Re: changing default justification

Hi Comments embedded
<dbenedict99@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:0a0a5c1c-4bee-47f6-bf71-3130c5275df4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Jul 29, 6:07 am, "Frank Winans" <fwin...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Peter McMurray" wrote



My Most abject apologies it should of course read
Ed Dict file ITEMID
001 A
002 0
003 My Numeric Key
009 R
010 16

you could also make lines 011 to 016 be empty,
and add a freeform remark to line 017
{in ED insert lines w/ just Z on them, then change Z to nothing
in that range of lines. Honestly, U editor is worth learning...}

Why put in any remarks at all?

Why indeed. I had everything you discuss and more documented as part of my
system setups in 1977. Yes I do mean full details of every attribute
totally independent of the File Dictionary. Every program - yes that
includes subroutines without an associated screen - automatically picks up
and initialises the file layout. Plus we have a couple of standard
programming rules such as "thou shalt initialise everything" and "thou shalt
never address an attribute by its offset" the corollary of which is "thou
shalt always use the name defined in the application dictionary to address
any variable in a program".

Well, how about
'what is this file good for?'
'what year did I create it?' (in case you need to
fetch an old copy from backups some day...
'what program populates this file?'
'is there some future date or situation that permits clearing
or deleting this file?'
to let you SORT MD WITH A17 = "[project moonbase]"

You can keep seperate remarks in the md foo item distinct from the
dict foo foo item. Any qpointers to the file can get a third set of
comments.

You might find it tedious to adjust all your files to default
right-adjusted;
a lesser cure is to copy md *a01
to: *a0r
and edit that so it is attribute 0, right adjusted,
and get in the habit of doing SORT THISFILE BY *a0r etc, etc.

Yes we have stuck with ED for several reasons.

Firstly when UPDATE came out it was not available on most of the systems
that we supported.
Secondly it is a cludgy mess.
Thirdly it almost nullified the value of the REF account. I have only ever
seen one decent display of REF which was full of goodies ,that was done by
Grigory with PE and by the way RD/TL there is not a single copyright
statement on any page in REF
Most importantly it was flagged for deletion many years ago as it was hated
by many senior Pick/RD/TL personnel as well as large numbers of developers.
Tony tells us that it has survived because *** forced its use on internal
accounting systems. Thank heavens I have never run into it on a real
system.

ED on the other hand is simple, reliable, not case-sensitive (Cache please
note) and it is on every system. As for changing the base and modulo well
if one knows enough to use the (d) option one would be pretty stupid if one
did that. This is of course why one does not give it to general users
although some resident genius will always find a way to screw things up.
Just last week a person who has worked on our systems for at least 10 years
gained access to the machine room opened the locked cupboard to the system
monitor and deleted the two main system printers from the Windows server. I
believe that she thought she was cancelling a print that she did not want -
previously passwirds and keys were not given to the hoi polloi, new
"management" new ideas!

Oh by the way it is not necessary to insert and change rubbish to add lines
in ED, one can just use the appropriate system mark, in this case Attribute
<ctrl^>

Another point is the use of A0, A0r etc. That was another of those well
kept secrets. I personally use it regularly for random access having
accidentally discovered it when chatting to an RD guy that wrote it.
However it is no use for regular reports for two reasons it, it lacks a
meaningful heading and it is not necessarily an appropriate size. That is
why I prefer to add my own attribute to the dictionary, however I have
another rule "thou shalt always use the correct attribute number when
setting numeric dictionaries so Items 0,1,2,3.... always refer to Attributes
0,1,2,3 etc Yes I do know that *** said that they should be used for the
preferred report order. He was wrong.
Peter McMurray

Y'All seem to want to use the ED command to change the FDI.

IF'n ya use the update processor: UD filename y'all can't change the
base or modulo, and the update processor shows what the attributes are
all about.

Get with the modern gear. Or are y'all stuck in R83 land?

Dale


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