Here's my take on devinfo...

It doesn't seem to show WHO owns a device as clearly as showdev.  Are we
supposed to track it down by asking pinfo for the program name or job#?
Wouldn't anyone who uses 'down' a lot (we don't) want to distinguish between
already 'down' vs 'down pending' ?  Showdev shows this in its 'ownership'
column.
Maybe the 'ownership' could just match showjob's ownership column more closely
(except for the number of files)?  Or add items like 'OwnerJobNum',
'OwnerJobName'.

Any chance of having it tell us if a printer or modem has a reply pending ?
SpoolerState showing suspended printers looks nice.  Might eventually be a
background job here to tell the operator about such things, and the more we
can have it check for the better.

Is there a direct way to tell the IP# of a nework printer or session?  Anybody
else think it is even worth having ?  (I know how to get the ip# of a session
once I know the know the session#).

I don't like to say it has too much of anything, because I have no idea what
everyone else wants or what I might want in 2007.  The one thing I have needed
most in the past was a way to tell for sure that a tape drive is ready to
write to, and it looks like I can get that from BOT, TapeError, TapeOnline,
TapeWriteProtect, etc.  Of course, it kinda has to be here for me to fiddle
with before I really know what I think of it.
That said, I would be surprised if I ever used:
any of the lists
BackSpaceErase
Duplicative
HasPassword
(int)ParitySetting
ParityEnabled
SecurityDown
Header/TrailerDisabled
TermType
XON/XOFF

Please keep everything that could help explain why printers aren't printing
now, or tape drives can't write/read now.


Dave Powell,   MMfab

----- Original Message -----
From: "Vance, Jeff H (Cupertino)" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2005 13:17
Subject: devinfo() externals ready for review


Hi all,

I've completed the external specs for the new DEVINFO CI function and
have available for your comments an early draft of the HELP text. Please
see:

http://jazz.external.hp.com/private/devinfoHelp.txt

Also we have similar specs for volinfo and spoolinfo, see:

http://jazz.external.hp.com/private/volinfoHelp.txt

http://jazz.external.hp.com/private/spoolinfoHelp.txt


We would very much appreciate your review of these external specs.  Are
we providing enough information to meet your needs?  Also, as important,
are we providing too much info, too many aliases, overlapping data,
unnecessary formatted results (where the integer form will suffice),
etc.

For instance, does spoolinfo really need to accept "Onnn" and "#Onnn" as
valid inputs for the target spoolfile?  Does devinfo need to distinguish
between "all printers" vs. "serial printers" vs. "ds printers" -- ditto
for terminals?  Do we need to distinguish between MB and sectors for all
of the disk size items returned by volinfo?  Etc...

If we are returning information or formats which you don't see value in
please let me know. If I can reduce the complexity of these functions
and still meet customer needs then we all win.


Thanks,
 Jeff Vance, vCSY