On Dec 28, 2007, at 10:16 AM, Tom Marchant wrote:
On Thu, 27 Dec 2007 20:53:09 -0600, Ed Gould wrote:
We finally agree on something. One of the many standards we
implemented at a company I worked for was that a program could *NOT*
use display upon console for *ANYTHING*.
There *might* be exceptions, but they would be very rare. When I
was just
starting out in the early '70s, we had a few "checkwriting"
programs that
printed checks on continuous forms that had the check numbers pre-
printed
on them. Does anyone still do that? Part of the application
requirement was
that the ledger be updated with the check number. This required
that the
printer be allocated to the program and that there be some
communication
with the operator.
There was one such checkwriter program that was being tested and the
message came out in the console, "POSION THE FROMS". The operators
couldn't figure out what it meant. Dave was a very talented
programmer, but
couldn't spell to save his life. The message should have said
something
like "Position and align the check forms in the printer".
--
Tom,
When I was first starting out I was "elected" to work Christmas day
t o print such forms out on a DOS system (no less). NO operators were
in the computer room just me and no one to ask questions of. The
programmers who had written the program to print stuff like this had
many of the same issues you talked about and they managed to get it
right without programmer/operator interaction. I was able within 2
or 3 minutes of arriving to start the process up and yes I had paper
jams and paper rips and additional boxes to be loaded and I was able
to do so without communications with the program. Oh yes I forgot the
ink roll ran out and I had to reprint 200-300 forms. That did require
communication but IIRC it was a push of the interrupt button and the
program made a query and I responded and put in the "sequence number"
and it started from there. So in that case communication was needed
but could have be done with parm= on the exec card just as easily, IMO.
Ed
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