| I have to agree that this is a major bug and a major disfunction. There
seem to be two problems:
o /OUTPUT's behaviour is pathological in the way it renames things.
Customers are going to expect it to work and you can't siumply say
"fixed in next release". This is one bug you can't make into a
feature by DOCUMENTing it (sorry for the pun - I couldn't resist).
o RENAMING the output is brain-damaged behaviour to begin with. I just
ran into another case of where /OUTPUT doesn't work. I was chasing
a formatter problem ("text is too long to fit in line" or something
like that. So I used /OUTPUT=TT: to get the results interspersed
with the error messages (as you can do with DSR) and it tried to
RENAME a disk file to a terminal device. A LOG file below demonstrates
the problem.
$ document output_test memo line/out=tt:
%DOC-I-IDENT, VAX DOCUMENT T1.0-008
[ T a g T r a n s l a t i o n ]...
%TAG-I-TAG_IDENT, T1.0-002
%TAG-I-DEFSLOADD, End of Loading of Tag Definitions
%TAG-I-ENDPASS_1, End of first pass over the input
%TAG-I-CPU_USAGE, Pass 1: 16.5 Pass 2: 6.0 Total: 22.4 seconds
[ T e x t F o r m a t t i n g ]...
%TEX-I-IDENT, T1.0-005
%TEX-I-PAGESOUT, 6 pages written.
-TEX-I-OUTFILENAME, 'disk$csse_disk:[withers.reports]OUTPUT_TEST.DVI_LINE'
[ D e v i c e C o n v e r s i o n ]...
%DVC-I-IDENT, DVC$LPR T1.0-4
%DVC-I-PAGESOUT, 6 pages written to file:
DISK$CSSE_DISK:[WITHERS.REPORTS]OUTPUT_TEST.LINE
%DOC-F-CANT_RENAME, Can't rename DISK$CSSE_DISK:[WITHERS.REPORTS]OUTPUT_TEST.LINE to TT:[WITHERS.REPORTS]OUTPUT_TEST.LINE;
I hope you can get this fixed before V1.0 goes out the door.
This is a MAJOR show-stopper!
BobW
|
| > I hope you can get this fixed before V1.0 goes out the door.
Sorry*, but V1.0 is already "out the door"! The product kit is in
the hands of SQM -- the last stop before SDC. As I understand it,
it's even too late to change the release notes. (I don't know if
this topic made it in.)
--Mark
*(Sorry in the context of this complaint, but happy in a lot of
other ways.)
|
| RE: .0--.4
Before addressing the timing issues related to our V1.0 ship, let me first
address the criticality of the functionality affected. /OUTPUT is
a minor piece of functionality, and its entire function can be duplicated
by using either the RENAME command:
$ DOCUMENT myfile S.R LN03
$ RENAME myfile.ln03 [another_directory]another_name.ln03
or, for moving the file to a different device:
$ DOCUMENT myfile S.R LN03
$ COPY dev:[dir]myfile.ln03 another_device:[another_directory]another_name.ln03
$ DELETE dev:[dir]myfile.ln03;
/OUTPUT was designed as a convenience, a "one-plus",
but it is *not* a major piece of VAX DOCUMENT's functionality,
as the above commands perform exactly the same function.
Now, as to timing and V1.0 ship.
We do not intend to hold up shipping V1.0 because of problems with /OUTPUT.
Neither, however, do we want to give our customers a one-plus (/OUTPUT)
which does not do what they would expect it to do, as that would indeed
cause problems with customer expectations and headaches for the support
organization. Therefore, we have decided to "undocument" the /OUTPUT qualifier,
and to document the use of the RENAME, COPY, and DELETE commands.
In this way, customers get exactly the same functionality that /OUTPUT
would have given them, and we get our product out the door on time.
Internally, we will fix /OUTPUT (just as we fix other bugs which are
reported to us) and make the fixed version available as part of a subsequent
baselevel.
We take this notesfile and your comments *very* seriously, and it was not
our intention to give anyone the impression that we were closing the door
on being responsive to problems and issues. Indeed, your
comments about what customers would be led to expect were valuable input
into our decision on this matter.
--Brian Adler
|
| I'm sorry I don't have the time to recreate the problem for you, but it
seems to me that when I first encountered the problem I created a .com file
to handle processing and renaming for me in one shot...and for some reason the
RENAME did not work. I don't recall if the rename failure occurred when
DOCUMENT renamed the file to SYMBOL_NAMES.SDML, or if it occurred when I tried
processing a profile; I think it was the former. Both strange occurrences
are noted in .0 and .1.
Anyway, please test the rename using at least the command qualifiers that I
stated earlier, both at DCL and within a .com file, before you document
anything. At best you'll find everything is ok; at worst you'll find you
have to document it a slightly different way.
Rose
|