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To:	MRGATE::"ARISIA::EVERHART"
Subj:	L&T/VAX SIG Tape Reviews: Part 1 -- L&T Reviews

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From: Ted Nieland <@AAMRL.AF.MIL:TNIELAND@FALCON>
Subject: L&T/VAX SIG Tape Reviews: Part 1 -- L&T Reviews
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Attached is part 1 of the L&T/VAX SIG Tape Reviews.  The reviews are broken in 
to several parts and will be posted over the next week or so.  

These reviews will be published in the DECUS Newsletters.  Permission is 
granted to publish them in DECUS LUG Newsletters and other DECUS Publications.  


Ted Nieland     TNIELAND@AAMRL.AF.MIL
DECUS L&T SIG Steering Committee

		The Spring 1989 L&T/VAX SIG Tape Reviews


Earle Ake
Science Applications Intl. Corp.

Todd Aven
Computer Associates International

Jack Davis
Phillips Consumer Electronics

Daniel Graham
Dynamics Research Corporation

Rand Hall
Merrimack College

David Hittner
Pioneer Standard Electronics

Ted Nieland
Control Data Corporation

Jon Pinkley
Westinghouse Electric Corporation


This is a review of a L&T section of Spring 1989 L&T/VAX SIG Tape.  
Due to the large amount of overlap between the L&T and VAX SIG tapes, the
Tape editors decided to combine the tapes into one large tape with no 
overlap.  This SIGs tape contains many useful items for people with VAX 
Computers and people interested in Languages and Tools.

The reviews VAX submissions to the tape will be published in the Pageswapper. 

The reviewers have scoured through most of the tape and have jotted down the
following notes on the material that is on the tape.  Not everything on the
tape is reviewed due to the shear volume of material, but it is hoped that
this review will help people in deciding what on the tape might be useful to
them.

The SIG tapes are a project started by the SIGs a while back as a method of 
distributing free software that might be helpful to others.  Not all of the 
material on the tapes are "finished" products.  

The encapsulated reviews are rated on a 1-5 scale with 5 being excellent.


Submission Subdirectory:	[LT89A.AVEN_MAKE]
Ease Of Installation:		4
Documentation:			3
Intended Audience:		Programmers
Ease of Use:			4
Usefulness:			5
Sources Included:		Yes, C
Objects Supplied:		No


This submission is Todd Aven's MAKE for VMS.  (MAKE comes from the Unix 
world.  It is similar to MMS.)  This version of MAKE is used by implementors 
of PMDF and DECUS UUCP to build those utilities.  

Submission Subdirectory:	[LT89A.Bauer...]
Ease of Installation: 		2
Documentation: 			4
Intended Audience: 		Programmers
Ease of Use: 			3
Usefulness: 			5
Sources Included: 		yes - .msg, .scn, .tex, .mms, .c
Objects Supplied: 		yes

Description:
    CKMAP - Check Map - scans a VMS link map for PSECT mismatches and 
	undefined symbols and reports these.
    DISK_REPORT - disk report tool that scans directory log files and
	produces reports summarizing disk usage.
    SMC - Show Merged CMS Classes - checks that all members of one CMS 
	class are also members of another CMS class.
    IMGDEF - Image Definition tool - supports automated generation of
	link MMS and options files.
    RCMS - Remote CMS Server - provides an interface to CMS libraries on 
	a different DECnet node.
    DCOPY - Delete/Copy - deletes file in destination directory before
	copying a new version there.
    MMSGEN - MMS Generator for source - generates compile MMS for files
	with extensions: .FOR ,.EQF, .EQE, .FBL, .C, .SCN, .MSG, .MAR,
	.MBL, and .X.
    LNKCHK - Link Check tool - verifies the existence of a input files 
	on a link command, executing the link command if all inputs exist.
    OPTCHK - Link Options file checker - checks that all input files
	listed in a link option file exist and are readable.

Observations:
    All look like useful utilities, but there are three obvious winners
    in this submission: the Remote CMS Server, and the two that generate
    MMS dependency files.



Submission Subdirectory:	[LT89A.GNUSOFTWARE]
Ease Of Installation:		3
Documentation:			1
Intended Audience:		Programmers
Ease of Use:			4
Usefulness:			5
Sources Included:		Yes, C
Objects Supplied:		No


This directory contains the compressed-tar savesets for the GNU software.  
Included is GCC, GAS, GNU EMACS, GAWK, GNU GREP, GCC++, and others.  This is 
the actual tar savesets from the Free Software Foundation.


Submission Subdirectory:	[LT89A.GNUSOFTWARE.VMSGCC134]
Ease Of Installation:		3
Documentation:			1
Intended Audience:		Programmers
Ease of Use:			4
Usefulness:			5
Sources Included:		Yes, C (in upper directory)
Objects Supplied:		No


This directory contains the VMS port of the GNU GCC compiler Version 1.34.
This compiler doesn't have all the niceties of the DEC compiler (it doesn't 
create list files, it doesn't give nice error messages, etc), but it does put 
out good code.  Many sites are using this compiler for commercial work.

This directory also has BISON, the GNU version of YACC.  


Submission Subdirectory:	[LT89A.GNUSOFTWARE.VMS_GAWK]
Ease Of Installation:		3
Documentation:			1
Intended Audience:		Programmers
Ease of Use:			4
Usefulness:			5
Sources Included:		Yes, C 
Objects Supplied:		No


This directory contains the VMS port of the GNU AWK utility.  It isn't the 
latest version of GNU AWK, but it is a working version.  Awk is a pattern
scanning and processing language.


Submission Subdirectory:	[LT89A.GNUSOFTWARE.VMS_GGREP]
Ease Of Installation:		3
Documentation:			1
Intended Audience:		Programmers
Ease of Use:			4
Usefulness:			5
Sources Included:		Yes, C
Objects Supplied:		No


This directory contains the VMS port of the GNU GREP utility.  It isn't the 
latest version of GNU GREP, but it is a working version.  GREP is a very
powerful utility for searching a file for a pattern.

Submission Subdirectory:	[LT89A.GNUSOFTWARE.VMS_BIN]
Ease Of Installation:		3
Documentation:			1
Intended Audience:		Programmers
Ease of Use:			4
Usefulness:			5
Sources Included:		Yes, C (in above directory)
Objects Supplied:		No


This directory contains the VMS executables for AWK, LEX, DIFF, GREP and SORTC.

Submission Subdirectory:	[LT89A.LOMASKY]
Ease Of Installation:		4
Documentation:			1
Intended Audience:		BASIC Programmers
Ease of Use:			4
Usefulness:			5
Sources Included:		Yes, in BASIC and Macro
Objects Supplied:		No


This directory numerous functions for use in VAX Basic.  The session LT029 "VAX 
Basic Toolkit of Useful Callable Functions" was about this toolkit.

These functions can be linked to other languages, but you need VAX BASIC to 
compile them first. 

Submission Subdirectory:	[LT89A.MEMOREX_TELEX.ETHERNET]
Ease of installation: 		4
Documentation: 			3
Intended Audience: 		System Managers
Ease of use: 			4
Usefulness: 			4
Sources Included: 		Y (Pascal)
Objects Supplied: 		Y

[Tape Editor's Note:  The MEMOREX_TELEX submission could have been
on either the VAX or L&T section of the SIG Tape.  It was placed in L&T 
section.]

This directory contains 2 ethernet tools. ETHERMON is an ethernet
monitor that displays packets/sec, bytes/sec, and top receiving and
transmitting nodes ala VMS MONITOR. INEPT is an ethernet packet
watcher.

Both of these tools are valuable. Both utilities use a user-built
database to translate ethernet hex addresses to more meaningful
mnemonic names (ex. DECnet node name). Inept has major security
implications since it reads everything (like passwords) floating over
the wire.

Submission Subdirectory:	[LT89A.MEMOREX_TELEX.SDE]
Ease of installation: 		3
Documentation: 			5
Intended Audience: 		Programmers
Ease of use: 			4
Usefulness: 			4
Sources Included: 		Y (Pascal)
Objects Supplied: 		Y

The Memorex Telex Software Development Environment is a collection of
tools built around DEC/CMS and DEC/MMS for the purpose of source,
module, and configuration management.

If you don't mind adopting Memorex Telex's software development style
this could improve your development time and ease maintenance quite a
bit. Documentation is extensive.


Submission Subdirectory:	[LT89A.MDRAW]
Ease of Installation:		5
Documentation:			5
Intended Audience:		General, TeX & LaTeX users
Ease of use:			4
Usefulness:			5
Sources included:		Yes, PASCAL, FORTRAN, C
Objects Supplied:		Yes, except ones written in FORTRAN

          A object-oriented drawing utility for TeX, a mouse and a VT2xx or 
          VT3xx graphics terminal.

     A utility written for the VT240, or VT330 series terminal that allows
the user to input designs and view them on the screen.  You may also save
the pictures to a file to be later included in your TeX output.  A little time
consuming to use, but a lot of fun.  All you TeX and LaTeX users, check this
one out.



Submission Subdirectory:	[LT89A.RemTab]
Ease of Installation: 		4
Documentation: 			4
Intended Audience: 		Programmers
Ease of Use: 			4
Usefulness: 			4
Sources Included: 		yes - Cobol, Macro, Runoff
Objects Supplied: 		some

Description:
    A package of routines to implement the ability to share static tabular data
    between multiple programs.

Observations:
    Uses a special 'library' file containing multiple tables, there are utilities
    to allow creation and maintenance of the library files.

    Implemented for Cobol, but could well be useful for other languages.




Submission Subdirectory:	[LT89A.TEX]
Ease Of Installation:		3
Documentation:			2
Intended Audience:		TeX and LaTeX users
Ease of Use:			4
Usefulness:			5
Sources Included:		Yes, C
Objects Supplied:		No


This directory contains compressed-tar savesets of various TeXware for UNIX
systems.  The items include TeXX, for previewing DVI files under X-Windows;
SPIDER, which creates different versions of WEB, and TEXPS, a Postscript DVI
driver that  makes use of Postscript fonts.


Submission Subdirectory:	[LT89A.TEX.MAKEINDEX]
Ease Of Installation:		3
Documentation:			4
Intended Audience:		LaTeX users
Ease of Use:			4
Usefulness:			4
Sources Included:		Yes, C
Objects Supplied:		Yes


This a utility to help LaTeX users generate Index information from the output 
of LaTeX.  


Submission Subdirectory:	[LT89A.TEX.PROFILE]
Ease Of Installation:		1
Documentation:			2  (in the WEB code)
Intended Audience:		PASCAL Programmers
Ease of Use:			3
Usefulness:			4
Sources Included:		Yes, WEB/PASCAL
Objects Supplied:		Yes


This directory contains a early copy of the VMS port of Donald Knuth's PROFILE 
program to PROFILE a program.  It allows a PASCAL programmer to see how much 
time each section of code uses.


Submission Subdirectory:	[LT89A.TEX.XDVI]
Ease Of Installation:		4
Documentation:			2
Intended Audience:		TeX and LaTeX users
Ease of Use:			4
Usefulness:			5
Sources Included:		Yes, C
Objects Supplied:		No


This is DECWindows previewer for DVI files.  It is the port of the XDVI 
program to VMS and DECWindows.  It does a good job, even though it doesn't 
have any fancy trappings like most DECwindows/X-Windows applications.


Submission Subdirectory:	[LT89A.tpuVI_V5...]
Ease of Installation: 		2
Documentation: 			4
Intended Audience: 		General,Programmers
Ease of Use: 			3
Usefulness: 			3
Sources Included: 		yes - TPU, Macro, and Runoff
Objects Supplied: 		no

Description:
    An implementation of the VI editor written in TPU.

Observations:
    Uses only the normal typing keys on the keyboard - great for those
    with strange terminals on their VAX.  Also of interest to those
    already familiar with it.




Submission Subdirectory:	[LT89A.XEVE5]
Ease Of Installation:		3
Documentation:			3
Intended Audience:		General
Ease of Use:			3
Usefulness:			4
Sources Included:		Yes, FORTRAN
Objects Supplied:		Yes


This is a Spelling checker for EVE under VMS Version 5.  It comes with a 
91,000 word dictionary.




