S/ENL - The Sprezzatura Electronic Newsletter

(All the RevSoft News That's Fit To Print (And bits that probably aren't as well...))

Welcome

WELCOME - to this issue of S/ENL, the Sprezzatura Electronic Newsletter.

This issue finds our esteemed publisher traveling off to France with a certain RevSoft employee leaving me with the thankless job of guest editing. As my flight arrived early this morning, or really late last night, I’ll blame any incoherence on complete exhaustion.

Using editorial judgment and intentionally angering Mr. McAuley in the process, I’ve taken the liberty in reformatting this issue to standard letter 8½ by 11 inches. I’ve also reformatted the default dictionary to US English.

We were going to include a write-up of the UK Revelation Conference (I even took 3 whole pages of notes on Jim and Cam’s presentations). However, it was decided we should wait until after the Houston conference, after all we don’t want to steal Jim’s thunder. We will tell you that the gentleman from IBM pretty much validated everything Revelation is doing with jRev. We’ll also strongly suggest that anyone who can, should do themselves the favor and head to Houston for next weeks show. It’s something you won’t want to miss!

Mr. McAuley should be back next issue and SENL should return to its more proper and consistent format. Until then, I wish you all a belated äáåè äðùì and remember it’s 5759 so be careful when writing those checks.

Aaron Kaplan

Publisher in training

Feedback

From the war of the words department: I’ve received various variants of this message over the past few weeks but this one is from Steve Smith.

1) Open a new word document

2) From the Tools Menu, select 'language' - 'set language'

3) Choose English (United States)

4) In the document, type 'I'd like to see Bill Gates dead'

5) Highlight the sentence, and consult the thesaurus.

From the Revelation of Jim department: This one arrived from a source that currently remains anonymous.

Chapter 3

Then fled King Otsbia of Cosmia unto the mountains. The land was ruled by King Perilous for many years. Then God smote Perilous with a great confusion, and the king, who had borne no male child, wandered in the desert for forty years. On that same day, Ja-mez arose from among the people and was appointed over all principalities in the kingdom. And after these things, there came about a time of great prosperity.

But in the west, king Bile from the kingdom of Redonia waged war against the Belvites, the Stamforites, the Cambridites, and the Andovites. And the false prophet, from the tribe of Balmites, led the armies of king Bile against the peoples of the land. And the armies of king Bile lay waste to many cities, both in the lands of Nitscap and Lutos, also to the land of the Neuvellites and the Ibbimites, and those who encamped with them. These did he smote with malice and evil doings. And after crossing the Cherlas river, his armies encamped about the city of king Ja-mez.

Chapter 4

And so, on that same day, there arose a great clamour, and the ground shook, and the heavens were darkened, and the clouds parted, and those who witnessed these events trembled with fear. And unto Yevgeny, the chosen of God, appeared the angel of the Lord in a vision.

And the angel of the Lord sayeth unto him, "I will bless those who bless thee and curse those who curse thee. Thus sayeth the Lord. And I will make thee to lie down in green pastures. And I shall provide thee with all thy needs. And I shall make of thee a great nation. And you shall know what things must be done in these last days. And your people shall smite the Redonites with my rod and my staff, which I shall make known unto thee." And the face of Yevgeny glowed from the presence of the angel. And after these things, he set forth to do those things which the Lord had commanded.

Chapter 5

And after setting forth to do those things that the Lord had commanded, and having received also a vision of those things which he must do, he labored to complete these things that were appointed unto him. And on the fourteenth day of the tenth month, he set before the people his first work,

and those which witnessed these things knew that they had witnessed the chosen work, and that it had been bestowed upon him to carry it forth. And the people in the city of Ja-mez had a great feast. And while they slumbered, the armies of king Bile and the false prophet of the Balmites

were stricken with a great plague, and set upon by the Renites.

Incidentally, rumor has it, Mt. Sinai Hospital has a Revelation application working in their medical billing departments. Thus, we can all view the Revelation from Sinai. Version 3.16 anyone?

From the all in the family department, Victor Engle asks if Gene Gleyzer and Alex Gleyzer are related or one and the same. I’ve been asked that question a few times, with one person asking if Gene might be Alex’s wife. In actuality, Gene and Alex are cousins. Back in the old days, when Alex would visit the Stamford office, it was not uncommon to hear them arguing in Russian. My Russian is a bit rusty, since I only know a few words, and that’s really Czarist Ukrainian anyway, but as best as I could determine, the dispute was over which was better, regular or nova lox.

From the you can’t get there from here department: A subscriber writes

When you go to the revelation.com discussion group, there is an icon advertising "Revelation direct" which shows the map of Australia to the east of the U.S.A. If it was *really* direct, shouldn't Australia be to the West? You save about 6000 miles heading west instead of east.

Signed,

Puzzled.

Well, Mr. Puzzled, you see, Australia and the rest of the antipodes would fall under the purview of the UK subsidiary. Now, to get to the UK from Andover, one would fly east. To continue onwards to Australia, one would continue to fly east. We realize the graphics might be misleading, but as with all other things from RevSoft, answers to seemingly incongruous constructs can be found with a mere scratch if the surface.

From the choose one from record A, one from record B department, a Sprezzatura customer writes with the following:

I want to thank you for your efforts to fix the bug in Revelation Reporter regarding headings and footings. We now have an environment in which we can do what we need to do. The fix worked for calculated fields in headings where the calculated fields were defined in a dictionary record. As far as we can see, if the calculated field is defined inside of Reporter, the problem still exists, but we were able to change all our headings to point to a calculated field in a table and it worked.

Now I am writing to report what appears to us to be a bug in OPENLIST Select under certain circumstances. We have tested it in 3.61 and it is still there.

The simplest way to describe the problem is to say that selects of the form:

SELECT TEST_TABLE WITH FIELD1 "X""Y" AND WITH FIELD2 "Y"

selects items that do not fulfil the conditions.

Let me describe how I created a test environment which your folks can easily do in five minutes.

1) Create a table TEST_TABLE

2) Create two data fields, FIELD1 and FIELD2, pointing to attributes 1 and 2 respectively.

3) Create two records, A and B, in the table, as follows:

A

X

Y

B

X

Z

The select, which you can perform at the System editor Execute line:

LIST TEST_TABLE WITH FIELD1 "X""Y" AND WITH FIELD2 "Y"

returns items A and B, when it should only return item A.

The select works properly in Arev 3.12.

When the select statement is of the form

SELECT TABLENAME WITH COLUMN1 ‘VALUE1’ ‘VALUE2’ AND WITH COLUMN2 ‘VALUE3’’VALUE4’

and both COLUMN1 and COLUMN2 are indexed, the select works properly. We perform this select everywhere in our application and have for many years. If you eliminate the index on COLUMN2, you get the same problem as described above in TEST_TABLE. We discovered the problem when we attempted to eliminate the index in COLUMN2.

I’ll look forward to your reply.

This one is a difficult question to answer and begins to fall into one man’s bug is another man’s feature. In case you don’t feel like spending the time to try, I ran the test as outlined and indeed received the same results as the perplexed developer. However, I also took the time to run the select in 3.11 as well. That version of Advanced Revelation returned the same results as OpenInsight.

We’ll leave it to the reader to determine which syntax notation is correct.

MYKL'S JOKE SECTION

Three contractors were visiting a tourist attraction on the same day. One was from New York, another from Texas, and the third from Florida.

At the end of the tour, the guard asked them what they did for a living. When they all replied that they were contractors, the guard said, "Hey, we need one of the rear fences redone. Why don't you guys take a look at it and give me a bid?" So, to the back fence they all went to check it out.

First to step up was the Florida contractor. He took out his tape measure and pencil, did some measuring and said, "Well I figure the job will run about $900. $400 for materials, $400 for my crew, and $100 profit for me."

Next was the Texas contractor. He also took out his tape measure and pencil, did some quick figuring and said, "Looks like I can do this job for $700. $300 for materials, $300 for my crew, and $100 profit for me."

Without so much as moving, the New York contractor said, "$2,700."

The guard, incredulous, looked at him and said, "You didn't even measure like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?"

"Easy," he said. "$1,000 for me, $1,000 for you and we hire the guy from Texas."

Ruminations — Gary Gnu

Unlike most of your bit-chompin’ wildebeest’s fables, this one actually happen, so sit tight and see if you can figure out the mystery. Just this morning I was off at a client’s site, a dingy warehouse which stores old records for safekeeping. They’ve got something like a million or so folders floating about and they’ve got an ARev 3.12 database minding the store. Well, they brought me in cause the stuff just twern’t running right fine. Items were gone a missing and there was just a mess trying to find all these things in 7 floors pack to the rafters with files and folders and boxes. They brought ole Gary in to try and straighten things out, and whoa, were the system a mess. The original programmer went and shelled all sorts of routines, and he walked off with a good chunk of the source code. He also managed to password protect sysprog and all the backdoors. After a few days, I figured to heck with it and broke into the system and cleared out all the passwords and I found there was a user name same as the old programmer. Me, I like poking my snout about some so I decided to see if maybe he did some diddling about on that login, and sure enough, he did, attaching a whole different volume for various things. I poked about some and found a couple of windows that did some system documentation, so I messed about with them for a while. Eventually, I found myself painting a few windows to see where they were going to and coming from. Then, loading up the prompt attributes window (that’s Shift-F6) I saw something that made my horns fall out. Better yet, I didn’t see something, and that was the problem, and a darn good explanation about what was happening in these here parts.

Do you see what the Gnu saw? Check the end of this SENL for the answer.

There’s no place like HTML — Aaron Kaplan

Recently I've been reminded of the old adage, you can't go home again. Well, you can go home, but you might find that siblings have kicked you out of your room. Such is the case for myself when while doing a 6 month gig in the Boston area, I offered my place up to my brother, his wife and their 14 month old son. Little did I know that a few weeks later, the Boston job ended and now I'm sleeping on the living room floor.

However, even if you can't go home again, you can still go html again, or even go html for the first time. As some of you may or may not be aware, Revelation Software is making strong inroads into what they call the "webification" of OpenInsight. [ Just for the record, Jennifer Scheer, the HPMC of RevSoft spouted that word out in a meeting once. She has an MBA, you know, and after she reads this is plotting ways to kill me slowly and painfully. And Cam, well.....]

This is actually so easy I'm wondering why I'm even writing about this. The first thing you need to do is get yourself a copy of a web server. I'm using the Microsoft Personal Web Server that came with Visual Studio 97. Next, you'll need a web browser. Unlike SprezzUK, SprezzUS has standardized on Netscape Navigator. I'm currently running version 4.06. As usual, OpenInsight comes from my LATEST directory and Help->About is telling me 3.7, so I'm guessing this is a pre-release, though I have no idea what version. I had troubles downloading it the other day and Michelle Markus from Revelation's Andover headquarters was kind enough to e-mail me a copy. The operating system is the ever ubiquitous Microsoft Window 95b or version 4.00.950 B with IE 4.0 4.72.3110.8.

After you've set up your environment, you'll have to copy OICGI from REVBOOT into the CGI-BIN directory of your server. Some servers, like the one I'm using, require you to rename this to OICGI.EXE, so if you get errors, try this fix first.

Once all the pieces are in place, we can being the process.

First things first, you need a window. It doesn't really matter what window you choose, but you need a window. I've decided, for purposes of this example, to use the STOCK, PURCHASE_ORDERS and RECEIPTS files that ship as part of the example apps. It's easier, since I don't have to create table and you can follow along. First things I did was create a new app (I called it WEBAPP) and attached in my tables. Next, I did a quick form on STOCKS and saved the form as STOCK1. I then changed the DESC editline to an edit box. Finally, I added two pushbuttons, once called RETRIEVE and the other SUBMIT.

The two pushbuttons need some quick event scripts, so you'll have to add code to the SUBMIT quickevent. Be careful not to use the CLICK event. CLICK does nothing in HTML; you must use SUBMIT. For the retrieve button, chose the Read into HTML form option. For the Submit button, choose the Write from HTML option.

Now, save the window.

Finally, choose the HTML Publishing option off the Form Designer File menu and choose Compile HTML page.

Now, assuming you've got the internet gateway loaded and your web server is up and running, all you need to do is enter http://EnterYourSeverInfoHere/cgi-bin/oicgi.exe/inet_formload?form_id=stock1 and you should have web page that reads and writes LH data.

Unfortunately, all I had was a screen with 2 buttons. Looking at the generated HTML source, everything seemed OK, all the fields were there, but for some reason, it would not display. I tried increasing the distance between controls, but nothing worked. Finally, I decided to place the buttons one on top each other. Sure enough, this displayed the form.

Looking at the code, there didn't seem to be much of a difference, so I saved them off as STOCK1 and STOCK2 to try and compare them. There wasn't much of a difference, but I did notice some overlapping table commands. I played and fussed, but nothing really seemed to come of it.

Finally, in desperation, I decided to try <shudder> the Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.72.3110.8 which was forced upon me by Outlook98. Lo and behold, the screen loaded like a champ. After forwarding off a bug report to Netscape, it's time to finish working, this time comparing our results between the two browsers.

Being able to read and write the information is nice, but being ARev and OI type people, we'd like to give the user some options.

Next month, we’ll talk some about creating popups and giving users choices.

CELEBRITY INTERVIEW

CELEBRITY INTERVIEW – Bill Gates

Who are you?

My name is William H. Gates, Billionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht.

Who do you work for?

The shareholders.

What is your role in the RevSoft community?

Most omnipotent overseer.

How long have you been involved with RevSoft?

Almost 14 years.

Which products do you use?

Advanced Revelation 3.02

What do you most like about RevSoft products?

They’ve got really cool Easter eggs.

What do you most dislike about RevSoft products?

Jim wouldn’t sell, the bastard!

If you HAD to use another database what would it be and why?

Maybe SQL 7.0, I’m not sure. I’ve been hearing good things about DB2. I might buy them for the wife this Christmas.

What are your favorite 3 books and why?

How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Think and Grow Rich

Curious George goes to the hospital

What are your favorite 3 CDs/Albums and why?

The 15% in 15 days one at Washington Federal

The one at Seattle Bank and Trust

The one at Redmond Federal Savings and Loan

What are your three favorite films and why?

Disclosure

Tron

A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Antitrust Suit.

What event in history would you most like to have been present at?

The release of DOS 1.0…oh wait…..

Who is the best president/prime minister we never had and why?

Besides myself?

Your motto/witty aphorism

We never have time to do it right, but we’ll always have the cash to buy you out.

web site: http://www.microsoft.com

The medium is the massage — ERIC THE EMU'S AREV TIPS

After what seems like weeks of colic, reflux, backslapping,

3am feeds, dirty diapers, young Erastus Emu has settled on

a new colic remedy that is 13% alcohol (like a good shiraz)

and now spends all his days happily inebriated at the breast,

just as his father did before him. Minutes before, in some cases.

However, enough of pleasantries. There is RBASIC to consider.

There comes a time in every emu's existence when you

see a way to improve on mother nature. The standard way of

handling video with VIDEO.RW is to pick up the entire

screen image 4000 bytes (25*80*2 =2000 characters + 2000

video attributes) where the characters are alternating

ASCII characters and video attribute values. To put a

string to video memory involves reading the whole video,

array, stepping through every second character to apply

the color attribute, and every second character to apply

the text. So slow it hurts.

In many cases it would be easier, instead of all the attributes

and characters alternating, to have all the characters up front,

and all the colors down the back. Just set the text and apply

it in one line of code, and then set the attributes (2000 bytes

away) in a second line of code. Simpler. Less code. Quicker too.

The routines below give you what you need for video access on

a simpler basis. They are designed to work in standard CGA 25 * 80

video mode (like AREV) and will work on REVG and AREV.

It makes me larffff!!

Eric.

! $VIDEO.READ Syntax

DECLARE FUNCTION VIDEO.READ

string = VIDEO.READ()

! string[1,2000] is the screen characters,

! and string[2001,2000] are the attributes.

A = \02000000000000000000B9A00FBA00B8\

A := \8EDABE0000B9A00FB40F2EFF1E0A0057\

A := \33C933F68A04268805468A04268885D0\

A := \0747464181F9D00775EA5FB9A00F33C0\

A := \33D2B4102EFF1E0A00CB\

OPEN 'BP' TO HANDLE THEN WRITE A TO HANDLE,'$VIDEO.READ'

! $VIDEO.WRITE Syntax

DECLARE FUNCTION VIDEO.READ

DECLARE SUBROUTINE VIDEO.WRITE

string = VIDEO.READ()

string[20,40] = FMT('Really Advanced Revelation','C#40')

string[2020,40] = STR(\2F\,40)

VIDEO.WRITE(STRING)

A = \020000000000000000002E803E050001\

A := \7403EB3290B8000C050001BA01002EFF\

A := \1E0A0006B90000BA00B88EC2BF00008A\

A := \04268805478A84D00726880547464181\

A := \F9D00775EA07CB\

OPEN 'BP' TO HANDLE THEN WRITE A TO HANDLE,'$VIDEO.WRITE'

* To blank the screen,

A=STR(' ',2000):STR(\00\,2000)

VIDEO.WRITE(A)

No animals were tested in the execution of this code.

What the Gnu Knew

Well, I’ll be darned if there were no Mandatory field in the prompt window. I scurried about, checked a few other things that were new in 3.12 and sure enough, none of them were there. Finally, I looked at the system the ‘super user’ was attaching to, and saw it was a 3.10 system. The users though, didn’t have these special attachments and were running pure 3.12. Turns out the guy were, for all intents and purposes, developing on a 3.10 system with a 3.12 AREV.EXE. I’m still trying to hash the whole thing together, but just imagine what selects and indexing and all other things are doing when tested on one version and placed live on another. No wonder the poor guy couldn’t duplicate the problems.

Peripheral Trivia

As this issue of S/ENL was put to bed we fed the inner man with:

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