Open Access User Group Meeting - 11 June 96 Back to Chatswood RSL for our June meeting. News from SPI SPI President, John Bowne has sent the following information: I just today received the No. 114 Open Access Newsletter from your group. I wanted to pass onto your members that we appreciate getting copied on these. I also want to comment on what I read in the newsletter regarding the future of Open Access. While there are some further developments in WindowBASE such as the availability of an excellent DASL Guide, written by Tom Solarek of Super Systems Co., 1817 Clark Road, Rochester, NY 14625, Tel. +1-716-385-4648. There is also a new direct interface to the Gupta SQLBase Server. That is available through the German Distributor, SPG. There is a development currently planned for an Open Access IV Plus, to be available early in 1997. We have solicited inputs from the Australian Users Group on what should be in this release, the final determination will be made shortly. If your group has any last thoughts on this, please send them ASAP. You were correct in that the Open Access technical support will be coming from a new SPI partner, DISPI, b.v., a Dutch firm, located at: Ph de Schonestraat 27, 5216 AJ, `s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands. Tel.+31-73-614-1407, Fax +31-73-614-1438, they maintain a BBS at +31-73-614-1434. They are very competent in Open Access. They also have an email address: doef@telebyte.nl The head of DISPI, b.v. is Mr. Frank Doevendans, and he is very keen on Open Access, having just taken over as our Benelux Distributor. Our Spanish distributor, Sedyco, S.A., has recently released Open Access Profesional in Spain, and will soon be releasing a Spanish WindowBASE there as well. I hope that you share this news with your members. With best wishes, John Bowne, President Also received via email: From: Frank Doevendans Subject: Open Access Newsletter Dear Michael: Can you send us directly your newsletter, maybe the last 20 letters is possible?? Best regards President DISPI bv Frank Doevendans (Judy has added Frank to the mailing list and is arrnaging to send back copies) No News from Communique Communications! The phone and fax at Communique seem to have been disconnected. At the time of writing the status of Communique was unclear. If you cannot get through on an urgent matter we suggest you deal directly with SPI in San Diego. The User Group will investigate the matter and provide advice as soon as possible - watch the Web site for details. Questions & Answers Networking OA under Windows for Workgroups Lindy Kidman reported a problem where a client had the 4-user network (Netbios) version of OA installed on two PCs linked with Windows for Workgroups (WfW). Only one user could start up a compiled application at any one time. When the other user tried they received the dreaded warning "Put code disk in drive and press ". The most likely explanation is that WfW is not "sharing" the APP.SPI file which is used by OA for compiled applications. A check of WfW File Manager indicated that the directory was being shared but, unlike Novell Netware, there is no way of telling whether an individual file is shareable. Otherwise the wrong version of APP.SPI might have been installed. Lindy got around the problem by installing runtime OA. Please let us know if you have any tips for networking. Network Printing Another network problem is printing from a DOS application when running under Windows. Generally the WfW Print Manager ignores print jobs initiated by DOS programs on the local machine but captures print jobs sent from other machines. The latter seems unreliable - sometimes jobs don't print at all or only print when you exit OA and sometimes the print queue is locked up after th ejobs finshes printing. Lindy found that one solution is to use the LST: option for the OA printer setup. Other solutions depend on the network - for example the CAPTURE command in netware has a flag which can be set to immediately print jobs. IN WfW the printer setup options allow you to vary wait and interupt times and this may help overcome a problem. It all seems to be a conspiracy against DOS software! Incidentally, watch out for the latest generation of "cheap" laser printers - many of them have no intelligence and will only print from Windows. For Open Access you will almostly certainly need a printer with resident fonts. More Networking Tips From time to time Michael Paine runs a Personal Netware network rather than built-in WfW networking. He has found two helpful tips (courtesy of Datapac) which might also work with full Netware as well as System Manager (i.e network operating systems that load before Windows and which have their own print spooler). One is to set the WfW printer port to LPT1.DOS rather than LPT1: (this might cause problems with some Windows programs but it certainly helps DOS programs) and the second is to switch off the WfW networking function by loading Windows with WIN /N. This approach leaves you with access to network drives but WfW does not get in the way of DOS applications. If you also only run a network occasionally consider a simple DOS trick to show you whether the network is running when Windows is loaded. Have two verisons of the tile bitmap (eg. brick.bmp) and use Paintbrush to superimpose the word NET on one of the bitmaps. Then in your batch file which loads the network overwrite the bitmap in the C:|WINDOWS directory with the network version. The batch file could have the following lines: :LOADNET copy c:\windows\bricknet.bmp c:\windows\brick.bmp :NONET copy c:\windows\brickx.bmp c:\windows\brick.bmp Phew! We could write a book about networks. Merging text into memo field (Database) When text is to the clipboard and into a memo field the existing memo text is overwritten. You should use Merge to copy complete text files into memo fields Printing Screen Mask & Field Information (Database) When you have designed a new screen mask (and after saving your hard work) press for a list of fields in that screen mask. Press and select FILE to print the list to a text file (say JUNK1.TXT). Now press to do a screen dump of the screen mask layout. Select FILE again but use a different file name (say JUNK2.TXT). Now load the Notepad ( N) and load JUNK2.TXT. Go to the end of the file and Merge JUNK1.TXT. Delete unwanted blank lines and save or print the results. The screen mask layout and field information should be on the one page. These steps can be automated with a macro. OA Toolkit has a better way of doing this (see LIB 158, Aug 93). Barcode Printing This was described many years ago in LIB 97 (July 90). You will need a printer which accepts commands to print barcodes instead of characters (these seem to be very rare nowadays). The trick is to sacrifice a print feature such as subscript and, in the 64 impossible printer questions, replace that sequence with the one which initiates barcode printing. You will also probably need to put the commands which restore the printer to normal in the "normal" sequence. Now when you design a print mask just set the attributes of the relevant field (with the barcode values) to "subscript". Macro Jumps in Spreadsheet Terry demonstrated a way of jumping between two spreadsheet when running spreadsheet macros. The trick here is to nominate and external model in the JUMP statement and hav eth elocation in that model initiate a macro do the work in the second spreadsheet then return to th efirst spreadsheet. [ed: Terry might provide notes to replace this] Information Technology Management After the break Terry gave a fascinating talk about information technology (networking, hardware, software and every thing) in a large geographically distributed corporation. [don't forget to drop the Communique "ad"] \