FW: Couple of Questions and some feedback for you... -- RPG400-L

All,
 
Thought you might want to read this response from the Cool Spool people.
 
Charles
 
-----Original Message-----
From: ariadne software [mailto:support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2004 7:45 AM
To: Wilt, Charles
Subject: Re: Couple of Questions and some feedback for you...


Hi Charles.
 
I hope you had a good weekend. I wanted to give you some feedeback on the
points you raised with us. Your comments in bold italics.
 
CVSPLFSTMF v1 had a couple of *PNLGRPs to provide help for the CVTSPLSTMF
and CVTSTMSPLF commands, but I don't see any panel groups for v4r1; though
the commands themselves are set to use them. What's the status of on-line
help for v4r1?

Hopefully you will have received an email from us at the end of last week
notifying you that this has been resolved, i.e. the install file on the
website now includes the panel groups. Also, you can download a save file
that contains just the panel groups from our website too (
www.ariadnesoftware.co.uk/CoolDown.htm
<http://www.ariadnesoftware.co.uk/CoolDown.htm> ).

Still having some problems getting the subfile to reset properly. In
particular, we noticed that when you make a selection from WRKSPLFPDM and
then cancel, the WRKSPLFPDM seem to jump to the last screen of the subfile.
 
We believe we have a fix for this and will be making a PTF available
shortly. We will send you the PTF when it is ready so you can try it out
along with the other fixes and changes we have made (see below).
 
If you subset by an OUTQ that doesn't exist, you don't see any error
messages you just see the last subset you had looked at.
 
This too is now fixed in the new PTF.

Really would love to see a separate option too email.  When the option is
taken, I want to see basically the SNDCMNMSG screen with an additional
options: STMFOPT(), TITLE(), and maybe PAGESIZE() and MARGINS().  Hide the
rest behind "F10-More options".  By default the stmf created would be
deleted, though you may have an option to save it.  I don't want to depend
on my users remembering to select Delete after sending - *YES.  Basically,
I'm looking for a clean, simplified, easy to use interface that I  can show
to our users. 

In the new PTF, we have added an option 10=Email. This runs CVTSPLSTMF with
the EMAIL(*YES) and EMAILOPT(*YES) pre-selected so that, by default, the
option will send an email and delete the stream file afterwards. All the
user needs to do is supply one or more recipient email addresses. If the
user keys a valid EMAILTO parameter on the command line, the option will run
without any prompting (unless the user presses F4). If the user does not key
a valid EMAILTO parameter on the command line, the command is automatically
prompted and the user need only supply the details of the recipients.
 
We have also restructured the parameters to CVTSPLSTMF to try to make them
more user-friendly and hide the complexity. We gave serious consideration to
your suggestion of using F10=More..., however, this would have had a major
disadvantage for the majority of parameters. There are a large number of
infrequently used parameters which are only relevant to a particular stream
file format. For example, TITLE is relevant only to PDF and HTML. If TITLE
was controlled by F10=More..., pressing F10 would show the TITLE parameter
even if you had selected, say, TOFMT(*TEXT).
 
We have therefore implemented F10=More... for only a small number of
infrequently used parameters which are relevant to all file formats and have
taken a different approach. We have added a new parameter PMTADLPARM (Prompt
Additional Parameters), the sole purpose of which is to control the
prompting of additional, infrequently used parameters, where the relevance
of those parameters is dependent on the 
value of the TOFMT parameter. Thus, if PMTADLPARM is left as *NO (the
default), the little used parameters are hidden. If the user keys *YES for
PMTADLPARM, the little used parameters are shown, but only those that are
relevant to the TOFMT option selected.
 
As a result of these changes, when users select, say, 10=Email against a
spooled file, they will see the absolute bare minimum of parameters that are
necessary: TOSTMF (with a default name pre-filled), TOFMT (defaulted to *PDF
unless TOFMT is keyed as a parameter on the command line), STMFOPT
(defaulted to *NONE for safety's sake unless STMFOPT is keyed as a parameter
on the command line), PMTADLPARM (in case additional parameters are
required), EMAILOPT (with delete = *YES unless overridden on the command
line), EMAILFROM and EMAILTO.
 
We're not particularly happy with the batch conversion ability.  Having the
ability to use a PDM option is nice, but we'd also prefer to be able to key
everything directly from the command line.

Basically, having to create the PDM option is an extra step that is
detrimental to one time conversions.  For example, we had a group of spool
files in an OUTQ that we wanted converted to PDF and stored in a folder on a
Windows PC via QNTC.  Another group in a different OUTQ needed to go to the
same PC, but in a different ending folder.  Neither of these jobs will be
done again.  We had to waste the time creating the first PDM option then
either create a second or modify the first.

Granted, we could have left the TOSTMF parm off the PDM option, and used the
OPTPARM(TOSTMF(...)).  Generically, our PDM option could just be CVTSPLSTMF
FROMFILE(&F) JOB(&N/&U/&J) SPLNBR(&S) and used OPTPARM for everything else.
But the problem with in regards to future usage is that is there's no access
to the on-line help for the CVTSPLSTMF parameters.

What would be nice would be a Convert Spool to Stream File Batch
(CVTSPLSTMB) command that combines the Selection fields of WRKSPLFPDM with
the conversion files of CVTSPLSTMF.

This would allow for a quick and easy SBMJOB (F4) CVTSPLSTMB(F4) type all
the options and go.  :-)

We took your point on this one. We have added a new CMD parameter to
WRKSPLPDM which allows you to specify a full ad hoc CVTSPLSTMF command
string to be run against each selected spooled file when WRKSPLFPDM is
running in batch mode, as an alternative to specifying an option.
 
This has the advantage, as you pointed out, of saving you the trouble of
defining a PDM option if this is a one-off. Also, since this new parameter
is defined as a command parameter, you can do command prompting using F4 and
get access to help text as you can a command type on SBMJOB.
 
The complication (and main reason we hadn't done this previously) is that
there must be a way of prompting CVTSPLSTMF and indicating that the spooled
file to be processed is the one just selected by CoolTools. You can't
unfortunately use a substitution variable here: the command prompter will
not allow FROMFILE(&F) to be specified for example. To get around this we
have changed CVTSPLSTMF to allow a special value *SLT on each of the
FROMFILE, JOB and SPLNBR parameters. When specifying a CVTSPLSTMF command on
the CMD parameter of the WRKSPLFPDM command, you should specify CVTSPLSTMF
FROMFILE(SLT) JOB(*SLT) SPLNBR(*SLT) to indicate that the spooled file you
want to process is the one just selected by CoolTools.
 
    e.g. 
 
WRKSPLFPDM
    ...
    MODE(*BATCH)
    CMD('    CVTSPLSTMF 
                    FROMFILE(*SLT)
                    JOB(*SLT)
                    SPLNBR(*SLT)
                    TOSTMF(''/home/&U/&F.PDF'')
                    TOFMT(*PDF)
                    STMFOPT(*REPLACE)')
                    
Since this requires a change to CVTSPLSTMF, to be able to use this you will
need to apply not only the new CoolTools PTF we're planning to send you, but
also a new CoolSpools PTF we're preparing.
 
Following feedback from other customers we have also added a JOB parameter
to WRKSPLPDM to allow the selection of spooled file for a specified job, and
have made SPLFNAME a generic parameter, so you can specify SPLFNAME(ST*)
etc.
 
Once you've had a chance to try these changes out, which hopefully will be
tomorrow, we hope that they will go a long way to convincing you that our
products represent a satisfactory integrated package. At the very least, it
will hopefully demonstrate that we take customer feedback seriously and are
anxious to respond to constructive criticism in a timely manner. If you have
any further feedback, this will be most welcome and we wil endeavour to
respond to that in a similar way.
 
Thanks again for all your help and patience.
 
Pete
 
Peter Clifford
ariadne software
www.ariadnesoftware.co.uk <http://www.ariadnesoftware.co.uk> 
 
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <  <mailto:CWilt@xxxxxxxxxxxx> CWilt@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <  <mailto:support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> support@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2004 7:30 PM
Subject: Couple of Questions and some feedback for you...


> Pete,
> 
> Hope you had a nice holiday.  My was pretty nice, except for spending Jan
> 2-4 in the office moving to our new 810.
> 
> Anyway, had a couple of questions for you:
> 
> 1) CVSPLFSTMF v1 had a couple of *PNLGRPs to provide help for the
CVTSPLSTMF
> and CVTSTMSPLF commands, but I don't see any panel groups for v4r1; though
> the commands themselves are set to use them. What's the status of on-line
> help for v4r1?
> 
> 2) What was the last price you offered for the Cool Tools/Communique
combo.
> I found an email that say $995, but I thought I remembered it being lower.
> 
> Cool Tools Feedback
> 
> 1) Still having some problems getting the subfile to reset properly. In
> particular, we noticed that when you make a selection from WRKSPLFPDM and
> then cancel, the WRKSPLFPDM seem to jump to the last screen of the
subfile.
> 
> 2) If you subset by an OUTQ that doesn't exist, you don't see any error
> messages you just see the last subset you had looked at.
> 
> 3) Really would love to see a separate option too email.  When the option
is
> taken, I want to see basically the SNDCMNMSG screen with an additional
> options: STMFOPT(), TITLE(), and maybe PAGESIZE() and MARGINS().  Hide the
> rest behind "F10-More options".  By default the stmf created would be
> deleted, though you may have an option to save it.  I don't want to depend
> on my users remembering to select Delete after sending - *YES.
> 
> Basically, I'm looking for a clean, simplified, easy to use interface that
I
> can show to our users. 
> 
> 
> Thanks for your help,
> 
> Charles Wilt