00lhramer@bsu-ucs.uucp (I don't think, therefore I aint.) (09/11/90)
#1) Many of the users of CAS at BSU have been greatly annoyed at the need to "HAVE THEIR CAS USERNAMES 'RESET'" for various reasons. I believe that I have a potential fix for this problem. If in the file (I'm assuming it's a file) that contains the info about the person being logged into cas would also contain that person's process ID number, then a couple interesting things could be discearned between. Provided that person's pid matched the one in the master file, then somehow that person exited improperly. (This happens, sometimes the system will go down, or the person will have some difficulty with that particular terminal, etc...) The program should then allow them to log back into CAS. If, however, that person's pid doesn't match the one in the file, then if the PID in the file is an active process, then the peson should be disallowed to enter CAS otherwise, allow them to log in. #2) Many of the users here at BSU are very computer illiterate, and have a hard time dealing with the computers here. At some time or another, almost every CAS user finds a terminal that should allow CAS usage, but nontheless will not allow CAS to run on it. I've found a couple commands quite useful in fixing this problem. Both set the terminal attributes. $ SET TERMINAL/REGIS ! this should allow terminal to handle REGIS code and $ SET TERMINAL/DEVICE=VT200 ! of course this sets the emulation I'm sure there is some sort of escape sequence that duplicates this. If this were done before the program were executed, the program could better decide whether the user was, in fact, on an "UNSUPPORTED CAS TERMINAL". I'm not saying that all computer users are illiterate, extremely computer literate people have problems with CAS sometimes. They ask our often under-educated lab assistants for help, but most often to no avail. Problem #1 also creates another problem, the need for a professor to take time to reset the usernames. I'm sure that you have other ideas on how to make CAS better; I just wanted to suggest an improvement. This is the only way I know how to suggest an improvement. Sincerely, Leslie Ramer (CS Major, Ball State University, Muncie, IN)