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.