Hi all,

Apparently, Interex has started a moderated mailing list called
"Hot News for HP Computer Users".  I just received my first mailing
from them (unsolicited), and tried to reply...that's how I found out it
was moderated :)      Perhaps my reply will appear on it later.

Anyway, my main comment (aside from the implied snipe at them competing
with an established vendor (Ron Seybold)) was about not putting in
accurate URLs for HP's and SCO's API matrix.

> HP AND SCO COMPLETE SECOND DRAFT OF NEXT-GENERATION UNIX
> SYSTEM APIS
...
> SCO and HP have announced that a second draft of API
> specification for their next-generation UNIX system
...
> A matrix-format summary of information about the APIs --
> listing the APIs, their origin and the standards they
> support -- is available on the companies' World Wide Web
> sites: http://www.hp.com/go/3dunix for HP and
> http://www.sco.com for SCO.

The latter URL is certainly *NOT* where the API specification is.
I'm tired of people publishing the top-level company URL instead of
the *correct* URL.  For those of you who want to check it out, try:

   http://www3.sco.com/Company/scohp/apicover.htm
or
   http://www.hp.com:80/computing/next_genunix/api.html

BTW, the *actual* info is on a second page, in @#$%^ PDF format (instead
of HTML).  Why is this annoying?  AFAIK, PDF can't be converted into
usable ASCII text.  The Adbobe Acrobat reader will, at least, let you
cut/paste text from a PDF doc into a text buffer, which you can then
paste into an ASCII file ... but you lose tabular/columnar information,
which is vital in this instance!  (And don't even bother trying to
print to a file, at least with the HP-UX version!)  OTOH, an HTML version
would be IMMEDIATELY viewable on most web browsers on most platforms,
and would be easier to convert to simple ASCII text (if desired).

Oh well.  If you want the latest (beta) HP-UX PDF viewer, go to:
   http://www.adobe.com/acrobat/3beta/undownload.html

Oh yes, the two PDF files from HP and SCO are significantly different
in size (haven't compared content yet): HP's is 312554 bytes, and
SCO's is 238351 bytes.  The extra stuff in HP's is an extra page of
text at the start.

> HP and SCO jointly are developing 64-bit, next-generation,
> UNIX operating system technology, which will be optimized

One annoying aspect is that it seems that MPE users have had no chance to
provide input ... and we're some of the few people who've been using
64-bit pointers for over a DECADE.  I've heard several offer assistance
to HP-UX lab managers (and higher, even to the Dick Watts level), but
they've been turned down.

> HP and SCO plan to enrich their operating systems, HP-UX and
> SCO Gemini, with the next-generation UNIX system technology

Good trick, considering HP-UX doesn't even have last-generation technology
support yet!  (I.e., lacks full support of the current PA-RISC 64 bit
(32 bit space, 32 bit offset) virtual address scheme)

SS