[comp.lang.ada] Simtel20

perkin@CRC.SKL.DND.CA (Kuo Perkin) (07/05/90)

I would like to use a database package and a queue management
package from the SIMTEL20 library.  Does anyone have any experience
with using such packages?  I would appreciate some recommendations.
Thanks in advance.

g_harrison@vger.nsu.edu (12/13/90)

How to find [anything] on SIMTEL20:

According to AJPO SIMTEL20 is understaffed and only maintained by what I would
describe as a skeleton crew.  (Correct me if I'm wrong... I'm sure someone
will.)  Dispite all apparent talk about wsmr-simtel20.army.mil being
hard to get to, I was able to ftp into it this morning twice and ftp "get" some
files.  File transfer was slow (could have been on our end), but it did work.

Recent calls for Ada parsers led me to write this.  SIMTEL20 is hosted on a DEC
20/TOPS20.  Directory structures do no appear in directory listings; thus, you
have to know the directories before you "cd."  "get" the file SIMTEL20-ADA.INFO
file in the anonymous root directory (about 64K).  It contains all the ASR
information that you need.

The parser is contained in the directory PD2:<ADA.COMPONENTS> either as a
program (non-squeezed source) PARSER.SRC or in the large (572K)
file ABSTRACT.SRC.  

To get there or to get to any subdirectory you must use the entire path name: 
cd pd2:<ada.components>

SRC files containe separate appended files.  To UNappend them get UNPAGE.ADA
from pd2:<ada.pager>; this program will extract all the appended files into
separate files.

For those of you interested in the pretty printers cd to
pd2:<ada.pretty-printers>; there are three different ones there (I believe). 
The powerful one uses most (if not all) the separate files in ABSTRACT.SRC

Good Luck.  

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mwills@x102a.harris-atd.com (wills ms 01309) (12/14/90)

The problem here is not connecting to Simtel, it is holding a reliable
connection long enough to retrieve a sizable file.  I can usually get
through one out of five times, but NAPPSRC.SRC is 1MB+ and the connection
usually breaks around 700K or 800K.  Now there's a waste of
bandwidth... Dropping the connection after 70% complete.

Two things might alleviate my current distress:

A kind sole who would put NAPPSRC.SRC and/or ABSTRACT.SRC on their
(non-simtel) ftp site and mail me its address.

-or-

A compressed (zoo, zip, or tar.Z) version of the files at simtel which
would require a shorter transfer time and have a (hopefully) higher
probability of success.

Two people have requested summaries of pretty printer comments.  I
have received none.  However, I have found napp.zip (msdos binary
only) at wuarchive.wustl.edu in mirrors/msdos/ada, in case they are
interested.  For the above reasons, I still don't have one for UNIX.

Thanks in advance.
--

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kl@sei.cmu.edu (Ken Lee) (12/17/90)

>> For the above reasons, I still don't have one for UNIX.

So you want a pretty printer (PP) you can use with a Unix system, huh?
Hey, have I got a deal for you !!

I extracted the PP from SIMTEL20 that is based on an Ada grammar and lex a
few years ago.  I can't remember the exact SIMTEL20 name of the files now.

I have updated and modified the PP as follows: The original version used
lex to parse the input file(s) and created a Scribe output file.
I have an Ada version which creates a Scribe output file, one which
creates Interleaf text files, and one which creates MIF text files
which can be read into FrameMaker.  I also have a C version and a Pascal
version which create Scribe files.  There is enough documentation to demonstrate how the PP's are used.

I will send the source code to anyone who wants it as long as the requests
don't overwhelm me.  Just let me know which pretty printers you would like.
If I am overwhelmed by requests, I'll find another way
to make them available (perhaps on SIMTEL20, ha, ha, ha, ha - just 
kidding).

--- Kenneth J. Lee                     Software Engineering Institute
kl@sei.cmu.edu                         Carnegie-Mellon University
(412)268-7702                          Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA

"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and
if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't.  That's logic!"
                -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"