Conference 7.286::digital

    I'd like to get a banner made up that adheres to the guidelines in .0. 
    Does anyone know of an approved vendor that can provide this service?
    
              |<-------------------------- 3-6 ft -------------------------->|
          --- +--------------------------------------------------------------+
           ^  |                                                              |
           |  |  StorageWorks LOGO       Multivendor Customer Service (MCS)  |
           |  |                                                              |
           |  |   Software           +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+          Networks       |
           |  |                      |d|i|g|i|t|a|l|                         |
           |  |                      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+                         |
 	   |  |	 PC Logo                DUPS Expo                            |
        18-24"|                                                              |
           |  |                                     Components & Peripherals |
           |  |   Systems Integration (SI)                                   |
           |  |                                                              |
           |  |                          Custom Systems & Solutions (SS)     |
           v  |                                                              |
          --- +--------------------------------------------------------------+

Your local purchasing group can find a Digital-approved vendor, but
you will have to guide the vendor's work to ensure that it complies 
with WW Brand Identity guidelines.  Order the books in the base note 
and contact the Brand Identity program office.

	  DTN:      244 6100.  	    
	  All-in-1: brand programs @AKO
	  Internet: [email protected]

   re: .1
    
>    I'd like to get a banner made up that adheres to the guidelines in .0. 
>    Does anyone know of an approved vendor that can provide this service?
>    
>              |<-------------------------- 3-6 ft -------------------------->|
>          --- +--------------------------------------------------------------+
>           ^  |                                                              |
>           |  |  StorageWorks LOGO       Multivendor Customer Service (MCS)  |
>           |  |                                                              |
>           |  |   Software           +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+          Networks       |
>           |  |                      |d|i|g|i|t|a|l|                         |
>           |  |                      +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+                         |
> 	    |  |	 PC Logo                DUPS Expo                     |
>        18-24"|                                                              |
>           |  |                                     Components & Peripherals |
>           |  |   Systems Integration (SI)                                   |
>           |  |                                                              |
>           |  |                          Custom Systems & Solutions (SS)     |
>           v  |                                                              |
>          --- +--------------------------------------------------------------+
    
    Hello, are we trying to confuse somebody here ??!!
    Do you realize the company's name figures no where in a banner 
    4 ft by 2 ft large !!!

    Please consider adding the company's name in a way that would also bring 
    out DEC prominently (which incidently the whole world knows Digital by)

    How about:

	+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+  
	|d|i|g|i|t|a|l|  
	+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+  
	 D...E....C...  
	 ^
	 |
	 spelled out fully as Digital Equipment Corporation
         with D, E, C in v LARGE Caps and BOLDER color from the rest
         so that D E C stands out clearly.

Re: 3

The "Digital Brand Identity Guidelines," referred to in the basenote,
states very clearly that DEC is not to be used.  The following extract
comes from page 15:

	...to give all our entities a single name, and to reinforce 
	our brand, the name we go by is 'Digital'--not the acronym
	DEC, or any other variations.
		
The "Guidelines" document also provides instructions and examples for the
proper use of the DIGITAL logo on pages 16 through 20. 

Regards,
Alice

...and furthermore, no-one's allowed to make jokes about it.
   Humour is not consistent with Digital's Brand Identity.

    The Corporate Standard:  
    
    There is a Certain Standard Caliber of ammunition that Is To Be Used.
    
    There is a Certain Standard Ear in which the muzzle is to be placed.
    
    There is a Certain Standard Mantra which is to be spoken...
    
    	... before the trigger is to be pulled.
    
    ... and that Mantra is "-< Now we are Digital, no longer DEC >-"
    
    
    
    I repeat what I've said before...  These are views that are mine only,
    and I *never* repeat them in front of customers.  The above is simply
    my way of agreeing with .3 ...
    
    Stated less baldly, well maybe FINE, for PURELY GRAPHICAL stuff...  But
    how's about relaxing the tongue-twisting in spoken and printed running
    text?  I tell ya, we'd save a deal of confusion (plus avoid pratfalls
    such as those committed by TRMITW) if we just agreed that it is better
    not shoveling against the tide of Whorf's Law...  
    
    Which (pardon my repeating myself) an unchangeable, heavily documented
    and well-understood psycholinguistic property of human beings.  As a
    symbol-using species, we tend to search and then fix on UNAMBIGOUS and
    SHORT representations of concepts.  As concepts get MORE popular or
    relevant, their NAMES get shortened.  Telephone=>phone, Television=>TV,
    et cetera=>etc. ...  No sorry, we decree that this cannot be so.  
    
    Fiat Umbra.                 
    

    
    Re, .4/.1 banner
    
    The primary contention in .3 was aimed at the fact that while the
    |d|i|g|i|t|a|l| logo stood out loud and clear, there was no company it
    related to.  I mean, if someone were looking at the logo for the first
    time, which company would one associate the logo to ?? (because the
    company's name is nowhere seen).
    
    To create an assoication, don't we need at least two objects?? By
    omitting the company's name, isn't some purpose of brand identification
    actually lost??
    
    The ploy to bring out D-E-C into a sharper focus in the company's name 
    (in .3) was purely incidental ;-}. And hey, if it hurts our company, by
    all means tone down the colors of D,E,C and make the letters small as
    they go.
    
    Personally, i think it won't hurt at all,  since all we are doing here
    is gain extra milage. The intent was NOT to underplay  |d|i|g|i|t|a|l|
    but to gain MORE brand recognition by also associating |d|i|g|i|t|a|l|
    with DEC which is not exactly unknown. But then again, lesser minds
    like us don't have the big picture.
    
    JMHO. And, this is just a humble suggestion and is in no way meant to
    criticise in any way, an obviously well intentioned effort towards
    brand name recognition and  standardisation. 
    
    Thx,
    
    /vj                                 

    I was never a convert to the "digital=good, DEC=bad" camp, I know,
    but... After all the reasoned argument in favour of making capital out
    of the fact that DEC is already a well-known name for us, and that the
    word "digital" is an adjective, and a very commonly-used one at that, is
    anyone else *really* depressed and saddened that we're still careering
    doen this stupid "digital=good, DEC=bad" path?
    
    Laurie$disheartened.

    Yo.
    
    But at  least we can vent about it.  
    
    BTW, if "Schadenfreude" is "taking pleasure in the misfortune of others"
    then what is this?  I guess it's simply masochism.  Well maybe,
    constructive masochism.  Flattering ourselves that someday, someone
    might be found who both agrees and can change things.
    
    Now you've gone & got ME disheartened...  Cut that out!!! :-<
    

re Note 4121.7 by AQU027::SAXENA:

>     The primary contention in .3 was aimed at the fact that while the
>     |d|i|g|i|t|a|l| logo stood out loud and clear, there was no company it
>     related to.  I mean, if someone were looking at the logo for the first
>     time, which company would one associate the logo to ?? (because the
>     company's name is nowhere seen).
  
        Perhaps the company intends to do what the performer
        "formerly known as Prince" has done?

        Bob

    >    Perhaps the company intends to do what the performer
    >    "formerly known as Prince" has done?
    
    I received e-mail recently that referred to us as "the company
    formerly known as DEC."
    					andrew

    The Company's name is Digital Equipment Corporation.  The stock ticker
    symbol is DEC.  Many customers know and refer to us as "DEC".  Until
    all 3 of these undeniable facts are no longer, we will continue to
    struggle with the results of Corporate denial.  
    
    This is simply ridiculous; things like this continue to erode my faith
    in our ability to turn this company around, compete, and prosper...

    
    	Wait a minute, folks. We are not floundering, and we are competing
    very well thank you.
    
    	Yes, I , for one, think we should capitalize on the DEC moniker;
    but, I , for two, do not run this joint, and have very limited access
    to anyone who does. Maybe the boys in the suits will wise up some day,
    maybe they won't. But for now, we DEC/Digital are starting to get our
    act together and taking it on the road...
    
    	Thanks to the "little people" here who are doing it by ones and
    twos....
    
    	Now if I could just find a steamroller and do some organizational
    flattening ;-)
    
    
    		the Greyhawk

Searching the VMS 6.2 spd, hot off of the VTX IR presses, we find:

$ sear vms.spd/stats/noout dec

Files searched:                 1       Buffered I/O count:         4
Records searched:            5311       Direct I/O count:          26
Characters searched:       182799       Page faults:               74
Records matched:              177       Elapsed CPU time:  0 00:00:00.81
Lines printed:                  0       Elapsed time:      0 00:00:01.01

Comments?

Rick

RE: .14

...  most of the matches are DECwindows, DECnet, DEC C, and DEC nnnn machine
product names.  One is "decompressed".  Didn't see DEC used as a company name.

						Brian

    ... and what about matches with DIGITAL and DIGITAL EQUIPMENT
    CORPORATION?
    
    :-)
    

    Mods should pls consider moving .3 onwards to the DEC/Digital Note.
    Otherwise, we may unwittigly be casting shadow on the theme spelled out
    in .0 which is honest and serious and has nothing to do with
    DEC/Digital controversy but deals strictly with promoting a brand in
    line with Company's policy whether right or wrong.
    
    Thx.

    Ahhhh c'mon let's just rehash this again here.  Then some executive
    will have to sign off on more DEC, ooopps Digital disk drives to store
    all this dribble again.  It's like a boomarang, every time you throw it
    out there it comes back and whacks you in the back of your skull.
    
    I like DEC.  I like Digital.  I like Digital Equipment Corporation.
    And you know what?  So do the CUSTOMERS, you know, the one's with the
    money.  Heck, they can call me Ray and they can call me Jay and on and
    on and on as long as they keep sending me P.O.'s with our part numbers
    on them.  Cause' you know what??  Tomorrows Thursday, payday once again
    and man oh man that payroll has got to be a big one.  Time to
    feed the money machine so the little gray checks keep coming out and
    our CFO doesn't have an embolism in his brain one day while looking
    over our statement of cash flows.
    
    Mav

    RE: .18
    
    And your point is?
    
    Laurie.

Two of the Brand Identity guidelines, "Building Our Brand and Identity" and
"Promotional Materials Framework User's Guide" will not be available through
the IR. Corporate Communications has decided to post them on the WWW because
much of the intormation is in the full color illustrations. I do not have a
date on which these WWW pages will be available.
                    
                          

    If these materials need to be available, we would be happy to put them
    on our VTX DEMO server for you.  VTX is more than capable of displaying
    full color illustrations - it's the IR infobase that is the problem,
    not the underlying VTX software.
    
    If you make the files available to us, we should be able to add them to
    the application within an hour.  Users can connect to the infobase
    using the keyword VTXDEMO.  We can assign keywords to both documents if
    you like so users can immediately 'launch' the guideline documents. 
    Users coming in via the VTX Windows client will be able to view/save
    the documents in their native format, or they can use the built-in VTX
    viewers.  Users coming in via VTs can save the documents in their
    original format and then use something like XV to view them from the
    VT.
    
    Please contact me at DTN 237-2063.
    
    Gita Devi
    Information Delivery Services Group
    
    
    

    I don't wanna use any keywords.  I don't wanna know I gotta press PF1,
    kp5, etc.  I don't wanna find out my tab key doesn't work.  Screw VTX.
    
    I want something that looks like WebCrawler, where I can enter a
    keyword or two, like:
    
    		DEC/EDI
    
    and see:
    
    	DEC/EDI users group notes conference
    	DEC_EDI internal conference
    	Stars
    	Price Book
    	Client Recommendations
    
    Then I wanna click on one or, if I'm on a character-cell terminal, I
    wanna hit SELECT or enter a number or something.  I'm SICK of VTX, I'm
    SICK of the cryptic keywords, options that don't work, outdated
    information.  I'm (yaaaaaaarrrrggghhhhhh)...
    
    (Barry: He seems to have had a stroke!)
    
    (Andy: Quick!  Let's get help!)
    
    (Barry: Who do we call for help?)
    
    (Andy: Here.  Let's try VTX STROKE.... Nope, that's not it.  Hmmm.)
    

    >    (Andy: Here.  Let's try VTX STROKE.... Nope, that's not it.  Hmmm.)
    
    Try VTX EA
    That's for Emergency Alert

    Heck, just stick the stuff in a STARS database, and use it.  Or, you
    search the database via lynx/Mosiac/Netscape and COMET.

�    Heck, just stick the stuff in a STARS database, and use it.  Or, you
�    search the database via lynx/Mosiac/Netscape and COMET.

    Heck, just stick the stuff in a STARS database, and use it.  Or, you
    search the database via lynx/Mosiac/Netscape and STARS at
    http://aztech.cxo.dec.com:1999/stars.

    Sorry, but I had to do some of my own advertising here.  :)

    - Bryan
      STARS Development

    
    The issue is $'s who's going to pay to convert/setup the databases.
    I don't think anyone could give you a valid argument against conversion. 
    
    I remember when VTX was first released. There was a frenzy in the
    company to convert everything to VTX. Unfortunatly I don't see the same
    frenzy to move to Netscape/lynx/Mosiac supportable formats. Maybe where
    just short a few bodies!
    
    Pete

  NIH wouldn't have anything to do with it, would it?

  "It's *OUR* legacy database and we like it just the way it
  is, thanks."
                                   Atlant

No, probably not.  It's "it works fine the way it is, and we have no funding
to convert to the latest fad in interfaces".

				Steve

Steve:

> It's "it works fine the way it is, ...

  "Fine" must mean different things to different people.

  I'm aware of a few VTX infobases that work. I'm not sure I'm
  aware of any that work "fine", especially when compared to most
  of the Web pages I've seen.

                                   Atlant

I'm suggesting what the position of the database maintainers is.  To them,
it works fine (and indeed most of the VTX databases I access do work fine,
if a little clumsy.)  Sure, we'd all love point and click access with
pretty pictures, but such conversion is not free, and you have to make sure
you don't shut out people with non-graphics devices (a lot of them out there!)

With budgets the way they are, there is little money for redoing something
that isn't obviously broken.

				Steve

    Ah, but non-graphics devices do have a way in, via lynx.
    
    Granted, it's not obviously broken, just tough to find the info that
    you want, if you don't know the proper page.  Unless there is a way to
    search the text of the pages for the info you want that I'm not aware
    of.
    
    As for conversion, it's pretty easy to add an article to a database. 
    We have a procedure that will extract a mail message and put it into
    our local database.
    
    One problem would be finding a server to store this information in. 
    TIMA uses almost the same sort of mechanism for technical articles.
    

    VTX does have full text search capabilities and has for years. It also
    can handle any binary file format you want to add to it.  And the
    windows client is all point and click.
    
    The problem is getting those folks who maintain the VTX infobases to
    add these capabilities.  We maintain about 40+ infobases and when we
    offered to index their infobases (for a modest charge to cover the
    increased disk space on our systems) most didn't think it was
    necessary!
    
    Again - it's not always the software that's at fault.  I often wonder
    if those people complaining against VTX the loudest have ever seen/used
    the latest windows client...doesn't appear like it.
    
    And - why don't those who complain about VTX ever mention all the times
    you try to connect to a URL and wait and wait and wait and then get
    told you can't get there!   And outdated content isn't limited just 
    to VTX.
    
    Gita

    No VTX is not broken but the fact of the matter is it's not the
    standard. Try finding someone on the street who knows anything about
    VTX. With the burgeoning business of internet provider's people are
    getting more and more familiar with tools like Netscape.  I don't think 
    Netscape is the latest fade I think it's getting firmly entrenched and
    we can ignore it or join in. We missed the Window's boat and finally
    are catching it. Do we want this to happen again?  If we could get the 
    fever for internet UI tools like we had in the mid 80's for VTX the 
    side affects would certainly help the revenue pipe.

    Pete 
    

    In the continuing trend of "*I* don't like it, change it, NOW!"
    
    Here we have a case of the often beaten up Brand Identity folks
    putting their information on the web, and *not* in VTX IR.  That leads
    to the immediate rathole of "VTX sucks" and "IR" sucks.  (The other
    people in Digital who seem to be victims of gratuitous slams at every
    opportunity is anyone connected to VTX or IR.)  We even get treated
    to mistatements of fact such as VTX can't search.  VTX can search.
    In fact, the *IR* can search.
    
    
    Now, don't get me wrong.  *I* HATE IR!  Given the choice, *I* want
    a good browser.
    
    But you know what?  The people (my customers) who need the stuff
    which ends up in IR, you know what they tell me?  They tell me they
    use it and it works.  And more, they tell me that the most of the
    people who need my information still don't surf.  And you know what
    else?  Even more amazingly, they find it easier to remember "VTX IR"
    than they do "http://sdtad.zko.dec.com/pub/csdpg/"
    
    
    So what do I want?  Do I want the way *I* want to find information
    (browse the web) to be the way they find information?  Or do I want
    the way *they* find information (IR) be the way they find information?
    
    If I focus on the purpose (getting the information into the hands of
    people who need it) I'll answer that question easily.  I'll be
    giving it to them they way they want it.
    
    (Which is why I now use Word, Powerpoint, etc etc etc etc....)
    
    (And why our information is *also* getting put on the web, to reach the
    folks who browse.)
    
    								-mr. bill

    No one has to remember an http path, they can lift it in
    once and then add it to their hot list/bookmark list.  Heck, they
    can use the Internet Search facility packaged free with Netscape.
    
    Quick, when was the last time someone actually found info they needed
    via the VTX Systems and Options catalog when they didn't already
    know the part number?
    

    Re: 4121.34
    
    Just to clarify something:
    
    The search available in IR is NOT the full text retrieval searching
    that is inherently available with VTX.  You can do your search in the
    IR for word(s) in Title, by keyterms and by document ID.  It is
    limited.  But that's the way the IR was designed.
    
    Other than that, your note was well-written and the points very valid. 
    
    Gita

 VTX also has (book)MARK functions.
 Use HELP/ ask your local support!

 FWIW:  I prefer NETSCAPE (but use both), as appropriate.

 Des G.

There is nothing I know of to preclude IR from containing
files with color graphics. I've helped prepare a number of
color PS files and PDF files that ended up in IR. In fact almost 
all the thousands of {BW,color} clip-art graphics from the ArtLibrary
are "in" IR. The main consideration is probably file size for 
e-mailing; since few people probably want to receive a 20 Mb PS 
file in their inbox (which the "Building our brand identity" booklet
could easily surpass in size). However an Acrobat PDF file should 
be considerably smaller and therefore a good candidate for inclusion 
in IR.

   erik