HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: u910826@bruny.cc.utas.edu.au (Louis        siuoL)
Subject: Find-a-Word / Crossword HELP
Summary: as above
Keywords: Find-a-Word, Crossword
Organization: University of Tasmania, Australia.
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 00:41:50 GMT

HELP can anyone help me out with an efficient algorithm to generate word grids
given a list of words? 
I will need to be able to specify the grid size and the individual words.

Some Shareware/PD source in TP 6/7 would be *very* nice!
 
--
Louis Solomon - a student at The University of Tasmania
      e-mail: u910826@bruny.cc.utas.edu.au

"If wishes were fishes, we'd all cast nets" - Dune
From: ulf@julius.c3consult.comm.se (Ulf Lagerstedt)
Subject: Inventory of methods for software development
Organization: Communicator C3Consult AB
Distribution: comp
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 16:36:50 GMT



 (I asked this a while ago in comp.software.eng, with limited success.
 If the subject is slightly inappropriate for this newsgroup, I apologize.
 I urge you to mail your answers. Thanks.)


I am about to do a survey or inventory of methods for software development.
With methods, I mean documented procedures and conceptual models for
either the entire development process or some parts thereof.

Anything worth being called a method in this sense is of interest.
Obviously, a complete inventory would be very large, but I hope
to be able to compile information about at least a large share of
the more widespread methods.

I wish to get as much information as possible about each method,
but the following will do fine:

                                                (for instance)

Name:                                           Coad/Yordon OOA and OOD
Key characteristics:                            Object oriented
Parts of development process concerned:         Analysis, design
Software tools supporting the method:           ...etc.
Result/output from method:
References:
- Documentation (title, author, etc):
- Organizations (commercial or other):


Please, if you have any references to a particular method, or if you
know of similar work elsewhere, mail me a reply. If there is enough
interest, I'll gladly post a summary. Your help is appreciated.

--
Ulf Lagerstedt, Communicator C3Consult, Sweden  /  ulf@c3consult.comm.se
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: john@phobos.sscl.uwo.ca (John Tucker)
Subject: Knapsack problem??
Organization: University of Western Ontario
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 21:02:41 GMT
Summary: C code for knapsack algorithm needed 

Here is my problem:
	I have N items with an associated cost of Cn. I want to select
the best subset of these items where TotalCost-Tolerance < Sum(Cn) <
TotalCost.

	I know it is a form of a knapsack problem, but I can't recollect the
elegant way of coding this. I'm using a brute force algorithm based on
2^n possible combinations of n objects taken 0..n at a time. This limits
me to a max of 32 items and is slow (micro) to acceptable (DECstation 5000).

	I know there is an excellent book (with code), but I can't remember
the name or author ...and its probably already signed out of the library.

	So if you have any code (C C++ Pascal Modula-2) which can help me,
or if you know of an ftp site. Please Help!!!

E-mail me as :jtucker@uwo.ca


-- 
--
jtucker@uwo.ca  John Tucker

A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: mlavine@novell.com (Marc Lavine)
Subject: Re: reentrant code
Organization: Novell, Inc.
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 11:05:49 GMT

crawford@boole.mitre.org (Randy Crawford) writes:

>But reentrant code is meant to remain 
>in memory after a context switch, allowing another task to reuse the memory 
>and save the cost of swapping it out and then back in immediately.

I believe that you may be confusing reentrancy with shared code.
Reentrancy has nothing to do with swapping memory or tasks around.
You may also be confusing context switching and swapping.  Context
switching does not generally have to do with swapping anything other
than values in registers.

Here's how I'd describe reentrant code:

A section of code is reentrant if it will function properly when it is
entered by a thread and then entered again without the thread that
previously entered the code having exited the code yet.

This has nothing to do with the O/S moving memory around.
-- 
Marc Lavine
mlavine@Novell.Com
-- 
Marc Lavine
mlavine@Novell.Com
Xref: sparky comp.programming:3319 comp.unix.programmer:5683 comp.unix.misc:4569 rec.games.corewar:1527 rec.games.programmer:5027 comp.org.ieee:594 comp.org.usenix:1072 comp.lang.c:18321 comp.lang.c++:17918 comp.software-eng:4936
From: ahmedh@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (ahmed h al-mehdi)
Newsgroups: comp.programming,comp.unix.programmer,comp.unix.misc,rec.games.corewar,rec.games.programmer,comp.org.ieee,comp.org.usenix,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.software-eng
Subject: 1993 IEEE CS National Programming Contest Addendum 2
Date: 14 Dec 92 15:24:49 GMT
Reply-To: ahmedh@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (ahmed h al-mehdi)
Followup-To: comp.programming
Organization: IEEE CS Student Branch Chapter, UT Austin, USA
Originator: ahmedh@tigger.cc.utexas.edu

:--------------------------------------------------------------------------:

            1993  IEEE CS  National Programming Contest [Addendum 2]

:--------------------------------------------------------------------------:


This is the second addendum to the IEEE CS National Programming Contest
announcement posting.  First a correction; MIT is in Cambridge not in Boston.

A quick update on prizes.  We got our first prizes in due to a generous 
donation from Hewlett Packard- three HP 48SX scientific calculators and
three HP calculator printers.  As we receive more prizes, we will keep
you posted.  

We have received several letters from European schools asking for the
definition of "undergraduate."  As we have loosely defined it, it means
persuing a Bachelor of Arts degree, Bachelor of Science degree,
or its equivalent.  If you are unsure of your status, please send us
mail at answers@npc.ece.utexas.edu.

The deadline for applications is still December 30.  Please drop us a note
if you have any trouble submitting an application by this date.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Ahmed H. Al-Mehdi,
NPC Applications
From: bsmith@mickey.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Brian Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: UDP Checksum?
Date: 15 Dec 1992 00:34:08 GMT
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: mickey.cs.berkeley.edu

Do anyone know how to turn off checksum in UDP under SUN OS and/or HP-UX?  
I know how to do it under Ultrix (with dbx), but I'm not sure what to
do under the other two.

Please e-mail to the addresses below.

Thanks,
-----
Brian C. Smith				arpa:  bsmith@cs.Berkeley.EDU
University of California, Berkeley	uucp: uunet!ucbvax!postgres!bsmith
Computer Sciences Department		phone: (510)642-9585
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: Kari.Hurtta@Helsinki.FI (Kari E. Hurtta)
Subject: Re: Binary to ASCII encodings (was Re: A better mousetrap)
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki, Finland
	<1g5mtmINNfgk@daisy.ee.und.ac.za> <Bz3nEK.13H@aplcenmp.apl.jhu.edu>
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 21:19:52 GMT

In article <Bz3nEK.13H@aplcenmp.apl.jhu.edu> brownwm@aplcenmp.apl.jhu.edu (William G. S. Brown) wrote:
>>If, as I suspect, the real problem has to do with transporting binary
>>files via email (or something similar), then I suggest MIME with
>>``Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64''.  See RFC 1341.
> Could you clarify "MIME" and "RFC 1341" ?

Some problem? RFC stands for Reguest fo Comments. These are Internet standards.
MIME stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension. RFC 1341 documents
MIME:
            Network Working Group               N. Borenstein, Bellcore
            Request for Comments: 1341               N. Freed, Innosoft
                                                              June 1992



                   MIME  (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions):


                      Mechanisms for Specifying and Describing
                       the Format of Internet Message Bodies


--
- K E H                                      /  El{m{ on monimutkaista
  Kari.Hurtta@Helsinki.FI
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: travis@eecs.nwu.edu (Travis Marlatte)
Subject: Re: collective program design
Organization: Rauland-Borg Corporation, Skokie IL
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 00:00:15 GMT

In article <fkaiser.724352429@Physik.TU-Muenchen.DE> fkaiser@Physik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Frank Kaiser) writes:
>The best public domain programs known were created by many programmers
>working together. Everyone of these did a little share of work. 

I doubt it. Even if you could provide specific examples, it would be hard
to claim that all, even most of the best PD programs were created my
multiple people working TOGETHER.

No doubt, many of the best PD programs were evolved by many people. Not
working together but rather each one contributing his or her own talents
when the need and interest arose.

>But the begin and development of such a workgroup was a result of randomness. 

I don't think that randomness is an appropriate way to describe it.
Undirected maybe.
>
>For the development of such a project, one could thing of a bbs, where
>everyone willing to take a part of the burden can find a task to solve.
>This procedure should have to be higly formalized in a top-down-manner.

Oh, that kind of randomness.
-- 
Travis Marlatte
travis@eecs.nwu.edu
708-297-0055
From: trier@slc6.ins.cwru.edu (Stephen C. Trier)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Re: Semaphores, Swap, or Test_And_Set
Date: 18 Dec 1992 15:57:19 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland OH (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: slc6.ins.cwru.edu

In article <1992Dec18.045022.15255@umbc3.umbc.edu> reagle@umbc8.umbc.edu (Mr. Joseph Reagle; MEYERHOFF (U)) writes:
>	What hardware devices are supplied on MS-DOS(none?) or various
>Unix machines to allow this?  Do any languages such as C or C++
>provide (I guess concurent pascal does) provide mechanisms for the
>protection of a shared variables, or CST?

Well, most systems end up implementing them in one way or another.
Here's a simplistic way to do it, in pseudocode:

     Mask all interrupts
     Do the atomic instruction
     Unmask interrupts

This approach is actually quite common in MS-DOS.  I have seen it all
over the place in MS-DOS network software.  The ensuing lost interrupts
are nothing to sneeze at, though.  Interrupt masking should never be
done when not absolutely necessary.

The 8086 family, however, supports a number of atomic operations.  XCHG
is atomic.  Any other test-and-set instruction, like INC, DEC, and many
others, can be made atomic through use of the LOCK prefix.  (It is not
clear to me whether the LOCK prefix is necessary for single-CPU atomic
operations.  It is obviously necessary for multiprocessor apps.)

Upon a suggestion from the net, I used INC and DEC to implement semaphores
in CWRU's MS-DOS network kernel.  It took me all of 4 lines of assembly to
implement simple non-blocking versions of the P and V primitives, 20 lines
of assembly if they were callable from C.

Mainstream languages generally treat process coordination primitives as
OS-dependent features, not language primitives.  A few, like the Modula
family, have such primitives built in.  Concurrent languages, which are
by definition the ones that have these features as part of the language
spec, have not really caught on outside of the academic world.

Many Unix systems (especially those of the System V persuasion) have
semaphores, shared memory, and other nifty IPC mechanisms as part of the
OS services offered to applications.  BSD Unix seems to use more of an
"everyone much use sockets" approach, which is, in many cases, sufficient.
Of course, there are mutual exclusion mechanisms used within the OS
kernel, and a user implementing a thread library at the application level
is more than free to build his own coordination routines.  If he can
implement a threads library, doing mutual exclusion will be easy.

-- 
Stephen Trier                      "We want to offer you a price that you
Network software type               just can't afford to take advantage of."
Case Western Reserve University         - Sales blurb from HSC Software
trier@ins.cwru.edu
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: mayers@yak.syr.EDU (Michael  Ayers)
Subject: Re: collective program design
In-reply-to: fkaiser@Physik.TU-Muenchen.DE's message of Mon, 14 Dec 1992 17:00:29 GMT
Organization: Syracuse University
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 12:02:42 EST

In article <fkaiser.724352429@Physik.TU-Muenchen.DE> fkaiser@Physik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Frank Kaiser) writes:

>The best public domain programs known were created by many programmers
>working together. Everyone of these did a little share of work. 
>But the begin and development of such a workgroup was a result of randomness. 

>One could think of rules for finding the need for a new program, for 
>example a newsgroup with suggestions for new programs, together with 
>a sort of democratic decision to start a new project. 

>For the development of such a project, one could thing of a bbs, where
>everyone willing to take a part of the burden can find a task to solve.
>This procedure should have to be higly formalized in a top-down-manner.

>I don't believe this is a new idea. Please comment it.


	Comment:  It sounds too much like work to fly.  I'm not a real expert
 on the deal, but as far as I can tell, most of the big P.D. programs (GNU
 excepted) were as much a social thing as a programming thing.  Those involved
 were having full as well as getting work done, perhaps just to prove that
 the two were compatible.

	The democratic process thing sounds like the weakest link - "Okay,
 we've all agreed on what to do, now who's going to do it?" [silence]

	I do agree that a newsgroup or mailing list for thinktanking
 prospective projects would be a good idea, I just think that a relatively
 anarchic framework is mandatory - project control must remain entirely
 within the group which does the work.

	I can see myself working on my own baby, and then giving it away. I
 can picture myself working on someone else's project, so long as they were
 nice to me, so they could give it away.  Working for a comittee?  Sorry,
 I just can't picture myself doing that for free.


--

             Mike                       mayers@mailbox.syr.edu

    C: Unintelligible code means job security.
  
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: fkaiser@Physik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Frank Kaiser)
Subject: collective program design
Cc: fkaiser@physik.tu-muenchen.de
Organization: Leibniz-Rechenzentrum, Muenchen (Germany)
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 17:00:29 GMT

The best public domain programs known were created by many programmers
working together. Everyone of these did a little share of work. 
But the begin and development of such a workgroup was a result of randomness. 

One could think of rules for finding the need for a new program, for 
example a newsgroup with suggestions for new programs, together with 
a sort of democratic decision to start a new project. 

For the development of such a project, one could thing of a bbs, where
everyone willing to take a part of the burden can find a task to solve.
This procedure should have to be higly formalized in a top-down-manner.

I don't believe this is a new idea. Please comment it.

    
			Frank Kaiser

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

	Muenchen/Germany...the origin of weissbier
                                
                   _%+_%-%-_%_%
                  / +%%+% + +% \  
                  \ -% %+%+ % % %
		   \\+ ---- - +/%
		   \\+  +  /   /%%
		   \\ \ -  /   /%
		    \ -       /%+
		    \\  - /   /
		    \\\    /  /
		     \  +    /
		     \\ -  / /
         	    .\\ -    /.
		   [\\ ----  /-]
                   -\\_______-/ 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------



Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: reagle@umbc8.umbc.edu (Mr. Joseph Reagle; MEYERHOFF (U))
Subject: Semaphores, Swap, or Test_And_Set
Organization: University of Maryland, Baltimore County Campus
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 04:50:22 GMT


	I've learned some interesting CST solutions in my OS class
recently and was thinking of trying to implement some concurrent
processes with access to a shared variable or CST.  Of course, access to this
variable must be atomic.
	What hardware devices are supplied on MS-DOS(none?) or various
Unix machines to allow this?  Do any languages such as C or C++
provide (I guess concurent pascal does) provide mechanisms for the
protection of a shared variables, or CST?
	Do I have to depend on the OS, and make a shell script to
execute things correctly, or do languages allow me to do it within
themselves.  (I would assume these would be non-standard additions
to the compiler--TC has a _fun lock()_ on files.  Are considerations
being made for languages to have CST solutions implemented as standard
features if they don't exist now?  Especially semaphores?)
	Curiously awaiting a reply!
					Joe
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: stone-andy@cs.yale.edu (Andy Stone)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Re: Mouse handlers??
Date: 13 Dec 1992 15:15:57 -0500
Organization: /homes/majors/stonea/.organization
Distribution: usa
NNTP-Posting-Host: macaw.zoo.cs.yale.edu
In-reply-to: alliso@david.wheaton.edu's message of Thu, 10 Dec 1992 19:52:54 GMT

My problem with this was that I was declaring my handler as an interrupt
routine (and thus returning with iret).  Actually, your handler is not an
interrupt, just a normal (far) procedure, and thus should return using retf.

						
-- 
                                                  |  Andy Stone |      
					     stonea@minerva.cis.yale.edu
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: alliso@david.wheaton.edu (Bryan Allison)
Subject: Mouse handlers??
Organization: Wheaton College, IL
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1992 19:52:54 GMT

	I have recently tried programming my mouse on my pc-clone, but have had little
luck when trying to make a user defined handler.  I set register cx to the appropriate
mask and when the first mouse event happens my handler procedure is run, but then the
mouse cursor disappears and from then on the handler doesn't seem to be called again?
Is there anyone out there that can help, or possibly send me mouse information or
possibly C code.

Thanks,
Bryan Allison.
Xref: sparky comp.programming:3339 comp.unix.programmer:5745 comp.unix.misc:4652 rec.games.corewar:1538 rec.games.programmer:5138 comp.org.ieee:597 comp.org.usenix:1096 comp.lang.c:18729 comp.lang.c++:18264 comp.software-eng:5096
From: wa2cs252@troi.cc.rochester.edu (Guardian)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Re: Programming contest
Date: 16 Dec 92 04:47:10 GMT
Organization: University of Rochester - Rochester, New York

In <1992Dec15.213125.28056@athena.mit.edu> acgoldis@athena.mit.edu (Andrew C Goldish) writes:

>  I am a relatively new subscriber to this newsgroup and did not get most of the
>information about the programming contest.  Can you send over the complete file
>with the details?

>							A. Goldish
						acgoldis@athena.mit.edu

Me Too!

						D. Flores
					df004b@uhura.cc.rochester.edu
From: ed@titipu.resun.com (Edward Reid)
Newsgroups: comp.programming
Subject: Re: collective program design
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 13:31:08 EST(-0500)
Organization: Accuracy, Ltd.
Reply-To: ed@titipu.resun.com (Edward Reid)
X-Mailer: uAccess - Macintosh Release: 1.6v0

fkaiser@Physik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Frank Kaiser) writes:
> For the development of such a project, one could thing of a bbs, where
> everyone willing to take a part of the burden can find a task to solve.
> This procedure should have to be higly formalized in a top-down-manner.
> 
> I don't believe this is a new idea. Please comment it.

Sounds very much like the FilterTop project currently nearing completion. 
It's a bunch of Macintosh programmers working together but at their own
locations.  None had worked together before the project began.  They decided
what project to undertake, divided it up, and by the few accounts I've seen
are progressing rapidly.  The result is intended to be freeware or PD (I'm
not sure which).

Edward Reid  (8*}>
  eel:   ed@titipu.resun.com  or  nosc.mil!titipu.resun.com!ed
  snail: PO Box 378/Greensboro FL 32330
Newsgroups: comp.programming
From: reagle@umbc8.umbc.edu (Mr. Joseph Reagle; MEYERHOFF (U))
Subject: Re: Semaphores, Swap, or Test_And_Set
Organization: University of Maryland, Baltimore County Campus
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 19:51:39 GMT

In article <1gsscvINNa2r@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> trier@slc6.ins.cwru.edu (Stephen C. Trier) writes:
>Well, most systems end up implementing them in one way or another.
>Here's a simplistic way to do it, in pseudocode:
>
>     Mask all interrupts
>     Do the atomic instruction
>     Unmask interrupts
>
>This approach is actually quite common in MS-DOS.  I have seen it all
>over the place in MS-DOS network software.  The ensuing lost interrupts
>are nothing to sneeze at, though.  Interrupt masking should never be
>done when not absolutely necessary.

	Sounds like a pain, I'm not familiar with how DOS deals with
deals with interupts whether priority based, FCFS, interupts could
occur but only queued and not actually do anything if a process has
requested this-keeping atomicity while not loosing interupts.


>The 8086 family, however, supports a number of atomic operations.  XCHG
>is atomic.  Any other test-and-set instruction, like INC, DEC, and many
>others, can be made atomic through use of the LOCK prefix.

	Don't know what xchg does and I am not quite sure how to
implement test_and_set using inc or dec.

Are you refering to a bit TS and use DEC to decrement the PC until
false?
	if (bit == 0) bit = 1 and PC += 2; (or return, or whatever)
	if (bit == 1) PC--;

>Upon a suggestion from the net, I used INC and DEC to implement semaphores
>in CWRU's MS-DOS network kernel.  It took me all of 4 lines of assembly to
>implement simple non-blocking versions of the P and V primitives, 20 lines
>of assembly if they were callable from C.

	Would you mind passing on the C callabled assembly?

	Thanks for the info, it was interesting.
						Joe
Newsgroups: comp.society.development
From: acceso@huracan.cr (ACCESO - Informacion y Asistencia Tecnica para ONGs en C.A.)
Subject: Job Announcement - Costa Rica
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 92 13:12:11 CAM




Acceso
 
Position Announcement
 
 
Program Officer, Costa Rica.  
Acceso, a non-profit service organization based in Costa Rica, 
provides communication services, information, training and 
technical assistance to NGOs in Central America.  The program 
officer will be responsible for contributing to the design, start-
up, and consolidation of an electronic network for communications 
and information exchange between NGOs in the region; recruitment 
and orientation of new organizations on the network; coordinating 
the organizations that will contribute specific information 
products to the network; working closely with the network steering 
committee; training new users; assisting with the development of 
training materials; and participating in the administration and 
institutional development of Acceso.  
 
Essential Requirements:  A personal commitment to the regions 
social and economic development, bilingual (English/Spanish), 
minimum of 4 years professional experience with NGOs, university 
degree, familiarity with computers and word processing programs, 
ability to write clearly and analytically.  
 
Preferred Requirements:  Central American origin or experience, 
experience with electronic communication, applied experience in 
management of development organizations, experience in training 
and knowledge of training programs and methods.
 
Remuneration:  Competitive salary and benefits commensurate with 
experience.
 
Please submit:  Resume, an original essay in Spanish (maximum two 
typed pages) on the topic 'Factores Criticos para el Trabajo de 
Organizaciones Privadas de Desarrollo en los Annos Noventa,' and 
the names and phone numbers of three professional references.  
 
Send application to:  Acceso, P.O. Box 025216-34, Miami, FL 33102-
5216, or by e-mail to acceso@nicarao.apc.org.
 
Application deadline:  January 15, 1993.