todd@uhunix2.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Todd Ogasawara) (03/05/91)
I recently received my Arity Prolog 6.0 for MS-DOS and was outraged by what
Arity has foisted on its customers as a $127 (including shipping) upgrade.
What was advertised as a major upgrade from version 5.1 is merely a
maintenance release with a few cosmetic changes (very few and minor).
The worst of it, from my point of view, is the 18 pages of documentation
changes which is simply provided as a README file with references to the
page number where the corrections should be applied. It should be noted
that these corrections are in addition to numerous other corrections to the
5.0 manual that had to be made when it was released.
If I were to actually take the time to pen in all the corrections (which is
ludicrous), it would have to be on top of some the corrections that I
actually did pen in when 5.0 was released. Arity's refusal to provide new
documentation in the face of the fact that the manual that came with 5.0 is
now hopelessly out of date with their current product is outrageous. This
says nothing of the fact that the Arity 5.0 manual was poorly written and
error-ridden to an unbelievable level to begin with. I wrote and mailed a
reasonably toned letter of dissatisfaction to Meredith Bartlett (VP of
Marketting at Arity) two days before I learned that I was not going to get
any new manuals (which I hoped would clear up a few changes they made to
some proprietary predicates). Now, that I know I am not getting any new
documentation, I am outraged at what they have sold to me under what I
consider "false pretenses."
If any one else is similarly outraged at Arity, please write a letter to
them and say so. If anyone is interested in sending a group letter, please
let me know and I will coordinate such an effort. I am going to wait for a
response to all the questions I posed in my first three page letter to
Meredith before drafting a stronger letter of complaint.
--
Todd Ogasawara, U. of Hawaii
UUCP: {uunet,ucbvax,dcdwest}!ucsd!nosc!uhunix!todd
BITNET: todd@uhunix
INTERNET: todd@uhunix.UHCC.HAWAII.EDUweiss@theory.lcs.mit.edu (Paul G. Weiss) (03/14/91)
This forum is not and should not become a substitute for direct communication with Prolog vendors regarding product features and technical support. Arity has always welcomed suggestions and complaints from its customers in order to be better able to serve them. Indeed, our current version, version 6.00, incorporates several features suggested by our users. Arity is very proud of the latest release and the response from users has been favorable. For criticism, inquiries, complaints, praise, or anything else we may be reached directly by any of the following means: Telephone: (508) 371-1243 (9am - 5pm Eastern Time) Fax: (508) 371-1487 BBS: (508) 369-5622 US Mail: Arity Corporation 29 Domino Drive Concord, MA 01742
weiss@theory.lcs.mit.edu (Paul G. Weiss) (03/14/91)
This forum is not and should not become a substitute for direct communication with Prolog vendors regarding product features and technical support. Arity has always welcomed suggestions and complaints from its customers in order to be better able to serve them. Indeed, our current version, version 6.00, incorporates several features suggested by our users. Arity is very proud of the latest release and the response from users has been favorable. For criticism, inquiries, complaints, praise, or anything else we may be reached directly by any of the following means: Telephone: (508) 371-1243 (9am - 5pm Eastern Time) Fax: (508) 371-1487 BBS: (508) 369-5622 US Mail: Arity Corporation 29 Domino Drive Concord, MA 01742 -Paul Weiss -Arity
pukite@vz.acs.umn.edu (J. PUKITE) (03/14/91)
In article <WEISS.91Mar13134309@toucan.lcs.mit.edu>, weiss@theory.lcs.mit.edu (Paul G. Weiss) writes... > >This forum is not and should not become a substitute for direct >communication with Prolog vendors regarding product features and >technical support. Arity has always welcomed suggestions and >complaints from its customers in order to be better able to >serve them. Indeed, our current version, version 6.00, >incorporates several features suggested by our users. 1) I strongly disagree with the view expressed above. This should be an open forum to discuss both problems and successes with different software packages. Software peddlers should not be able to dictate the specific topics open for discussion. 2) We are not hard of reading. There is no need to repeat the same message twice (2244 and 2245). It does not make it any more believable. 3) The questions raised in article 2225 were not answered in either of the above messages. 4) The sender of the above messages is identified as Lucifer Maleficius. Would you buy your software from him? J. Pukite pukite@vz.acs.umn.edu
dowding@ai.sri.com (John Dowding) (03/14/91)
In article <WEISS.91Mar13133515@toucan.lcs.mit.edu> weiss@theory.lcs.mit.edu (Paul G. Weiss) writes:
This forum is not and should not become a substitute for direct
communication with Prolog vendors regarding product features and
technical support.
I think that it is well within the charter of this newsgroup to report
bugs and significant complaints about the major Prolog products.
Whether a new user is considering a software purchase, or an
experienced programmer is tracking down problems with their current
implementation, knowledge of known bugs and major shortcomings would
be extremely helpful. Since it is not the policy of vendors to
publish this information (nor is it necessarily in their best
interest), this newsgroup can be an excellent source for that sort
of knowledge.
John Dowding
dowding@ai.sri.comok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) (03/14/91)
In article <DOWDING.91Mar13174830@palm.ai.sri.com>, dowding@ai.sri.com (John Dowding) writes: > In article <WEISS.91Mar13133515@toucan.lcs.mit.edu> weiss@theory.lcs.mit.edu (Paul G. Weiss) writes: > This forum is not and should not become a substitute for direct > communication with Prolog vendors regarding product features and > technical support. > I think that it is well within the charter of this newsgroup to report > bugs and significant complaints about the major Prolog products. I would certainly agree that it is appropriate to complain here if you are having trouble with a company. But the *FIRST* place to go with a bug report is the company responsible. Yes, let's have people telling each other about the problems they are having, but be fair to yourself, go to the company FIRST. When I was working at Quintus, I found that some people posting bug reports about QP here not only hadn't seen fit to tell Quintus (despite QP printing out the phone number every time), they were at a site that had a fully-paid-up maintenance contract! So DO send bug reports *FIRST* to the vendor, you may already have paid for service, and you may get help even if you haven't paid. > Whether a new user is considering a software purchase, or an > experienced programmer is tracking down problems with their current > implementation, knowledge of known bugs and major shortcomings would > be extremely helpful. Again, it is worth going to the vendor FIRST. If you go to the net you will get some mix of (accurate information, ravings from idiots, disinformation from other vendors). If the vendor refuses to give you the information you need, then fall back on the net as an act of desperation. If a new user is considering a purchase, some companies have lists of customers who are willing to tell other people about their experience with the product, so again it is worth going to the vendor first. -- The purpose of advertising is to destroy the freedom of the market.
todd@uhunix1.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Todd Ogasawara) (03/15/91)
In article <WEISS.91Mar13134309@toucan.lcs.mit.edu> weiss@theory.lcs.mit.edu (Paul G. Weiss) writes: >This forum is not and should not become a substitute for direct >communication with Prolog vendors regarding product features and >technical support. Arity has always welcomed suggestions and First, I want to say that I am the person who posted the original message. I also want to say that I've communicated with Paul a few times years ago and found him to be very cordial and helpful. So, I hope everyone understands that what I say here or elsewhere about Paul or Arity is never intended to be a flame. Rather, it is intended to be information (good, bad or otherwise) from a long time paying customer (I've been using Arity since version 3.2 which was released in 1984) to other current and potential Arity customers. Next, I want to say that I disagree with Paul about this... I hope he noticed the following lines from my original message. (I wrote in my original message): ]I wrote and mailed a ]reasonably toned letter of dissatisfaction to Meredith Bartlett (VP of ]Marketting at Arity) two days before I learned that I was not going to get ]any new manuals (which I hoped would clear up a few changes they made to ]some proprietary predicates). Now, that I know I am not getting any new ]documentation, I am outraged at what they have sold to me under what I ]consider "false pretenses." ]If any one else is similarly outraged at Arity, please write a letter to ]them and say so. If anyone is interested in sending a group letter, please ]let me know and I will coordinate such an effort. I am going to wait for a ]response to all the questions I posed in my first three page letter to ]Meredith before drafting a stronger letter of complaint. Please note that I did write a letter directly to Meredith at Arity at a time that (1) I was very dissatisfied with what I saw and (2) I thought I would get documentation that would at least clear up the documentation related problems (there are other problems that documentation alone will not clear up but those issues were also addressed in my letter to Meredith). Please also note that I asked people to write to me directly if they wanted to write a group letter to Arity. Again, I did not ask for a flame fest here. I was asking for other Arity users to contact me in order to approach Arity with a coherent set of complaints and also to show Arity that it was not a matter of a single dissatisfied customer shouting in the wind. I also asked people to write DIRECTLY to Arity. I am disappointed that Paul chose to ignore the fact that I took great pains to ensure that a flame war DID NOT start due to my posting. I was and still am simply interested in making sure that Arity customers discuss any concerns they have directly with Arity just as I am doing to make sure that they hear our concerns. I am also disappointed that Paul feels that this forum is not appropriate for discussing Prolog vendor specific issues. I have seen many discussions about Quintus Prolog, PDC Prolog (formerly Borland Turbo Prolog) and other vendor specific versions of Prolog discussed here. And, in fact, I see many other vendors' implentation of programming languages discussed actively in other news groups (take a look at comp.windows.ms.programmer if you want to see a really active discussion about the recently released Borland C++ 2.0 [I just received my upgrade of Borland C++ 2.0 and have been following the threads over there daily]). I think that this is the appropriate forum to discuss aspects of vendor implementations of Prolog. >complaints from its customers in order to be better able to >serve them. Indeed, our current version, version 6.00, >incorporates several features suggested by our users. I'm sure that's true. I noticed a few things in 6.00 that I found useful also. The point is, though, that the upgrade notice and the price indicated that the move from version 5.1 to 6.0 was a major one. Version 6.0 is not a major evolution from 5.1. At best it should have been called version 5.2 and cost much less than the ~$127 I paid. How can a product be considered a major release change if the company says that no new manuals are needed because the product hasn't changed enough? And yet, I now have something like 30 pages of documentation changes to wade through between release 5.0 (when the manuals were released) and 6.0? That just doesn't make sense. Borland, on the other hand, charged me $99+shipping to go from Turbo C++ 1.0 to Borland C++ 2.0. For this price, I received what I consider to be a evolutionary change from the previous version (it looks and behaves differently [and better for that matter]). I was provided with completely new documentation that reflects the changes in the product (to be fair, it also came with a README file that had documentation changes -- but the changes were, perhaps, 2 pages of material, not 19 to 30 like Arity's). Another interesting comparison between these two upgrades that I received about two weeks apart is that Borland's sample code modules compile as indicated in their documentation. Arity's, on the other hand, do not compile without modification to the source code that are not indicated anywhere in the README-type files on the disk. This was a minor, but annoying discovery as I tried to understand a few items in V6.0 by looking carefully at the sample files (which tend not to display features new to V6.0 anyway, I discovered). I'm not trying to claim that Borland has provided me with a "perfect tool" by any means. However, so far, I do feel like I have received an upgrade that reflects the major change in version number (from C++ 1.0 to 2.0) and that I was charged relatively fairly (~$100) for what I was provided. >Arity is very proud of the latest release and the response from >users has been favorable. For criticism, inquiries, complaints, >praise, or anything else we may be reached directly by any of >the following means: > >Telephone: (508) 371-1243 (9am - 5pm Eastern Time) >Fax: (508) 371-1487 >BBS: (508) 369-5622 >US Mail: Arity Corporation > 29 Domino Drive > Concord, MA 01742 Again, I urge people who are dissatisifed with what Arity has provided in V6.0 to do what Paul says. Contact Arity directly and let them know that you are dissatisfied and why ("why" is the important part). They also have an 800 number that is listed on their letters and in their advertisements in AI Expert. Finally, I want to say that in the many years I have dealt with Arity I have found their staff to be professional and responsive. In fact, Meredith left a message on my home answering machine yesterday and I am sure that we will have a productive discussion when we are able to touch bases with each other in the near future. I also want to say that their product was the only MS-DOS Prolog available at the time (1984) that allowed me to have a "real" Edinburgh style Prolog for PCs to develop with. Although that statement is no longer true, I would prefer to stay with Arity because (1) I have come to respect the staff I have interacted with, (2) I prefer not to have deal with a whole new set of proprietary Prolog extensions (menuing, etc.), and (3) quite frankly, I've invested something like $2,000 out of pocket over the years and want to see a return on my investment on this product. Again, I am disappointed that Paul's opinions and mine about using this forum for a discussion are so far apart. I still believe my statements are true and my actions appropriate. I still hope that despite Paul's feelings on this matter, that the result of these discussions will be productive and constructive and ultimately benefit those of us who are Arity customers. Perhaps a constructive P.S.: Before getting Arity 6.0 I had hoped that I would get an integrated development environment (what Borland referes to as IDE) like Borland's Turbo C++ environment (and in fact Arity documents say that their environment is Turbo-like; I disagree with this statement). However, I have been able to get around some of the environmental shortcomings in Arity by starting to modify the Sage Professional Editor [SPE] (I am using V1.0 and awaiting the V1.1 upgrade) to tune it to Arity. It is quite simple to launch a compile job from Sage's editor (something you can also do from Borland C++'s editor but not from Arity's). If any SPE users are out there, I can give them the modifications I made to their errorfix.pel that allows you to run APC from SPE. SPE also provides me with multiple edit windows on screen simultaneously, mouse control in the editor, and many other features which I feel are necessities in a modern programming environment. Now, that I know that Arity's environment isn't suitable for my programming environment desires, I am adding more features to SPE to allow me to use it as my environment for working with Arity. I'm already able to bring up the various Arity HLP files in various windows of SPE while editing source code. The next step is to add context sensitive features that will lead me to the appropriate place in the appropriage HLP file when I see an ERR message or need to check on syntax. I've also tried running Arity V6.0 and Sage simultaneously under Windows 3.0 in 386Enh mode and found that that works relatively well (Arity does see the Expanded memory emulation available when running DOS programs under 386Enh mode, btw). My only problem is that the DOS windows that appear on my SuperVGA screen are pretty small and my aging eyes can't see the characters as well as I would like :-). -- Todd Ogasawara, U. of Hawaii UUCP: {uunet,ucbvax,dcdwest}!ucsd!nosc!uhunix!todd BITNET: todd@uhunix INTERNET: todd@uhunix.UHCC.HAWAII.EDU
mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington) (03/15/91)
Of course you have to remember that Borland has a truly *gigantic* corps of beta-testers. Most companies would be hard put to assemble such a group. In fact I'll bet Arity is constantly up against the problem that they can't get enough people to test the product, thoroughly enough, during the beta phase. But I agree, Borland's reliability and support are exemplary. -- --------------------------------------------------------- Michael A. Covington, Assistant to the Director Artificial Intelligence Programs The University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602
pukite@vz.acs.umn.edu (J. PUKITE) (03/15/91)
In article <4968@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>, ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes... >Again, it is worth going to the vendor FIRST. If you go to the net >you will get some mix of (accurate information, ravings from idiots, >disinformation from other vendors). The PROLOG Vendor Paradox (PVP) IF the following mappings apply: The Vendor => information, facts; the users => ravings from idiots; other vendors => disinformation; THEN why do the users post messages on the net instead of going to The Vendor FIRST? J. Pukite pukite@vz.acs.umn.edu
dowding@ai.sri.com (John Dowding) (03/16/91)
In article <3609@ux.acs.umn.edu> pukite@vz.acs.umn.edu (J. PUKITE) writes:
The PROLOG Vendor Paradox (PVP)
IF
the following mappings apply:
The Vendor => information, facts;
the users => ravings from idiots;
other vendors => disinformation;
THEN
why do the users post messages on the net instead of going to
The Vendor FIRST?
Because no vendors will respond favorable to the request to declare
publicly to a potential (or actual) customer all the known bugs and
shortcomings of their product.
Over the years I have submitted a number of bug reports to a variety
of vendors. In each case, I have never known if they knew about this
bug already, or if mine was the first report. Who knows how many
times I have spent hours tracking down bugs in products that the
vendor already knew was there? (That is a rhetorical question, Richard)
I see nothing wrong with using this newsgroup as a forum for product
related discussions between users. When misinformation is spread on
the net, there have always been experts willing to set matters
straight.
In any case, it is certainly not the vendors place to tell us what
should and should not be discussed on the net.todd@uhunix1.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Todd Ogasawara) (03/17/91)
In article <1991Mar15.050522.21309@athena.cs.uga.edu> mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu (Michael A. Covington) writes: >Of course you have to remember that Borland has a truly *gigantic* >corps of beta-testers. Most companies would be hard put to assemble >such a group. In fact I'll bet Arity is constantly up against the problem >that they can't get enough people to test the product, thoroughly enough, >during the beta phase. I want to make sure that people who may have not read my previous posts understand that nowhere in my posting that started this discussion thread did I imply that Arity Prolog 6.0 was buggy. In fact, I feel that Arity's implementation of Edinburgh style Prolog is as stable as anything else I've seen. My complaints are based on two major points. 1. Arity has not provided new documentation since 5.0 in 1988. Versions 5.1 and 6.0 have made a number of confusing changes and additions to some of their proprietary extensions. There is no source of information besides Arity to go to to clarify these predicate extensions (i.e., you're not going to learn how to use these extensions by reading a Clocksin & Mellish or O'Keefe book). In addition the 5.0 manual was incredibly error ridden. It is not an overstatement to say that there is at least one technical error or on every other page. And, more likely, you are likely to find several errors of a single page that has code samples. 2. Arity claimed in their upgrade notice and implied in their version number shift (from 5.1 to 6.0) that this was a significant upgrade and a major overhaul of the system which has numerous shortcomings in providing a modern programming environments (when compared to Borland C++, Quick C, Actor, etc.) for the MS-DOS platform. They also charged (by PC standards) a large upgrade fee (~$120) for what is essentially a maintenance release. As to having a large number of beta-testers for QA. I don't think that QA in terms of operational bugs is the issue here. The issue, in my mind at least, is that Arity is out of step with current trends in programming environments. Their environment is as out of step with today's standards as a line editor was to full screen editors a few years ago. >But I agree, Borland's reliability and support are exemplary. Agreed.. BTW.. I don't claim that Borland C++ 2.0 is bug free. I just haven't had it long enough to make such a statement. I will say one thing though. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the program examples in Petzold's "Programming for Windows" which was written for use with Microsoft C and SDK work without modifications when compiled using Borland C++. Arity's examples, on the other hand, won't even compile in their own compiler without modifications. -- Todd Ogasawara, U. of Hawaii UUCP: {uunet,ucbvax,dcdwest}!ucsd!nosc!uhunix!todd BITNET: todd@uhunix INTERNET: todd@uhunix.UHCC.HAWAII.EDU
ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) (03/18/91)
In article <3609@ux.acs.umn.edu>, pukite@vz.acs.umn.edu (J. PUKITE) writes: > In article <4968@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>, ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes... > >Again, it is worth going to the vendor FIRST. If you go to the net > >you will get some mix of (accurate information, ravings from idiots, > >disinformation from other vendors). > The PROLOG Vendor Paradox (PVP) > IF > the following mappings apply: > The Vendor => information, facts; > the users => ravings from idiots; > other vendors => disinformation; > THEN > why do the users post messages on the net instead of going to > The Vendor FIRST? If the sea is made of boiling hot turpentine, then why do pigs fly backwards? I read comp.lang.c. It is *very* common for people to ask questions there which are answered either on page 2 of their compiler's manual or in the monthly "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions" list. To be brutal about it, "why do users post messages on the net first?" has answers like "because they are lazy", "because they are stupid", or perhaps "because their management won't let them make a phone call but will let them use the net." But I deny the hypothesis of PUKITE's "if": quite often you find people making plain assertions about various products on the net that turn out to be quite false, because the people making the assertions have never used the products. And the people I envisaged as providing straight information on the net were by no means the vendors. Surely it is obvious that the people most likely to HAVE information about a product are the people who made it? And that people who use it may have been misled by a badly worded manual, or by using an old version, or may simply be unable to read well? Note that the poster who started this thread *had* gone to the vendor first. Going to the net afterwards was a perfectly sensible thing to do. -- Seen from an MVS perspective, UNIX and MS-DOS are hard to tell apart.
ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) (03/18/91)
In article <DOWDING.91Mar15093959@sunset.ai.sri.com>, dowding@ai.sri.com (John Dowding) writes: > Because no vendors will respond favorable[sic] to the request to declare > publicly to a potential (or actual) customer all the known bugs and > shortcomings of their product. I wonder about that. When I was a student at Auckland University, we had a Burroughs B6700. A couple of times a year Burroughs provided a FTR/TAR collection (FTR = Field Trouble Report, TAR = Trouble Analysis Report). These were fairly thick lists of all known problems, both the ones that had been fixed and the ones that had not been fixed. From time to time I would try some of the "not yet fixed" ones to see if we had those problems, and we usually did. I don't recall them being subject to any form of non-disclosure, and there was nothing to stop any potential Burroughs customer wandering in and looking at them. DEC used to do the same sort of thing for RT-11 and VMS, and I presume they still do. One AT&T documentation set for UNIX V.3 that I saw had a list of known remaining problems. I have no idea what Quintus's current policy is. I don't recall them publishing a list of bugs when I used to work for them, but if someone asked "is this your bug or mine" they got an answer by return E-mail, and nobody ever said "don't tell". Vendors are in it for the money. Some vendors are big enough to ignore individual customers, but most Prolog companies that I know about are not. If you go to Quintus, ALS, Integrated Solutions, LPA, &c, and say "I am interested in buying X number of copies of your product, but only if you give me a list of problems currently known not to be fixed, and yes, I am willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement", then they are going to think very hard about doing it, because your purchase is big enough to be noticed. > Over the years I have submitted a number of bug reports to a variety > of vendors. In each case, I have never known if they knew about this > bug already, or if mine was the first report. Who knows how many > times I have spent hours tracking down bugs in products that the > vendor already knew was there? (That is a rhetorical question, Richard) How many times did you *ask* whether they already knew about the mistake? From my own experience, SUN *did* tell you whether your problem was a known one (after you submitted it), provided the person submitting the report was the official contact person for the site. By the way, my understanding of a "support contract" is that information like this "feature such and such has mistake so and so, we intend to fix it soon/in the next release/eventually, in the mean time here is how to work around it" is one of the things that such a contract is FOR. Again, I would point out that most Prolog companies are small and hungry. If you demand this kind of thing as part of the "support" you are paying for, they are hungry enough for the support money to listen and maybe do it. (It takes a fair bit of staff and time to track bug reports and distribute this kind of information, so I think it is perfectly fair of vendors to ask for money to do it.) > In any case, it is certainly not the vendors[sci]place to tell us what > should and should not be discussed on the net. I'm not a vendor. And the point of my posting was not to say "thou shalt not" but to say "DO YOURSELF A FAVOUR, go FIRST to the people who really DO have the answers, as opposed to the people who only think they have the answers." The law varies from country to country. My understanding is that in NZ and OZ vendors can get away with pretty well anything in their advertising, but that if you write and ask "does your product do X" and they state in writing _in reply to a specific request_ that their product does X, then they are legally required to be telling the truth. Do you begin to see how something like this could be used to shape the situation so that it is in the vendor's interest to tell the truth about known problems? -- Seen from an MVS perspective, UNIX and MS-DOS are hard to tell apart.
dowding@ai.sri.com (John Dowding) (03/19/91)
In article <4989@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: In article <DOWDING.91Mar15093959@sunset.ai.sri.com>, dowding@ai.sri.com (John Dowding) writes: > Who knows how many times I have spent hours tracking down bugs in > products that the vendor already knew was there? How many times did you *ask* whether they already knew about the mistake? From my own experience, SUN *did* tell you whether your problem was a known one (after you submitted it), provided the person submitting the report was the official contact person for the site. I think that you are missing the point here, Richard. It doesn't save me any time time to find out that the vendor already knew about a bug after I have traced through it enough to submit a bug report. By the way, my understanding of a "support contract" is that information like this "feature such and such has mistake so and so, we intend to fix it soon/in the next release/eventually, in the mean time here is how to work around it" is one of the things that such a contract is FOR. Of course I am not suggesting that the net replace the role of support contracts, but a support contract is only useful when you have already determined that the problem that you are having is a bug in the product (as opposed to a bug in your code), and you have distilled it to the point of submitting a minimal example in a bug report. > In any case, it is certainly not the vendors[sci]place to tell us what > should and should not be discussed on the net. I'm not a vendor. And the point of my posting was not to say "thou shalt not" but to say "DO YOURSELF A FAVOUR, go FIRST to the people who really DO have the answers, as opposed to the people who only think they have the answers." Yes, the point of your posting was not to say "thou shalt not", but I was not replying to your posting, but to the gentleman representing Arity who said that this newsgroup was an inappropriate forum for discussing complaints about their products. Also, I disagree with your assertion that it is the vendors that really do have the answers. In many cases I believe that it is the users of the product who really understand what the limitations are. Very often, the implementors of a product will not actually use it to get any work done. John Dowding dowding@ai.sri.com
weiss@theory.lcs.mit.edu (Paul G. Weiss) (03/19/91)
Let me try to respond to the flurry of recent posts that have resulted from my follow-up to Todd's original post. Several people said that this forum is indeed an appropriate place to discuss vendor-related issues. I never said otherwise. What I said was that it is no substitute for direct communication, and I listed several direct ways in which folks might talk to us. Frankly, I was concerned that if I responded to the content of Todd's post here I would waste the time of the majority of readers of comp.lang.prolog and be forced to use net resources to promote our product. I was struck by the unfairness of Todd's post, given past dealings. Todd lives in Hawaii, we are in Boston. His reasonably toned letter (his words - and having read the letter I would not disagree) is dated March 4 and his less reasonably toned post is dated March 5, hardly enough time for us to receive the letter, let alone respond. I mention this because I understood Todd's reference to his letter to mean that we had been given the opportunity to respond and had not. My first thought was that the letter was sitting on the addressee's desk, as she had been out sick for some days. It was only when the letter arrived a few days later that I knew what was going on. Todd, if you had given us the courtesy of coming to us first, as Richard O'Keefe assumed you had, you would then have much better information to include in your posts. Richard writes: > Note that the poster who started this thread *had* gone to the vendor > first. Going to the net afterwards was a perfectly sensible thing to do. Given the timing of the post, you did *not* come to us first, even though your post implies that you have. That is what is so unfair about it. Todd raises a variety of issues in his three posts and in his letter. His letter has been answered and I will not respond to it here. As for the content of his posts there is much that Todd says that is accurate and much that is not. I will agree that Arity's documentation leaves a lot to be desired and does contain some inaccuracies. I should note that the most recent review (AI Expert - Jan '91) described our documentation as "two well-written manuals," even though it points out the problem with examples that do not work properly: "Some of the predicate examples do not work properly ... but most of the examples function properly and are very helpful for learning the predicate functions." We attempt to address the problem with readme files - not a perfect solution, but a workable one. To reprint the manuals for this release would have both delayed the release and raised the cost considerably, and Todd already feels that the price is too high (I will address pricing issues below). In fact, the next "release" of the manuals will most-likely be on-line documentation, a format that is a lot more easily updated than printed documentation (not to mention cheaper). Todd's other major point has to do with whether or not version 6.0 is a "major upgrade." Todd equates this to whether or not the product has a "modern programming environment (when compared to Borland C++, Quick C, Actor, etc.)." Indeed, Arity's programming environment is not as full featured as those mentioned, and we have never claimed otherwise. We do provide a windowed editor, debugger, etc. and our environment is quite usable, but not as powerful as those mentioned. However Arity's focus in the Prolog market has never been on slick development environments. We have always been targetted at the professional, production programmer. Even though our products are often used for education and research we consider our primary market to be programmers who are producing applications to be distributed either for sale or for internal use within an organization. To this end, the bulk of our efforts go into performance and programming features and a much smaller effort goes into environments. We concentrate on Arity/Prolog code being as small and fast as possible and embedible into a wide variety of applications. Measured by this yardstick version 6.0 is indeed a major upgrade - it is a significant extension of Arity/Prolog performance and power. In order to build V6 we have modified practically every module in the system. Todd also objects to the way we priced the upgrade: "... outraged by what Arity has foisted on its customers as a $127 (including shipping) upgrade." In his next post he says: "Borland, on the other hand, charged me $99+shipping to go from Turbo C++ 1.0 to Borland C++ 2.0." I think our products are an excellent value. If you are interested enough to call us, we would be happy to discuss with you the details of the upgrade and you can decide for yourself whether the upgrade is worth it. We don't "foist" our products on anyone. The comparison with Borland is highly misleading. Especially since their pricing structure did not allow them to stay in the Prolog tools business for very long. Let's face it folks, good, bad, or indifferent, there are a lot more C and C++ programmers out there than Prolog programmers. This means that the average Prolog programmer must pay a larger proportion of the development costs of good development tools if such tools are to remain available. It does neither Arity nor its users any good to price ourselves so low that we can't afford to remain in the business. Again, I must stress that the best way to voice your approval or disapproval and to influence future decisions at Arity is to communicate with us directly. I'm sorry Todd feels that he needs to muster support by organizing a letter writing campaign to back up what he has to say. A customer with complaints is not "shouting in the wind," as Todd suggests. User feedback is a major source of direction for new versions as it has been for V6. Please don't send me bug reports through posting or E-mail. Our technical support function (which is excellent, and cheap!) is administered through our own BBS, FAX, telephone or U.S. Mail. Again, here are the numbers: BBS: (508) 369-5622 Fax: (508) 371-1487 Phone: (508) 371-1243 Mail: Arity Corporation 29 Domino Drive Concord, MA 01742 -Paul Weiss -Arity Corp.
todd@uhunix1.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Todd Ogasawara) (03/21/91)
In article <WEISS.91Mar19151349@toucan.lcs.mit.edu> weiss@theory.lcs.mit.edu (Paul G. Weiss) writes: >Let me try to respond to the flurry of recent posts that have resulted >from my follow-up to Todd's original post. > >I was struck by the unfairness of Todd's post, given past >dealings. Todd lives in Hawaii, we are in Boston. His reasonably toned >letter (his words - and having read the letter I would not disagree) >is dated March 4 and his less reasonably toned post is dated March 5, >hardly enough time for us to receive the letter, let alone respond. >I mention this because I understood Todd's reference to his letter to >mean that we had been given the opportunity to respond and had not. My >first thought was that the letter was sitting on the addressee's desk, >as she had been out sick for some days. It was only when the letter >arrived a few days later that I knew what was going on. I apologize if the impression I gave was that Arity had an appropriate amount of time to respond to my written letter. Let me rephrase the situation. I sent my upgrade request and check sometime in December (late December as I recall). When no upgrade arrived by late february I called Arity to ask what was going on. I was told that bugs had been discovered during beta testing and that the release of 6.0 would be delayed. "Fair enough," I thought. And besides, Arity had not charged against my credit card so it was not like I was losing money in any way by waiting. When I received the upgrade in March I was surprised to see such a thin package (e.g., I knew right away there was no documentation in the package) and, upon opening the package, just finding disks, a cover letter, and a few brochures in there. I assumed that Arity would ship manuals later since they had shipped upgrade disks ahead of the documentation to me in the past. I then printed out a large amount of README type files and started studying the numerous changes that needed to be applied to the Arity 5.0 manuals. A day or so later I learned from a friend and fellow Arity user that he had spoken to someone at Arity and was told that Arity would not ship new manuals to accompany the upgrade. Please note that no where in Arity's cover letter was there an indication that no new documentation would accompany this release. The letter did say to read the various README files. But then, don't all upgrade cover letters? After seeing what I had gotten as an upgrade and some other considerations which I address below, I decided to ask Arity Prolog users on the net to write to Arity to voice any concerns they had about this upgrade. >Todd, if you had given us the courtesy of coming to us first, as Richard >O'Keefe assumed you had, you would then have much better information to >include in your posts. Richard writes: > >> Note that the poster who started this thread *had* gone to the vendor >> first. Going to the net afterwards was a perfectly sensible thing to do. > >Given the timing of the post, you did *not* come to us first, even though >your post implies that you have. That is what is so unfair about it. Ok.. Fine.. It is now March 20th as I write this... Although I did receive a message on my home answering machine, I have not received any other communication from Arity (aside from Paul's postings) about either my paper letter mailed around March 4 or my net posting. I would be as receptive to an e-mail response to either my paper letter or net posting. However, I have not received any answers to any of my questions either in the form as a net-posting (which Paul does not what to do and whose wishes I respect) or a paper letter. >Todd raises a variety of issues in his three posts and in his letter. His >letter has been answered and I will not respond to it here. As for the In her phone message to me, Meredith indicated she had written a letter responding to my questions. However, again, as of March 20th, I have not received that letter. No matter how we berate our Postal Service at times, I know for sure that in most cases letters from the east coast to Hawaii takes no more than 5 or 6 days when sent first class. >content of his posts there is much that Todd says that is accurate and >much that is not. I will agree that Arity's documentation leaves a lot >to be desired and does contain some inaccuracies. I should note that >the most recent review (AI Expert - Jan '91) described our documentation >as "two well-written manuals," even though it points out the problem with I read the Jan 91 issue of AI Expert which briefly reviewed Arity Prolog 5.1 and a number of other MS-DOS and Mac based Prologs. The review was very favorable in its assessment of Arity 5.1. I think it was a relatively fair review except for its note about Arity's documentation. I don't know what documentation the author of that review had, but the last documentation Arity sent me is dated 1988 and has numerous errors on nearly every page. As I mentioned before, Arity has not sent me something like 30 printed pages of documentation changes (due to software changes and documentation errors) in their 5.0, 5.1 and 6.0 upgrades. The "pure" Prolog part is pretty accurate, of course. But that doesn't matter since one can go to numerous sources to get clarification on Prolog programming. The real documentation problem lies in the extensions that Arity added to their Prolog. Many of these extensions are quite valuable in producing the kind of software many of us want to put out (menuing, dialog boxes, etc.). However, my manual is so full of red ink after making doc changes for 5.0 and 5.1 that there is no way I am going to take the time to apply 19 pages of corrections to dozens and dozens of pages of two manuals. >one. To reprint the manuals for this release would have both delayed the >release and raised the cost considerably, and Todd already feels that the Ok... You may think that I've been unkind (I don't). But here, I draw the line. Hey, Arity released the last maintenance upgrade (5.1) sometime in 1989 I think. This was just a bunch of fixes to patch up a buggy version 5.0 released in 1988. So, we users have been waiting over three years now for an upgrade. Believe me, we could have waited a few months more to get decent documentation. >price is too high (I will address pricing issues below). In fact, the >next "release" of the manuals will most-likely be on-line documentation, >a format that is a lot more easily updated than printed documentation >(not to mention cheaper). No disagreement here... It is cheaper and easier to update. I'm a firm believer of online documentation. I'm a firm believer in applying Hypertext techniques to documentation. BUT! Only as augmentation to hardcopy documentation. Call me old fashioned, but I still like to have a manual that I can stick little yellow post-it notes in and write in the margins. >Todd's other major point has to do with whether or not version 6.0 is >a "major upgrade." Todd equates this to whether or not the product has >a "modern programming environment (when compared to Borland C++, Quick C, >Actor, etc.)." Indeed, Arity's programming environment is not as full >featured as those mentioned, and we have never claimed otherwise. We do >provide a windowed editor, debugger, etc. and our environment is quite >usable, but not as powerful as those mentioned. Ok.. So, what is a major upgrade? Arity 6.0 does not seem to have any significant differences from 5.1. It has a few new extension predicates and fixed a few flaws. And, it no longer makes me press "OK" after I execute 'halt.' to get back to DOS. But I don't see anything that warrants a version number change from 5.1 to 6.0. At best, it is a maintenance fix and should have been advertised as such by using a version number like 5.2. >However Arity's focus in the Prolog market has never been on slick >development environments. We have always been targetted at the >professional, production programmer. Even though our products are Sorry, again... I cry "foul"... Is the implication that "professional" programmers all use clumsy primitive tools to do development? The integration of a good development environment with a functioning and optimized interpreter or compiler is the key to professional software development. >The comparison with Borland is highly misleading. Especially since their >pricing structure did not allow them to stay in the Prolog tools business Yes, but Turbo Prolog survives as PDC Prolog. I'm not saying that PDC Prolog is better than Arity. If I did, I would have switched to it long ago since it does provide a lot of the environmental features I want to see it Arity. However, the reason I did not switch to either Turbo or PDC Prolog is that I didn't consider it to be a "real" Prolog with its Pascal-like strong typing and other oddities. >for very long. Let's face it folks, good, bad, or indifferent, there are >a lot more C and C++ programmers out there than Prolog programmers. This >means that the average Prolog programmer must pay a larger proportion of >the development costs of good development tools if such tools are to remain >available. It does neither Arity nor its users any good to price ourselves >so low that we can't afford to remain in the business. Again.. "foul".... I just received an upgrade to my Sage Professional Editor (from version 1.0 to 1.1). Sage has about 145 employees from what I've read in a recent article about them. So, they are bigger than Arity but not what one would call huge in the software industry. This maintenance release was actually pretty substantial. Sage supplies full source code for their library functions, so I was able to look in detail at the changes they've made. Sage made a lot of signficant changes in this release. They've fixed a few bugs, added a bunch of interesting features, and sped up the editor (it was plenty fast in version 1.0). They also provided me with a complete set of new manuals (117, 133, and 422 pages of manuals). The Sage Editor upgrade, by the way, includes versions for both DOS and OS/2. Yes, the new manuals are missing a few last minute changes and additions that are in a README file. But that README file is nowhere near 19 pages long. And lest you say, "but it's just an editor..." Let me add that the Sage Professional Editor includes a compiler that allows you to change the library functions (remember Sage supplies full source code) or add your own functions. This editor language is a superset of AWK with many C features. I've used it for a few months now and I would say that it is as complex and full featured as many packages sold as software development languages. Oh, by the way.. What did I pay for this upgrade? *NOTHING* !!! It was a free upgrade.... Now, I have said several times now that I have had a lot of respect for Paul and for Arity Corp. But having tried to ensure that my respect for Paul and Arity was recognized by people reading my posting and having Paul repeatedly attack me, I think the key word here is "had". I think that Paul is making a lot of excuses and neither he nor anyone else at Arity has responded to my questions posted here and in my letter to them. While I would agree that the "Prolog aspects" of Arity Prolog meet all the requirements needed to write "Prolog" programs, the package itself falls far short of what "professional" programmers expect to be provided in a professional development system. And since Paul seems to like taking cheap shots at my programmer status.. Let me say that I posted from this University account since I use Arity Prolog in the development of software for my dissertation here. However, I spend most of my time as a non-university Systems Analyst. So, when I tell you Arity Prolog doesn't come near what I expect on my DOS and UNIX based development systems at work, I am not blowing hot air. It falls far short of what I have in my non-dissertation related work environment. So, bottom lines are: (1) Arity implied major changes in their product in their upgrade letter and in changing their version number from 5.1 to 6.0. It isn't a major upgrade. It is a maintenance release. (2) Professional software developers DO expect a modern development environment and find it an important aspect in their productivity. (3) Arity has not answer any questions posed to them by me as of March 20. Sorry to waste so much net-bandwidth here, folks. But I think Paul's defensiveness is simply an indication that the product itself does not have the substance to defend itself and I want to make sure that is communicated to potential customers since it appears Arity is not going to provide such essentials as updated documentation. Paul, if you want to flame me... Fine... But if that is all you are going to do (given that I have not received any answers yet) all you are going to prove is that Arity is unable to upgrade their products the way other small (Sage) and large (Borland) firms do and I think all of us who have used Arity Prolog for a long time now have to wonder what we can expect from Arity Corp. in the future or even if you will be there for us in the future. And, don't tell me that Arity or any other company will be around forever. Anyone seen a new release of Visicalc lately? -- Todd Ogasawara, U. of Hawaii UUCP: {uunet,ucbvax,dcdwest}!ucsd!nosc!uhunix!todd BITNET: todd@uhunix INTERNET: todd@uhunix.UHCC.HAWAII.EDU
bradley@cs.utexas.edu (Bradley L. Richards) (03/26/91)
Todd Ogasawara writes: >(1) Arity implied major changes in their product in their upgrade letter >and in changing their version number from 5.1 to 6.0. It isn't a major >upgrade. It is a maintenance release. >(2) Professional software developers DO expect a modern development >environment and find it an important aspect in their productivity. >(3) Arity has not answer any questions posed to them by me as of March 20. Todd raises a number of interesting points. Let me just say that I purchased Arity version 5.1 about a year ago, and ran into a number of problems. Some bugs, some absurd system limitations (like 64k maximum stack space), but to a large extent just a lack of features that any serious programmer now expects in a program development system. Discussions with Arity removed any hope that the system would improve anytime soon, so I stopped using it. If I purchase another PC Prolog, it will be LPA-386. A comment on a related issue: I object to the policy some companies (including Arity) have that says: "you want to report a bug, pay us $xxx for customer support." Sorry folks, but I expect a product that I purchase to work as advertised. If it doesn't, it's the responsibility of the manufacturer to fix it. Period. Bradley P.S. Todd seems to think that his opinions may be discounted by some folks if they think he's a student rather than someone with real-world experience. I hope that's not the case; lot's of us student types have spent many years in the real world.