At 12:57 PM 11/24/98 -0800, Jon Cohen wrote:
>While users have been registering complaints for quite some
>time, I still haven't heard a suggestion on how to improve this.

OK - I like a challenge!

The nice short, terse, scannable V.UU.FF string is useful for comparing
between different versions, updates etc. This utility is underscored by the
fact that we can have no fewer than three different versions of the version
string (there HAS to be a more elegant way of expressing that concept!), to
suit different needs.

The need here seems to be getting an answer to the 'human-posed' general
information question - "Just what version and revision am I using, and what
Power Patch do I have in place?"

Why not dedicate a small portion of memory to answering just that question.
I.e.  a fixed, one-to-one relationship between a particular V.UU.FF and a
text-string that says:

MPE/iX Release 5.5      , with Power Patch 6

and that could be kept as an HP<variablename> (How about
HP_LONG_SYSTEM_VERSION_NAME, just for Stan ;-)

Note that this example actually uses two strings, but neither is
particularly long. They could be explicitly stated to be in no particular
format, but containing only human readable strings. The contents of the
memory would be set ony by AUTOINST and/or AUTOPAT (or whatever devious
techniques are used for updating the OS). I don't know if I'd like the idea
of using the catalog, since that makes it too easy to change (althoug why
anyone would want to do this to themselves beats me!), but it shouldn't be
too hard to find a home for it, surely?

Now that memory of the fixed and rotating varieties are delightfully
inexpensive, perhaps we could dedicate a few bytes to this usful little feature?

Tony "Eagerly anticipating the upcoming turkey infestation" Furnivall