Re: z/OS V2R5 Will be the Last Release to Include JES3

[John McKown]

On Wed, Feb 27, 2019 at 2:43 PM Knutson, Samuel <
samuel.knut...@compuware.com> wrote:

> Do you the think the z/OS overall ecosystem and the platform is made
> stronger or weaker by getting to one JES?
>

Yes.


>
> I think that for a core part of the mainframe platform rationalizing to a
> single standard configuration of the OS from two options makes it more
> sustainable.  Vendors and IBM can avoid duplicate investments and customers
> can better rely on pervasive support by software and an increase in the
> available supply of skills to operate their systems.  In my opinion IBM
> should have made this definitive choice sooner this amounts to acceptance
> of prevailing trends.
>

I like what I've read about the addition of JES3 type facilities into JES2.
Of course, at this place, I'll likely never see them. But, then, we have
been acquired by United Healthcare One, so I don't know what the future
will bring. Well, death is guaranteed, but before that is a bit iffy. (or
is that too morbid for this early in the morning?)



>
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Sam Knutson  |  VP, Product Management  |  Compuware
> @samknutson |  linkedin.com/in/samknutson
> samuel.knut...@compuware.com  |  M: +1 301 996-1318
>

-- 
I just burned 2000 calories!
That's the last time I'll nap with brownies in the oven.

Maranatha! <><
John McKown

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Re: z/OS V2R5 Will be the Last Release to Include JES3

[Matt Hogstrom]

Matt Hogstrom
m...@hogstrom.org
+1-919-656-0564
PGP Key: 0x90ECB270

“You can’t put too much water in a nuclear reactor"

> On Feb 28, 2019, at 7:22 AM, John McKown  wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Feb 27, 2019 at 2:43 PM Knutson, Samuel <
> samuel.knut...@compuware.com> wrote:
> 
>> Do you the think the z/OS overall ecosystem and the platform is made
>> stronger or weaker by getting to one JES?
>> 
> 
> Yes.
> 
Overall change can be hard, but, moving to one has benefits of focused 
development and delivery perhaps at the unfortunate cost of some function.  
Life is a set of tradeoffs.
> 
>> 
>> I think that for a core part of the mainframe platform rationalizing to a
>> single standard configuration of the OS from two options makes it more
>> sustainable.  Vendors and IBM can avoid duplicate investments and customers
>> can better rely on pervasive support by software and an increase in the
>> available supply of skills to operate their systems.  In my opinion IBM
>> should have made this definitive choice sooner this amounts to acceptance
>> of prevailing trends.
>> 
> 
> I like what I've read about the addition of JES3 type facilities into JES2.
> Of course, at this place, I'll likely never see them. But, then, we have
> been acquired by United Healthcare One, so I don't know what the future
> will bring. Well, death is guaranteed, but before that is a bit iffy. (or
> is that too morbid for this early in the morning?)
> 
Spot on … just truth :) 
> 
> 
>> 
>> 
>> Best Regards,
>> 
>> Sam Knutson  |  VP, Product Management  |  Compuware
>> @samknutson |  linkedin.com/in/samknutson
>> samuel.knut...@compuware.com  |  M: +1 301 996-1318
>> 
> 
> -- 
> I just burned 2000 calories!
> That's the last time I'll nap with brownies in the oven.
> 
> Maranatha! <><
> John McKown
> 
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> For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
> send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN


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Re: New look and linking for V2.3 product documentation PDFs

[Allan Staller]

Ref: 
https://www-01.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R3Library

I observed one thing. The introductory "new style" screens are portrait 
oriented and take up a lot  of vertical real estate.
The new screens generate a lot of unnecessary scrolling.

I have a laptop and a desktop, both with landscape oriented monitors.
The only portrait oriented device I have is a cell phone.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I spend *VERY LITTLE* time reviewing manuals on 
my cell phone.
Reduced use  of vertical real estate would go a long way to enhancing the user 
experience.

Thanks for all of your efforts and thanks for the heads up on the new link 
styles.



-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List  On Behalf Of 
Susan Shumway
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2019 9:01 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: New look and linking for V2.3 product documentation PDFs

Hi all,

I want to make you aware that every PDF in the z/OS V2.3 library was just 
refreshed to update the visual style and link coding. Because of the link 
coding changes, clicking on a link in an old-style PDF to a new style PDF will 
not work, and vice versa. So, to ensure that all cross-book links continue to 
work for you, ensure that you download the entire fresh set of library PDFs 
from 
https://apac01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ibm.com%2Fservers%2Fresourcelink%2Fsvc00100.nsf%2Fpages%2FzOSV2R3Librarydata=02%7C01%7Callan.staller%40HCL.COM%7C387bcaf360e54f3564d808d69d290d06%7C189de737c93a4f5a8b686f4ca9941912%7C0%7C1%7C636869197008313274sdata=Wj%2FzVYo2im8YpdAP9Wwiq5%2BxR0XUCsG6okyRhAba25E%3Dreserved=0
 as soon as you get the chance.

-Sue Shumway

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Re: z/OS 2.4 Announcement Letter (Preview)

[Dana Mitchell]

On Tue, 26 Feb 2019 11:31:17 -0600, John McKown  
wrote:
>>
>Yummy! Deploy z/Linux Docker containers on z/OS to run on the z/OS image
>itself. I don't know what the NoSQL VSAMDB is, but that sounds interesting
>too.
>

Interesting, yes.  Enough enticement for a small shop to want to try running 
Linux work in a z/OS container an a platform with perceived higher costs?  
Probably not around here.

It reminds me of how OS/2 could run Windows apps quite well (In some ways, 
WinOS/2 was better than real Windows), really became incentive for software 
developers to focus on Windows versions of their products and ignore native 
OS/2 support completely.
--
Dana

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Re: z/OS V2R5 Will be the Last Release to Include JES3

[Larre Shiller]

> Do you the think the z/OS overall ecosystem and the platform is made stronger 
> or weaker by getting to one JES?

Well... I guess there are a number of ways to look at that.  But I think that 
IBM runs the risk of losing some number of z/OS customers as a result of this, 
which could in the long term affect the overall IBM revenue stream and the life 
expectancy of the z/OS platform.  I have to assume that the number-crunchers at 
IBM have already factored this into their calculations and have come to the 
conclusion that the risk is worth the reward here.

In the near term, some larger and more complex JES3 installations, and 
especially those in the public sector that have constant external pressure put 
on them to "modernize" their systems (whatever that means... typically meaning 
"move to Linux" or "the AWS cloud"), may simply take this opportunity to move 
to a completely different platform.  Or simply speed up the already on-going 
effort to eliminate (what is perceived as) legacy software with a high 
"technical debt" cost by moving to a different/modern platform.  This is indeed 
a very real risk... and IBM has put many of us in a box.

For those JES2 shops out there... imagine how your shop has grown over the past 
30 years and what products/services that you support that have an API or in 
some way interface with JES.  Just imagine what would it take for you to be 
able to know for sure that this conversion will be 100% successful?  IBM can 
add as much JES3 functionality into JES2 as it wants to, but at the end of the 
day, you still have to do the conversion and ensure that your environment is 
100% functional the day after the conversion.  And how much fun do you think it 
will be to convert 16 SYSPLEXes and 300K MIPS-worth of workload (OK, so 30% of 
it is in a single SYSPLEX)...?

A JES3-to-JES2 conversion effort is a high risk change that requires 
essentially the same level of effort as a conversion from one platform to 
another--but it has the disadvantage of a 100% "must-go-right" overnight IPL 
switch.  And in the end, there's nothing to show for it... other than a 2 
instead of a 3 and a line item in the CxO's spreadsheet that shows the millions 
of dollars spent on R, additional products, test time, personnel costs and 
lost productivity.  Also, I certainly would not want to be the public official 
testifying in front of a Congressional panel the week after seeing the 
"Critical System Failure Affects Millions of Seniors" headline in the local 
paper.  Would you put your professional reputation on the line and tell your 
CxO that "everything is going to be all right" the day before a conversion like 
this?

On the other hand, moving to a different platform allows a staged application 
migration and a completely modernized environment--rich with new functionality 
and without the "legacy" problems that persist on z/OS while at the same time 
minimizing and compartmentalizing the risk to critical production applications. 
 So... why would a CxO choose to spend millions of dollars on a costly and 
risky conversion effort (even if it were logistically possible), instead of 
using those same funds to completely modernize that same environment...?

Similarly, very small shops that do not have the personnel or resources to 
perform a conversion will probably wait this out for a while and then simply 
move off the platform.  For medium-sized shops, it's probably a wash.  Overall, 
the number of customers affected here is probably rather small, but given the 
size of some JES3 shops, if this chases away enough JES3 shops, it could 
seriously negatively affect the overall installed MIP count and thus the long 
term stability of the platform.

So... perhaps the shops that remain on z/OS will be in a better position... at 
least for a while, until those remaining shops also start drifting away from 
the platform for one reason or another until eventually there's nobody left to 
turn out the lights.

Larre Shiller
US Social Security Administration
Office: 410.965.2209
 
“The opinions expressed in this post are mine personally and do not necessarily 
reflect the opinion of the US Social Security Administration and/or the US 
Government.”

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Re: CPU time and zIIP

[Peter Relson]

No more assumptions on my part, so what tools would show the correct 
time(s) for real time monitoring if not SDSF? 
RMF? Omegamon?  And now that you throw Java in the mix or USS spanned 
tasks I don't think any real time monitor can account for all CPU time 
GCPU and zIIPTIME 


SDSF shows the correct time(s). What in any way leads you to think what is 
shown is not correct? SDSF shows what it shows. The data is what the data 
is.  If you have a requirement for some other piece of data, then describe 
that in detail and we can tell you if it is available or not. In general 
the system keeps the data that if finds a need for, often (but not 
necessarily for only that reason) to make its way into SMF records. 

Peter Relson
z/OS Core Technology Design


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Re: z/OS V2R5 Will be the Last Release to Include JES3

[John McKown]

On Wed, Feb 27, 2019 at 3:50 PM Seymour J Metz  wrote:

> I would consider JES3 superior to JES2, but such questions rarely have a
> consensus answer.
>
> Is TSO really considered by all to be better than CMS? Is REXX really
> considered by all to be better than Perl? Is P/I really considered by all
> to be superior to C? I couldn't even get consensus on C versus C++, and
> they are at least similar.
>

No way. I adored CMS compared to TSO. And this was in the 1980s time frame.

PERL VS. REXX? As it now stands on z/OS, REXX is better due to its superior
interface with TSO and other systems such as ISPF, SDSF, et alias. Given
than IBM has "outsourced" PERL to RocketSoftware, I don't know how viable
PERL really is in z/OS. This is not a knock on Rocket, I think they did a
good job porting PERL (and Python). But keeping up with the advances with
FOSS languages such as PERL, Python, Ruby, ... is very time and resource
intensive. I don't really expect Rocket to keep up with the changes. And
then there is CPAN with a lot of PERL routines, some of which can't run on
z/OS, as is, due to C routines which would need to be ported. As you often
say "I hate EBCDIC!" But given what I read about IBM supporting the running
of "most" z/Linux Docker images under z/OS, this may be a way to get on the
FOSS bandwagon if it is done well.


>
>
> --
> Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
> http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3
>
>
-- 
I just burned 2000 calories!
That's the last time I'll nap with brownies in the oven.

Maranatha! <><
John McKown

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Re: CPU time and zIIP

[Carmen Vitullo]

I Probably wandering off the main topic of the OP's question, my initial 
response was 


according to SDSF 


ECPU% CPU usage consumed within the address space (RMF) 


to Brians query  



Hello, 

I'm trying to understand the CPU and ECPU times displayed on SDSF and the 
relation to zIIP processing time. 

For example, here is a CICS region running a Java web service. 

*CPU-Time ECPU-Time GCP-Time zIIP-Time zICP-Time zIIP-NTime* 

* 164.42 166.28 90.89 30.21 3.42 71.29* 

Here is a CICS transaction executing in the region to display various ASSB 
fields. 

 CPU DISPLAY * 

*ASCBEJST. . . . . . : 162.20* 

*ASCBSRBT. . . . . . : 2.23* 

*ASSBASST. . . . . . : .00* 

*ASSBPHTM. . . . . . : 1.86* 

*CPU . . . . . . . . : 164.43 (ASCBEJST + ASCBSRBT + ASSBASST)* 

*ECPU. . . . . . . . : 166.29 (ASCBEJST + ASCBSRBT + ASSBPHTM)* 

*ASSB-TIME-ON-ZIIP . : 30.22* 

*ASSB-ZIIP-ENCT. . . : 1.60* 

*ASSB-ZIIP-PHTM. . . : 1.60* 

*ASSB-ASST-TIME-ON-CP: .00* 

The CPU-Time, ECPU-Time, and zIIP-time match (as close as humanly possible to 
switch 3270 emulators and press enter). I was under the assumption that ECPU 
also included time spent on zIIPs, but that must not be true. Is zIIP time 
included in CPU and ECPU? I'm thinking it is not. 

so..this . 

and it mutated from there trying to understand the CPU times displayed in SDSF, 
I personally don't use SDSF's ECPUtime, I'll use CPU% then if I see something 
out of the ordinary I'll check CPUtime and EXCP and SIO's use to be a good 
indicator of a looping program if CPU time is accumulating and EXCPs are zero 
or not accumulating . 


Pie in the sky 


if at all possible, for me I'd like to see SDSF's CPUtime to include all time, 
GCPU+IIP, it's nice the times and percentages are shown in a separate variable, 
I can see if my workload is really using the specialty engine, but SDSF does 
not report TCB and SRB times separately so why not show all CPUtime combined 


Carmen Vitullo 

- Original Message -

From: "Peter Relson"  
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU 
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2019 7:07:56 AM 
Subject: Re: CPU time and zIIP 

 
No more assumptions on my part, so what tools would show the correct 
time(s) for real time monitoring if not SDSF? 
RMF? Omegamon? And now that you throw Java in the mix or USS spanned 
tasks I don't think any real time monitor can account for all CPU time 
GCPU and zIIPTIME 
 

SDSF shows the correct time(s). What in any way leads you to think what is 
shown is not correct? SDSF shows what it shows. The data is what the data 
is. If you have a requirement for some other piece of data, then describe 
that in detail and we can tell you if it is available or not. In general 
the system keeps the data that if finds a need for, often (but not 
necessarily for only that reason) to make its way into SMF records. 

Peter Relson 
z/OS Core Technology Design 


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IODF batch migration question

[Tony Thigpen]

When using the IODF batch migration program:

//MIGR5EXEC PGM=CBDMGHCP,REGION=4096K,
// PARM=('MIGR,B,RESCUE,MVS,PROZZ10,2096,LPAR'),

Why must the input include an IOCONFIG statement in the source when it's 
just going to be ignored and the information on the PARM is used?


I have not found a way for the information from the IOCONFIG statement 
to used instead.


I am worried that I am missing something.

--
Tony Thigpen

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Re: z/OS V2R5 Will be the Last Release to Include JES3

[John McKown]

On Thu, Feb 28, 2019 at 11:41 AM Seymour J Metz  wrote:

> I'm not the one who says "I hate EBCDIC"; I certainly like EBCDIC better
> than ASCII.
>

My apologies. I was confused. That is "gil". I prefer Unicode, personally.
And I really don't want to get into a discussion about "collating
sequences". Blech. How about we go back to Baudot? {grin}



>
> As for Perl, my primary use of it is on OS/2, nd it did things that would
> have been awkward with REXX. OTOH, I wish that the regex syntax were moe
> like SNOBOL.
>
>
> --
> Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
> http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3
>

-- 
I just burned 2000 calories!
That's the last time I'll nap with brownies in the oven.

Maranatha! <><
John McKown

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Re: New look and linking for V2.3 product documentation PDFs

[Gord Tomlin]

On 2019-02-27 22:00, Susan Shumway wrote:

Hi all,

I want to make you aware that every PDF in the z/OS V2.3 library was just 
refreshed to update the visual style and link coding. Because of the link 
coding changes, clicking on a link in an old-style PDF to a new style PDF will 
not work, and vice versa. So, to ensure that all cross-book links continue to 
work for you, ensure that you download the entire fresh set of library PDFs 
from https://www.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R3Library 
as soon as you get the chance.

-Sue Shumway

Thanks for pointing this out, Sue.

I have to say I'm not particularly happy with the new PDFs. I opened the 
new and previous versions of the same manuals in a few different PDF 
readers to compare. Here are my observations:


1. The line length of body text has been increased by approximately 25 
characters. The old PDFs had lines of about 75-80 characters (including 
blanks), and the new ones are more like 100-105 characters. A line width 
of 45-75 characters is generally considered to be best for readability. 
Try reading the same paragraph in both versions of the same PDF, and I 
think you will find that the old one is easier to read.


2. The bookmarks (ToC) in the previous PDFs were expanded to the chapter 
level. In the new PDFs, they are exploded to the first level of 
subheadings below the chapter level (on Adobe Reader or Evince Document 
Reader) or fully exploded (SumatraPDF reader). It now takes longer to 
locate a topic.


3. In Adobe Reader, the bookmarks are now shown with black text on a 
dark gray background. They are unnecessarily difficult to read. The old 
display (white text on a dark gray background) were much easier to read.


Taken together, these factors make the new PDFs harder to read and 
harder to navigate.


--

Regards, Gord Tomlin
Action Software International
(a division of Mazda Computer Corporation)
Tel: (905) 470-7113, Fax: (905) 470-6507
Support: https://actionsoftware.com/support/

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Re: z/OS V2R5 Will be the Last Release to Include JES3

[Seymour J Metz]

I'm not the one who says "I hate EBCDIC"; I certainly like EBCDIC better than 
ASCII.

As for Perl, my primary use of it is on OS/2, nd it did things that would have 
been awkward with REXX. OTOH, I wish that the regex syntax were moe like SNOBOL.


--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3


From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List  on behalf of 
John McKown 
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2019 7:31 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: z/OS V2R5 Will be the Last Release to Include JES3

On Wed, Feb 27, 2019 at 3:50 PM Seymour J Metz  wrote:

> I would consider JES3 superior to JES2, but such questions rarely have a
> consensus answer.
>
> Is TSO really considered by all to be better than CMS? Is REXX really
> considered by all to be better than Perl? Is P/I really considered by all
> to be superior to C? I couldn't even get consensus on C versus C++, and
> they are at least similar.
>

No way. I adored CMS compared to TSO. And this was in the 1980s time frame.

PERL VS. REXX? As it now stands on z/OS, REXX is better due to its superior
interface with TSO and other systems such as ISPF, SDSF, et alias. Given
than IBM has "outsourced" PERL to RocketSoftware, I don't know how viable
PERL really is in z/OS. This is not a knock on Rocket, I think they did a
good job porting PERL (and Python). But keeping up with the advances with
FOSS languages such as PERL, Python, Ruby, ... is very time and resource
intensive. I don't really expect Rocket to keep up with the changes. And
then there is CPAN with a lot of PERL routines, some of which can't run on
z/OS, as is, due to C routines which would need to be ported. As you often
say "I hate EBCDIC!" But given what I read about IBM supporting the running
of "most" z/Linux Docker images under z/OS, this may be a way to get on the
FOSS bandwagon if it is done well.


>
>
> --
> Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
> http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3
>
>
--
I just burned 2000 calories!
That's the last time I'll nap with brownies in the oven.

Maranatha! <><
John McKown

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Re: New look and linking for V2.3 product documentation PDFs

[Tom Brennan]

Sue - long story, sorry:

In the 90's we had a web server running (where else?) on MVS with web 
pages designed for application programmers and others who needed 
information about various local things - from RACF to TMS to how to get 
your TSO id cancelled.  I created the main web page format and style, 
headings, navigation bar, etc., and yeah, I'm not a real artist.  Other 
contributors had their own styles.  Around that time, the company had 
created their own "Intranet" web site, professionally designed, and 
someone decided to make a link from the company site to our little 
mainframe web site.  Cool, I thought at first, but I was wrong.  There 
was trouble brewing.


Next thing I knew, company Intranet managers were telling me I had to 
change the format of all our web pages to match the company web site 
style.  WHY?  I asked - our users care about the content, not the 
format.  In fact, since people are USED TO the old format, any changes 
would make things more difficult for them.  I was pressured, so I lied 
and told them I was working on it.  In addition, they wanted to add our 
mainframe doc to their main Intranet search facility, under the idea 
that a user should be able to find everything from one place.


Both of those ideas are silly.  When you search for how to order a box 
of printer paper, you don't want mainframe results popping up.  The 
whole idea of web pages is that you drill down.  You go to a mainframe 
site knowing (partly by the fact that the pages look different than 
where you came from) that you are in the mainframe realm.  And you get 
used to the format and are surprised if it suddenly changes to look like 
some other area that has nothing to do with mainframes.


So these are some of the things I felt when I opened one of the newly 
formatted pdf manuals just now.


On 2/27/2019 7:00 PM, Susan Shumway wrote:

Hi all,

I want to make you aware that every PDF in the z/OS V2.3 library was just 
refreshed to update the visual style and link coding. Because of the link 
coding changes, clicking on a link in an old-style PDF to a new style PDF will 
not work, and vice versa. So, to ensure that all cross-book links continue to 
work for you, ensure that you download the entire fresh set of library PDFs 
from https://www.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R3Library 
as soon as you get the chance.

-Sue Shumway

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Re: z/OS V2R5 Will be the Last Release to Include JES3

[Seymour J Metz]

I did cards; that was bad enough. And, yes, I would prefer that everyone had 
full support for Unicode.

Collating sequences? That's just the tip of the iceberg for locales.

How bout the different time standards? UT1? UT2/ UTC?


--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3


From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List  on behalf of 
John McKown 
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2019 12:51 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: z/OS V2R5 Will be the Last Release to Include JES3

On Thu, Feb 28, 2019 at 11:41 AM Seymour J Metz  wrote:

> I'm not the one who says "I hate EBCDIC"; I certainly like EBCDIC better
> than ASCII.
>

My apologies. I was confused. That is "gil". I prefer Unicode, personally.
And I really don't want to get into a discussion about "collating
sequences". Blech. How about we go back to Baudot? {grin}



>
> As for Perl, my primary use of it is on OS/2, nd it did things that would
> have been awkward with REXX. OTOH, I wish that the regex syntax were moe
> like SNOBOL.
>
>
> --
> Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
> http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3
>

--
I just burned 2000 calories!
That's the last time I'll nap with brownies in the oven.

Maranatha! <><
John McKown

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Re: New look and linking for V2.3 product documentation PDFs

[Gord Tomlin]

On 2019-02-28 11:06, Wendell Lovewell wrote:

(There might be reasons to replace the spaces with underscores.)


Blanks in file names can be a hassle on Linux.

--

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Action Software International
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Re: New look and linking for V2.3 product documentation PDFs

[Tom Brennan]

Personally, I don't really like the index.html method IBM provides, so I 
made a VBS script that takes that index and turns it into a pile of 
Windows shortcuts with group directory names and manual titles (bad 
characters taken out).  Send me an email if you want to try it.


On 2/28/2019 8:06 AM, Wendell Lovewell wrote:

Thanks for the update Sue.  I'm not sure how we would find out this information 
without your posting it here.

I personally really appreciate you continuing to create the PDF versions of the 
manuals.   But there are a couple of things that would make them a lot easier 
to use.

1) Could you please use the full title names (minus "/" and ":" characters) for 
the file names?  The 8.3 file names (actually, they aren't all 8-character anymore) are not very 
usable.  If we download the HLASM and MFA zip files, we get:
asmg1023.pdf
asmi1023.pdf
asmp1023.pdf
asmr1023.pdf
asmtic23.pdf
asmtis23.pdf
asmtiu23.pdf
asmtug23.pdf
azfi100_v1r3.pdf
azfli100_v1r3.pdf
azfpd130.pdf
azfu100_v1r3.pdf

I generally use Windows File Explorer to find a manual I've downloaded.  But to be able to find something by 
the file system name, I have to open each to determine which manual it is, copy the title (and maybe the 
publication number), close the pdf and then rename it.  "asmr1023.pdf" is not meaningful. 
"SC26-4940-08 HLASM Language Reference.pdf" is.  And if the title has a slash, colon, or other 
invalid character for a file name, I have to remove those.  (There might be reasons to replace the spaces 
with underscores.)  It's often easier to copy the pub # and title and use "Save As" so that I can 
use the full title as a file name.  Of course, this breaks any links between manuals.

2) The second thing to please stop dividing the manuals into sections so that 
the page numbers referenced from the TOC and all other places within the manual 
are the actual PDF page numbers. PDF doesn't (generally) recognize sections 
like this, so page numbers cited in the manual are always several pages short 
of the PDF page number.   (Hyperlinks from the TOC are great, but references to 
page numbers within the text are usually not set up as links.)

So, to jump to a page (Ctrl-G in most PDF readers) I usually add at least 10 pages to get close, 
then scroll to what the book thinks is the right page.  For example, in "asmr1023.pdf", 
if you want to go to page 61, you would actually need to enter "77" because of the reset 
in the page numbers after the first 16 pages.  In John Erhman's wonderful Assembler book there's a 
42 page difference, and there are so many references to page numbers in the text that I used a PDF 
editor to delete everything prior to what it calls page 1 so that I could go directly to the 
referenced page--at the cost of having a table of contents.

Thanks for listening.

Wendell Lovewell

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Re: New look and linking for V2.3 product documentation PDFs

[Wendell Lovewell]

Thanks for the update Sue.  I'm not sure how we would find out this information 
without your posting it here. 

I personally really appreciate you continuing to create the PDF versions of the 
manuals.   But there are a couple of things that would make them a lot easier 
to use.

1) Could you please use the full title names (minus "/" and ":" characters) for 
the file names?  The 8.3 file names (actually, they aren't all 8-character 
anymore) are not very usable.  If we download the HLASM and MFA zip files, we 
get:
asmg1023.pdf
asmi1023.pdf
asmp1023.pdf
asmr1023.pdf
asmtic23.pdf
asmtis23.pdf
asmtiu23.pdf
asmtug23.pdf
azfi100_v1r3.pdf
azfli100_v1r3.pdf
azfpd130.pdf
azfu100_v1r3.pdf

I generally use Windows File Explorer to find a manual I've downloaded.  But to 
be able to find something by the file system name, I have to open each to 
determine which manual it is, copy the title (and maybe the publication 
number), close the pdf and then rename it.  "asmr1023.pdf" is not meaningful. 
"SC26-4940-08 HLASM Language Reference.pdf" is.  And if the title has a slash, 
colon, or other invalid character for a file name, I have to remove those.  
(There might be reasons to replace the spaces with underscores.)  It's often 
easier to copy the pub # and title and use "Save As" so that I can use the full 
title as a file name.  Of course, this breaks any links between manuals.  

2) The second thing to please stop dividing the manuals into sections so that 
the page numbers referenced from the TOC and all other places within the manual 
are the actual PDF page numbers. PDF doesn't (generally) recognize sections 
like this, so page numbers cited in the manual are always several pages short 
of the PDF page number.   (Hyperlinks from the TOC are great, but references to 
page numbers within the text are usually not set up as links.)  

So, to jump to a page (Ctrl-G in most PDF readers) I usually add at least 10 
pages to get close, then scroll to what the book thinks is the right page.  For 
example, in "asmr1023.pdf", if you want to go to page 61, you would actually 
need to enter "77" because of the reset in the page numbers after the first 16 
pages.  In John Erhman's wonderful Assembler book there's a 42 page difference, 
and there are so many references to page numbers in the text that I used a PDF 
editor to delete everything prior to what it calls page 1 so that I could go 
directly to the referenced page--at the cost of having a table of contents.

Thanks for listening.

Wendell Lovewell

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Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: New look and linking for V2.3 product documentation PDFs

[Sankaranarayanan, Vignesh]

+1000

Poor use of top half of the screen (I'm referring to KC pages)
1. The 'IBM Knowledge Center' banner needn't be permanent, could be an 
auto-close area
2. The blue area showing the section that is currently open (Home > z/OS 2.3.0 
> etc etc), and the huge section header
3. Table of Contents / Change version or Product is its own row. Does it need 
to be?
4. I would rather see the ToC permanently in the left than waste space on the 
right side for Related Topics
5. The huge banner at the bottom.

I block most of these off using an ad block but it would be great if the site 
itself screamed "speed".

For reference, try opening any indexed PDF in Sumatra PDF reader.
Bare bones to the core, but gives you an idea of what's great UX.

– Vignesh
Mainframe Infrastructure

-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List  On Behalf Of 
Allan Staller
Sent: 28 February 2019 13:52
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: New look and linking for V2.3 product documentation PDFs

Ref: 
https://www-01.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R3Library

I observed one thing. The introductory "new style" screens are portrait 
oriented and take up a lot  of vertical real estate.
The new screens generate a lot of unnecessary scrolling.

I have a laptop and a desktop, both with landscape oriented monitors.
The only portrait oriented device I have is a cell phone.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I spend *VERY LITTLE* time reviewing manuals on 
my cell phone.
Reduced use  of vertical real estate would go a long way to enhancing the user 
experience.

Thanks for all of your efforts and thanks for the heads up on the new link 
styles.



-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List  On Behalf Of 
Susan Shumway
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2019 9:01 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: New look and linking for V2.3 product documentation PDFs

Hi all,

I want to make you aware that every PDF in the z/OS V2.3 library was just 
refreshed to update the visual style and link coding. Because of the link 
coding changes, clicking on a link in an old-style PDF to a new style PDF will 
not work, and vice versa. So, to ensure that all cross-book links continue to 
work for you, ensure that you download the entire fresh set of library PDFs 
from 
https://apac01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ibm.com%2Fservers%2Fresourcelink%2Fsvc00100.nsf%2Fpages%2FzOSV2R3Librarydata=02%7C01%7Callan.staller%40HCL.COM%7C387bcaf360e54f3564d808d69d290d06%7C189de737c93a4f5a8b686f4ca9941912%7C0%7C1%7C636869197008313274sdata=Wj%2FzVYo2im8YpdAP9Wwiq5%2BxR0XUCsG6okyRhAba25E%3Dreserved=0
 as soon as you get the chance.

-Sue Shumway

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Re: What was that link again for IBMLINK?

[George Rodriguez]

IBMLink


*George Rodriguez*

*Specialist II - IT Security*
*PX - 47652*
*(561) 357-7652 (office)*
*(954) 415-7586 (mobile)*
*School District of Palm Beach County*
*3348 Forest Hill Blvd.*
*Room B-332*
*West Palm Beach, FL. 33406-5869*
*Florida's Only A-Rated Urban District*


On Thu, Feb 28, 2019 at 2:56 PM Lizette Koehler 
wrote:

> I know, it seems several people I know are struggling with the new
> enhanced IBM
> search functions
>
> So how do they find the following in the IBM website?
>
> SIS
> APARS
>
> Thanks
>
>
> Lizette Koehler
> statistics: A precise and logical method for stating a half-truth
> inaccurately
>
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> For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions,
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Re: z/OS V2R5 Will be the Last Release to Include JES3

[Paul Gilmartin]

On Thu, 28 Feb 2019 17:41:14 +, Seymour J Metz wrote:

>I'm not the one who says "I hate EBCDIC"; I certainly like EBCDIC better than 
>ASCII.
> 
Why?  Is it largely 8-bit vs. 7-bit?  Would it be fairer to compare (any of) 
the EBCDIC
code pages to (any of) ISO-8859-x?  In either case there's code point 
instability.

Unicode?  But which representation of Unicode?  UTF-8 seems to be the modal 
choice.

>As for Perl, my primary use of it is on OS/2, nd it did things that would have 
>been awkward with REXX. OTOH, I wish that the regex syntax were moe like 
>SNOBOL.
>
Depends.  An interactive editor should be keystroke-economical (ISPF isn't.)
Its scripted companion should be referentially transparent (vi isn't.)

-- gil

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Re: What was that link again for IBMLINK?

[Don Poitras]

I think that's where it re-directs when you haven't logged on yet. My bookmark
is:

https://www-03.ibm.com/ibmlink/servicelink/servicelink.wss?lc=en=US

That has SIS. I don't know what APARS is.

In article  
you wrote:
> IBMLink
> 
> *George Rodriguez*
> *Specialist II - IT Security*
> *PX - 47652*
> *(561) 357-7652 (office)*
> *(954) 415-7586 (mobile)*
> *School District of Palm Beach County*
> *3348 Forest Hill Blvd.*
> *Room B-332*
> *West Palm Beach, FL. 33406-5869*
> *Florida's Only A-Rated Urban District*
> On Thu, Feb 28, 2019 at 2:56 PM Lizette Koehler 
> wrote:
> > I know, it seems several people I know are struggling with the new
> > enhanced IBM
> > search functions
> >
> > So how do they find the following in the IBM website?
> >
> > SIS
> > APARS
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> >
> > Lizette Koehler

-- 
Don Poitras - SAS Development  -  SAS Institute Inc. - SAS Campus Drive
sas...@sas.com   (919) 531-5637Cary, NC 27513

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What was that link again for IBMLINK?

[Lizette Koehler]

I know, it seems several people I know are struggling with the new enhanced IBM
search functions

So how do they find the following in the IBM website?

SIS
APARS

Thanks


Lizette Koehler
statistics: A precise and logical method for stating a half-truth inaccurately

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Re: What was that link again for IBMLINK?

[Tom Conley]

On 2/28/2019 2:56 PM, Lizette Koehler wrote:

I know, it seems several people I know are struggling with the new enhanced IBM
search functions

So how do they find the following in the IBM website?

SIS
APARS


Lizette,

The hostage crisis is over, www.ibmlink.ibm.com works again.

Regards,
Tom Conley

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Re: What was that link again for IBMLINK?

[Jesse 1 Robinson]

Confirming Tom's post. After *years* of using some other squirrely URL, I 
switched a while ago back to 
 
https://www.ibm.com/ibmlink

After automatic redirection, browser lands on this screen, which leads to 
everything I need:

--
ServiceLink

The applications listed below are your entitled applications.

Please click on the application you would like to access.
 
Automatic Software Alert Process (ASAP)  
Automatic Status Tracking (AST)  
Service Requests for hardware and software (SR)
Preventive Service Planning (PSP)
Product Cross Reference (PCR)
Service Information Search (SIS) 
Service Request and Delivery (SRD)  
-

The message is to let redirection do its job. Don't try to second guess it.

.
.
J.O.Skip Robinson
Southern California Edison Company
Electric Dragon Team Paddler 
SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager
323-715-0595 Mobile
626-543-6132 Office ⇐=== NEW
robin...@sce.com


-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Tom Conley
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2019 12:20 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: (External):Re: What was that link again for IBMLINK?

On 2/28/2019 2:56 PM, Lizette Koehler wrote:
> I know, it seems several people I know are struggling with the new 
> enhanced IBM search functions
> 
> So how do they find the following in the IBM website?
> 
> SIS
> APARS
> 
Lizette,

The hostage crisis is over, www.ibmlink.ibm.com works again.

Regards,
Tom Conley


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Re: z/OS V2R5 Will be the Last Release to Include JES3

[Jesse 1 Robinson]

I'm with Larre. I myself have always worked under JES2. Closest I came to JES3 
was when the old Bank of America (San Frisco) was swallowing up the late great 
Security Pacific Bank (LA). BofA was JES3. In a meeting about obstacles to 
merging, some exec asked "How about first converting SecPac to JES3, then 
merging?" Bless his heart, he had no idea the barrel of worms he was proposing. 

I don't believe that either JES is inherently superior. They are two 
alternative churches sitting kitty-corner on a busy intersection. One proclaims 
"There Ain't No Hell", the other counters "The Hell There Ain't". They each 
have adherents who don't want to concede the struggle to the other. A third 
church that melds the best of both might be a promising compromise, but habits 
would have change. People love their habits. And what would it be called? JES5 
(2+3) or JES6 (2*3)? 

I sympathize with JES3 sites that will get bitten.  

.
.
J.O.Skip Robinson
Southern California Edison Company
Electric Dragon Team Paddler 
SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager
323-715-0595 Mobile
626-543-6132 Office ⇐=== NEW
robin...@sce.com


-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Larre Shiller
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2019 3:27 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: (External):Re: z/OS V2R5 Will be the Last Release to Include JES3

> Do you the think the z/OS overall ecosystem and the platform is made stronger 
> or weaker by getting to one JES?

Well... I guess there are a number of ways to look at that.  But I think that 
IBM runs the risk of losing some number of z/OS customers as a result of this, 
which could in the long term affect the overall IBM revenue stream and the life 
expectancy of the z/OS platform.  I have to assume that the number-crunchers at 
IBM have already factored this into their calculations and have come to the 
conclusion that the risk is worth the reward here.

In the near term, some larger and more complex JES3 installations, and 
especially those in the public sector that have constant external pressure put 
on them to "modernize" their systems (whatever that means... typically meaning 
"move to Linux" or "the AWS cloud"), may simply take this opportunity to move 
to a completely different platform.  Or simply speed up the already on-going 
effort to eliminate (what is perceived as) legacy software with a high 
"technical debt" cost by moving to a different/modern platform.  This is indeed 
a very real risk... and IBM has put many of us in a box.

For those JES2 shops out there... imagine how your shop has grown over the past 
30 years and what products/services that you support that have an API or in 
some way interface with JES.  Just imagine what would it take for you to be 
able to know for sure that this conversion will be 100% successful?  IBM can 
add as much JES3 functionality into JES2 as it wants to, but at the end of the 
day, you still have to do the conversion and ensure that your environment is 
100% functional the day after the conversion.  And how much fun do you think it 
will be to convert 16 SYSPLEXes and 300K MIPS-worth of workload (OK, so 30% of 
it is in a single SYSPLEX)...?

A JES3-to-JES2 conversion effort is a high risk change that requires 
essentially the same level of effort as a conversion from one platform to 
another--but it has the disadvantage of a 100% "must-go-right" overnight IPL 
switch.  And in the end, there's nothing to show for it... other than a 2 
instead of a 3 and a line item in the CxO's spreadsheet that shows the millions 
of dollars spent on R, additional products, test time, personnel costs and 
lost productivity.  Also, I certainly would not want to be the public official 
testifying in front of a Congressional panel the week after seeing the 
"Critical System Failure Affects Millions of Seniors" headline in the local 
paper.  Would you put your professional reputation on the line and tell your 
CxO that "everything is going to be all right" the day before a conversion like 
this?

On the other hand, moving to a different platform allows a staged application 
migration and a completely modernized environment--rich with new functionality 
and without the "legacy" problems that persist on z/OS while at the same time 
minimizing and compartmentalizing the risk to critical production applications. 
 So... why would a CxO choose to spend millions of dollars on a costly and 
risky conversion effort (even if it were logistically possible), instead of 
using those same funds to completely modernize that same environment...?

Similarly, very small shops that do not have the personnel or resources to 
perform a conversion will probably wait this out for a while and then simply 
move off the platform.  For medium-sized shops, it's probably a wash.  Overall, 
the number of customers affected here is probably rather small, but given the 
size of some JES3 shops, if this chases away enough JES3 shops, it 

Re: z/OS V2R5 Will be the Last Release to Include JES3

[Tony Harminc]

On Thu, 28 Feb 2019 at 06:27, Larre Shiller
<0102cb4997b0-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote:

> A JES3-to-JES2 conversion effort is a high risk change that requires 
> essentially the same level of effort as a conversion from one platform to 
> another--but it has the disadvantage of a 100% "must-go-right" overnight IPL 
> switch.

I'm not so sure... Is it not possible to run JES2 and JES3 at the same
time on a z/OS image? Certainly you can run multiple JES2s. Yes, there
are a few things that a secondary JES can't do, but I would think that
would be the way to convert. Of course at some point you have to
switch which is the primary JES, but is that really such a risk.
Anyway, I'm not trying to minimize the effort or risk of a conversion;
just not sure that it has to be Big Bang.

> On the other hand, moving to a different platform allows a staged application 
> migration [...]

And how's that been going for most shops?

Tony H.

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Re: New look and linking for V2.3 product documentation PDFs

[Tom Brennan]

On 2/28/2019 2:39 PM, Andrew Rowley wrote:

On 1/03/2019 4:10 am, Tom Brennan wrote:
Personally, I don't really like the index.html method IBM provides, so 
I made a VBS script that takes that index and turns it into a pile of 
Windows shortcuts with group directory names and manual titles (bad 
characters taken out).  Send me an email if you want to try it.


I do! I think it's one of the most usable ways to access the manuals IBM 
has provided in a long time.


Sorry I wasn't very clear!  I do like index.html a whole lot better than 
my old method which was (like Wendell) renaming the pdf files to their 
title.  And of course I really appreciate being able to download the 
whole collection all at once.


Really, my only problem with index.html is that (at least in Chrome) the 
pdf file is opened in the browser.  So I'm stuck using the browser's 
search method, among other things.  There are probably Chrome ways 
around that if I would just look.  Oh... one other nitpick - I always 
tend to try to click the Title but I need to click the filename to the 
left instead.  But that's just me being overly picky.


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Re: z/OS V2R5 Will be the Last Release to Include JES3

[Tom Marchant]

On Thu, 28 Feb 2019 18:06:35 -0500, Tony Harminc wrote:

>Is it not possible to run JES2 and JES3 at the same
>time on a z/OS image? Certainly you can run multiple JES2s. Yes, there
>are a few things that a secondary JES can't do, but I would think that
>would be the way to convert. Of course at some point you have to
>switch which is the primary JES, but is that really such a risk.

AFAIK, JES3 can only be the primary JES.

-- 
Tom Marchant

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Re: How do I get a lower-case value into a "long" symbol?

[Farley, Peter x23353]

I think that you have to triple-quote the beginning of the SYM1 value and the 
end of the SYM2 value, like this:

// SET SYM1='''blah,blah,blah'
// SET SYM2=',foo,foo,foo'''
// SET LONGSYM=

In the SET for LONGPARM, the SYM1 and SYM2 values are quote-stripped when they 
are referenced.

HTH

Peter

-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf 
Of Charles Mills
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2019 6:33 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: How do I get a lower-case value into a "long" symbol?

EXTERNAL EMAIL

I want to set a symbol to a value with lowercase letters and too long to go
on one line. (The ultimate destination of the symbol is substitution into a
SYSIN file, but that is not where the problem is.)

So I am doing

// EXPORT SYMLIST=*
// SET SYM1='blah,blah,blah'
// SET SYM2=',foo,foo,foo'
// SET LONGSYM=
...
//PARMDD DD *,SYMBOLS=JCLONLY
MYPARM()
/*

I am getting errors on the SET LONGSYM: IEFC620I UNIDENTIFIABLE CHARACTER b
ON THE SET STATEMENT, etc.

If I quote the  then no substitution is performed and I end up
with LONGSYM being literally "".

Any ideas?

Charles

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Re: z/OS V2R5 Will be the Last Release to Include JES3

[Ed Jaffe]

On 2/28/2019 3:06 PM, Tony Harminc wrote:


I'm not so sure... Is it not possible to run JES2 and JES3 at the same
time on a z/OS image? Certainly you can run multiple JES2s. Yes, there
are a few things that a secondary JES can't do, but I would think that
would be the way to convert. Of course at some point you have to
switch which is the primary JES, but is that really such a risk.
Anyway, I'm not trying to minimize the effort or risk of a conversion;
just not sure that it has to be Big Bang.


We run with JES2 as secondary under JES3. It's no panacea. Your approach 
will work for a little while as you migrate your lowest-hanging fruit. 
But, at some point you'll really need to bite the bullet and put up a 
new LPAR that runs JES2 only. Once that's up, you can migrate your 
applications across, one by one, from easiest to most-difficult.



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Phoenix Software International
Edward E. Jaffe
831 Parkview Drive North
El Segundo, CA 90245
https://www.phoenixsoftware.com/



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Re: New look and linking for V2.3 product documentation PDFs

[Andrew Rowley]

On 1/03/2019 4:10 am, Tom Brennan wrote:
Personally, I don't really like the index.html method IBM provides, so 
I made a VBS script that takes that index and turns it into a pile of 
Windows shortcuts with group directory names and manual titles (bad 
characters taken out).  Send me an email if you want to try it.


I do! I think it's one of the most usable ways to access the manuals IBM 
has provided in a long time.


It's helped by the browser convention of showing visited links in a 
different color, so it is very fast and easy to spot the links to the 
manuals I use.


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Andrew Rowley
Black Hill Software

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Re: New look and linking for V2.3 product documentation PDFs

[Andrew Rowley]

On 1/03/2019 9:51 am, Paul Gilmartin wrote:


But, is this a collection of PDFs, as Susan seems to say, or a hierarchy
or browser pages, as the subsequent plies mostly say?

It's a collection of PDFs. The index.html is an old fashioned web page 
with tables grouping and listing titles with relative links to the PDF.


It works much better than most bookshelf lists, basically due to the 
simplicity.


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Andrew Rowley
Black Hill Software

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Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: What was that link again for IBMLINK?

[Sankaranarayanan, Vignesh]

Hello!

I usually just go to ibm.com/ibmlink and of redirects me to the right place.

– Vignesh
Mainframe Infrastructure

On 01-Mar-2019, at 01:50, Tom Conley  wrote:

> On 2/28/2019 2:56 PM, Lizette Koehler wrote:
> I know, it seems several people I know are struggling with the new enhanced 
> IBM
> search functions
> So how do they find the following in the IBM website?
> SIS
> APARS
Lizette,

The hostage crisis is over, www.ibmlink.ibm.com works again.

Regards,
Tom Conley

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Re: New look and linking for V2.3 product documentation PDFs

[Paul Gilmartin]

On Wed, 27 Feb 2019 21:00:57 -0600, Susan Shumway wrote:
>
>I want to make you aware that every PDF in the z/OS V2.3 library was just 
>refreshed to update the visual style and link coding. Because of the link 
>coding changes, clicking on a link in an old-style PDF to a new style PDF will 
>not work, and vice versa. So, to ensure that all cross-book links continue to 
>work for you, ensure that you download the entire fresh set of library PDFs 
>from 
>https://www.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R3Library as 
>soon as you get the chance.
> 
Now I'm trying it.  Seems pretty good.

It would be nice if the web metadata included file size so I could eagerly
watch the progress bar during download.

Is the "zOS_V2R3_Documentation.pdx" index gone?  I sometimes found it useful.

It would sure be nice if the cross-document references pointed to a chapter, not
just to the title page of the referenced document.  I suspect that's not easy 
to do.
 

On Thu, 28 Feb 2019 13:52:20 +, Allan Staller wrote:

>Ref: 
>https://www-01.ibm.com/servers/resourcelink/svc00100.nsf/pages/zOSV2R3Library
>
>I observed one thing.hThe introductory "new style" screens are portrait 
>oriented and take up a lot  of vertical real estate.
>The new screens generate a lot of unnecessary scrolling.
>
>I have a laptop and a desktop, both with landscape oriented monitors.
>The only portrait oriented device I have is a cell phone.
>
For that it would be nice if the doc were semantic-oriented html, adapting
to screen geometry, not presentation-oriented.  Not likely to happen.


On Thu, 28 Feb 2019 10:06:52 -0600, Wendell Lovewell wrote:

>Thanks for the update Sue.  I'm not sure how we would find out this 
>information without your posting it here. 
>
>1) Could you please use the full title names (minus "/" and ":" characters) 
>for the file names?  The 8.3 file names (actually, they aren't all 8-character 
>anymore) are not very usable.
>
Use the index.html file.

>I generally use Windows File Explorer to find a manual I've downloaded.  But 
>to be able to find something by the file system name, I have to open each to 
>determine which manual it is, copy the title (and maybe the publication 
>number), close the pdf and then rename it.  "asmr1023.pdf" is not meaningful. 
>"SC26-4940-08 HLASM Language Reference.pdf" is.  And if the title has a slash, 
>colon, or other invalid character for a file name, I have to remove those.  
>(There might be reasons to replace the spaces with underscores.)  It's often 
>easier to copy the pub # and title and use "Save As" so that I can use the 
>full title as a file name.  Of course, this breaks any links between manuals.  
> 
Use symbolic links rather than renaming.

>2) The second thing to please stop dividing the manuals into sections so that 
>the page numbers referenced from the TOC and all other places within the 
>manual are the actual PDF page numbers. PDF doesn't (generally) recognize 
>sections like this, so page numbers cited in the manual are always several 
>pages short of the PDF page number.   (Hyperlinks from the TOC are great, but 
>references to page numbers within the text are usually not set up as links.)  
> 
I do not have this problem with my PDF viewer, ancient MacOS Preview.  Does this
problem occur when you just click on a ToC entry?


On Thu, 28 Feb 2019 11:46:27 -0500, Gord Tomlin  wrote:

>On 2019-02-28 11:06, Wendell Lovewell wrote:
>> (There might be reasons to replace the spaces with underscores.)
>
>Blanks in file names can be a hassle on Linux.
>
Hasn't bothered me that much.


On Fri, 1 Mar 2019 09:53:57 +1100, Andrew Rowley wrote:
>
>black and white was appreciated. Even one tiny blue underline on a page
>might make it 5 times the cost to print that page.
> 
Can't you override to monochrome in your printer setup?


On Thu, 28 Feb 2019 15:30:49 -0800, Tom Brennan wrote:

>On 2/28/2019 2:39 PM, Andrew Rowley wrote:
>> On 1/03/2019 4:10 am, Tom Brennan wrote:
>>> Personally, I don't really like the index.html method IBM provides, so
>>
>> I do! I think it's one of the most usable ways to access the manuals IBM
>> has provided in a long time.
>
>Sorry I wasn't very clear!  I do like index.html a whole lot better than
>my old method which was (like Wendell) renaming the pdf files to their
>title.  And of course I really appreciate being able to download the
>whole collection all at once.
> 
Old stuff.  That's been available for a couple years.

>Really, my only problem with index.html is that (at least in Chrome) the
>pdf file is opened in the browser.
>
Firefox doesn't do that to me.  I guess I'm just lucky.

>...  There are probably Chrome ways around that if I would just look.  
>
That's configurable in Firefox, but sometimes I forget how.

>Oh... one other nitpick - I always
>tend to try to click the Title but I need to click the filename to the
>left instead.  But that's just me being overly picky.
> 
Too many web page designers do that to you.

-- gil

Re: How do I get a lower-case value into a "long" symbol?

[Paul Gilmartin]

On Thu, 28 Feb 2019 16:25:23 -0800, Charles Mills wrote:
>
>As I recall now I have had this issue before, and solved it with (or
>something like)
>
>// SET Q=
>...
>// SET LONGSYM=
> 
Yup.  It is a misdesigh that symbols are not substituted between apostrophes
in the operand of SET as they are in PARM, DSN, PATH, and a couple others.
Does any IBM representative dare to defend this bad choice, other than, 
"Because we could!"

In fact, why not everywhere!  Be consistent.

It's also wrong that apostrophes introduced by symbol substitution are not
treated as ordinary text, not metacharacters.  Rexx got that one right, but
JCL designers seem to be too proud to learn from Rexx.

>Thanks again. @Gil hates EBCDIC. I have to admit I am not overly fond of JCL.
>
JCL semantics, though not its syntax, are somewhat justified by the object of
static identification of all resources a job needs to serialize.  EBCDIC has 
only a
poor diachronic explanation.

-- gil

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Re: New look and linking for V2.3 product documentation PDFs

[Paul Gilmartin]

On Fri, 1 Mar 2019 09:39:55 +1100, Andrew Rowley wrote:

>On 1/03/2019 4:10 am, Tom Brennan wrote:
>> Personally, I don't really like the index.html method IBM provides, so
>> I made a VBS script that takes that index and turns it into a pile of
>> Windows shortcuts with group directory names and manual titles (bad
>> characters taken out).  Send me an email if you want to try it.
>
>I do! I think it's one of the most usable ways to access the manuals IBM
>has provided in a long time.
>
>It's helped by the browser convention of showing visited links in a
>different color, so it is very fast and easy to spot the links to the
>manuals I use.
> 
I haven't grabbed it yet; I'm waiting for the rest of the reviews.

But, is this a collection of PDFs, as Susan seems to say, or a hierarchy
or browser pages, as the subsequent plies mostly say?

-- gil

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Re: New look and linking for V2.3 product documentation PDFs

[Andrew Rowley]

On 28/02/2019 2:00 pm, Susan Shumway wrote:

I want to make you aware that every PDF in the z/OS V2.3 library was just 
refreshed to update the visual style and link coding.


I'm not thrilled by the new style, but I will probably get used to it. 
What was the objective for the change?


My main comment is: People still print manuals and work from printed 
copies. It looks like the margins in the new layout are a bit small for 
printing and binding. Also, given the typical size of these manuals, 
black and white was appreciated. Even one tiny blue underline on a page 
might make it 5 times the cost to print that page.


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Black Hill Software

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How do I get a lower-case value into a "long" symbol?

[Charles Mills]

I want to set a symbol to a value with lowercase letters and too long to go
on one line. (The ultimate destination of the symbol is substitution into a
SYSIN file, but that is not where the problem is.)

So I am doing

// EXPORT SYMLIST=*
// SET SYM1='blah,blah,blah'
// SET SYM2=',foo,foo,foo'
// SET LONGSYM=
...
//PARMDD DD *,SYMBOLS=JCLONLY
MYPARM()
/*

I am getting errors on the SET LONGSYM: IEFC620I UNIDENTIFIABLE CHARACTER b
ON THE SET STATEMENT, etc.

If I quote the  then no substitution is performed and I end up
with LONGSYM being literally "".

Any ideas?

Charles

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Re: How do I get a lower-case value into a "long" symbol?

[Charles Mills]

Ah, of course, the old triple-quote.

Seriously, thanks. My real stuff was a little more complicated than the
below and I had to rearrange it to get it to work, but yes, the triple quote
solved it.

As I recall now I have had this issue before, and solved it with (or
something like)

// SET Q=
...
// SET LONGSYM=

Thanks again. @Gil hates EBCDIC. I have to admit I am not overly fond of
JCL.

Charles


-Original Message-
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On
Behalf Of Farley, Peter x23353
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2019 3:43 PM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: How do I get a lower-case value into a "long" symbol?

I think that you have to triple-quote the beginning of the SYM1 value and
the end of the SYM2 value, like this:

// SET SYM1='''blah,blah,blah'

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Re: z/OS V2R5 Will be the Last Release to Include JES3

[Timothy Sipples]

IBM published JES3 to JES2 migration redbooks in 2014 and 2018, available
here:

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg248083.pdf
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg248427.pdf

The general recommendation is a phased, stepwise migration, taking
advantage of the fact that IBM supports JES3 and JES2 running in the same
Sysplex.

*IF* IBM's z/OS release schedule follows past practice, then the release of
z/OS following z/OS 2.4 will have this lifecycle:

September 30, 2021: General Availability
September 30, 2026: End of Service (Extended Service available for an
additional charge)
September 30, 2028: End of Extended Service


Timothy Sipples
IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM Z & LinuxONE


E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com

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