VPLUS Enhancements Go Into BETA Test
 
HP pleasantly surprised the attendees at IPROF'95 with the
announcement that they were looking for several sites willing to
test VPLUS enhancements.  The new features were:
          Cursor Position Sensing within VREADFIELDS
          Cursor Position Sensing by screen row and column number
          Copy Formspec specifications from one field to another
On addition HP is actively looking into a mechanism to handle
Century Date Types within VPLUS (MDYC).
 
HP presentations at IPROF'95. included a report on progress with
items on the Denver improvement list;  technical presentations of
items that are in progress or ready for BETA testing;  and a
description of intrinsics utilities and other lesser known
routines that could be effective alternatives to some of the
enhancement requests.
 
Brief vendor presentations on features of NewFace, Wings & TVP,
and EZC were made.  The current HP position is that there is
little benefit to be gained from doing enhancements that would
replicate function already available in third party products.
 
A new ballot of 14 enhancement requests was assembled for voting
by the SIG members before leaving the HP Cupertino site. The
results are shown below.
 
System  Denver
Improv   SIG   -IPROF'95 -
Rank 94 Rank  Rank  $Spent     Description
======= ===== ==== ====== ==============================
 
    18     1    1    395  Scrollable Pick Lists
    14     2    2    305  Pop Up / Pull Down Windows
    28     6    3    230  Expand maximum number of fields in a
                              form beyond 128
                4    135  Allow greater than 52 single character
                              fields per form (A-Z,a-z)
           8    5    120  Support terminals with greater than
                              132 characters per row
                6    120  Mass Edit to duplicate field
                              EX:SAME AS [FORM-NAME : FIELD-NAME]
                7     90  Set default attributes at form file
                              level  ("none","D","char")
           7    8     85  Support at least 12 Function Keys /
                          Labels
                9     80  Shift Function Key Labels if greater 8
                                - VSETLABELS
          11   10     65  Performance- Native Mode at run time
               11     55  Support arithmetic on DATES
                                EX: Set EXP-DATE to $TODAY + 30
          12   12     55  Increase processing specification space
                                in fields
               13     45  Include XWINDOWS Manager in MPE FOS
               14     10  Intrinsic access to get/save field
                                values
    26     3       Beta   Allow copying of processing specs from
                                one field to another
    32     4       Beta   Cursor Position Sending in VREADFIELDS
    31     5       Beta   Century Date Handling (MDYC)
           9       Beta   Cursor Position by screen row / column
    44    10      Avail.  Increase the number of forms in the
                               FastForms file (VMERGE Utility)
 
In the initial introduction go-round, attendees were asked to
identify the issues that from their opinion were most pressing.
The two items that were identified most frequently (and not on
the enhancement list) were :
     1.   HP's  Strategic Plan for VPLUS
     2.   HP's need to continue to enhance and support VPLUS
HP's timely response to the Denver list by going into BETA test
with four items, gave attendees more confidence that HP had
finally recognized the need to enhance and maintain the very
popular VPLUS part of the HP/3000 FOS.
 
If you are interested in participating in the Cursor Position
testing, Copy Formspec testing and / or the Year-2000 testing and
are prepared to provide timely feedback (April,May,June), send
your request to HP by FAX to 408-447-7902.
 
HP was well represented by Pam Bennett, George Cullison, Mike
Korwan, K N Kumar, Ronald Schweickhardt, Lucile Steiner, Jeff
Vance and Mike Yawn.
 
The SIG circulated a copy of the 1995 UIF-Vplus Interface Survey
(the results are not tabulated yet).  A copy of this survey will
go out to all INTEREX members in the near future. Your input is
very important.
 
 
======================= NOTE =======================
 
The above will appear in the next issue of InterexPress.
 
Question???
 
HP would like to know if persons voted high $ toward the first two
(Scrollable Pick Lists,  Pop Up / Pull Down Windows) because
they wanted them as enhancements in VPLUS or if they were
happy to get them in third party products?  RSVP please.