useful (combined with the QuickMail enclosure 
facility) for passing around comments that a group of people have made 
on a document.  If you do get the editor, please send questions/comments 
to prep-project+@andrew.cmu.edu so that the authors get some feedback on 
their work.

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Dr. Chaos and Science Fiction?

Dick Crepeau from Cornell's Chemistry Department, says he enjoys reading 
Chaos Corner and finds similarities in style with Jerry Pournelle's 
Chaos Manor column in Byte Magazine.  He asks if Dr. Chaos had ever 
considered writing Science Fiction.  While Dr. Chaos attempts to NEVER 
write any kind of fiction (thanks to Gary Buhrmaster), he must admit 
that the inspiration for writing Chaos Corner came to him on a trans-
Atlantic flight during which he read four back-issues of Byte.

--------------------------------------------------
Weather Maps

John Balogh from Penn State asked for more information about getting the 
weather maps from vmd.cso.uiuc.edu.  Dr. Chaos was remiss in not 
supplying the necessary information to 'cd phil.515' to access the 
minidisk (it's a VM/CMS system) to get the current weather map.  Dr. 
Chaos, thanks to Jeff Honig of CIT's Network Resources, now has the 
current weather map (updated hourly) as the background of his display
on pelican (it also becomes the "screensaver").  The magic shell script 
one needs to run in a Unix system is as follows:

#!/bin/sh

KEY=0
ONROOT=""

while [ $# -ne 0 ]; do
     arg=$1; shift
     case ${arg} in
          -key)
               KEY=1
               ;;
          -onroot)
               ONROOT="-onroot -fullscreen -border black"
               ;;
          *)
               echo "Usage: wxmap [-key] [-onroot]"
               exit 1; 
               ;;
     esac
done

if [ ${KEY} -eq 1 ]; then
     files="wxkey.gif" ;
else
 files=`date -u +"%m %d %H" | awk '{
          for (i = 0; i < 7; i++) {
               j = $3 -i;  k = $2 - 0;
               if (j < 0)
               {j += 24; k -= 1;}

               printf "SA%s%02d%02d.GIF\n", $1, k, j;
          }
     }'`
fi

# Note: This code has problems on month boundaries.  Due to holidays
#       and weekends, it shouldn't be a problem until April, 1992.
#       At that time, Dr. Chaos will be in France. C'est la vie!

for file in ${files}; do
     ftp -i -n vmd.cso.uiuc.edu <<EOF
user anonymous ${USER}@`hostname`
binary
cd phil.515
get ${file} /tmp/wxmap.gif.$$
quit
EOF

     if [ -f /tmp/wxmap.gif.$$ ]; then
          xloadimage ${ONROOT} -quiet /tmp/wxmap.gif.$$
          rm -f /tmp/wxmap.gif.$$
          break;
     fi
done


Note that there may be some character translation problems that I didn't 
get straightened out.  Also, if you happen to be running some versions 
of AIX (eg. 1.2 or 3.1), the 'date' command is broken and returns local 
time rather than CUT (GMT) even though the '-u' parameter is specified.  
Note that the script assumes you have access to a copy of the free 
program 'xloadimage' to display GIF files.

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Need info on Metafile or Fund Master

Keith Boncek of Cornell says he has been looking for commercial software 
programs for an IBM PC called "Metafile" and "Fund Master".  Does anyone 
know what companies market these programs?

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Recommendations for home computer

Joan Winters at the Stanford Linear Accelerator asks if Dr. Chaos has a 
preferred home computer.  Dr. Chaos tells me that his favorite is any 
computer that attaches to a 9600 baud modem.  Seriously, he really likes 
the IBM RS/6000 model 320H with the 19 inch color display.  Now, if only 
some vendor was willing to contribute one for his home use.

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Audix voicemail information

Finally, on the AUDIX voice mail front, Larry Fresinski of CIT's 
Workstation Resources has some additional information.  If you get 
impatient with waiting through someone's long, boring message, just 
press the '1' key and you can start recording immediately.  If you press 
'1' at the end of leaving the message, you can hear your message, add 
more to the end of the message, re-record the message, or delete the 
message.  Dr. Chaos likes the idea of having a second chance to record 
something that is understandable and hopes that the quality of 
everyone's voice mail can now be improved.



Random Bits of interesting and (un)timely things

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VT-100 emulation on 3270s

Loyal, long-time readers of Chaos Corner may remember that Bob Blackmun 
was interested in software that allowed 3270 terminals to emulate DEC 
VT-100s.  IBM recently announced that they are marketing some software 
to do at least a partial emulation (for full screen applications).  Bob 
promises to report back on his evaluation of the software once they have 
had a chance to try it out.

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OS/2 Upgrade information

It really is true that if you want to upgrade to OS/2 2.0 when it 
becomes available, all you have to do now is to call an 800-number, tell 
them you have PC-DOS, and give them an address and a credit card number.  
With that (and the $99 charge on your card) you will receive OS/2 1.3 
now, and OS/2 2.0 when it is available (April/May 1992).  IF you are 
feeling generous, check your local computer store for the same deal (the 
local IBM sales team gets credit for local retail sales and they do not 
get credit for the 800-number sales).

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Hello World

In the 'sub.jokes' newsgroup, we recently saw the ultimate in 
programming -- the 0-byte version of the traditional Hello World! 
program (the purpose of such a program is to type 'Hello World', and 
often to introduce a new computer language):

$ Hello_World!
Hello_World!: not found
$


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BBS system liability on message traffic

In a recent court case, CompuServe Information System was held to be a 
common carrier with regard to the messages posted on the system.  By 
stating up front that they did not review the messages that subscribers 
posted they could not be held liable for what other people might find 
that was offensive on the CompuServe system.  It is hoped that this 
decision will serve as a precedent that protects computer bulletin 
boards and systems carrying Usenet news traffic.  It seems that the 
important thing was that they did very little or nothing to control the 
message traffic ... if someone tries to monitor and edit the traffic, 
then they might be held libel for what appears.

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According to W4W, I have now exceeded 10,000 characters, so it is time 
to close for now.  Due to Dr Chaos being on the road, and the 
approaching holidays, the Chaos Corner schedule will be erratic in 
December.  This issue will get posted to the 'cornell.general' 
newsgroup; if you want to subscribe via electronic mail, send your 
request to: rdc@cornella.cit.cornell.edu

Read Dr. Chaos! (I have a Masters Degree)