HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: kirby@xerox.com (Mike Kirby)
Subject: Re: Is SEI's CMM being used in Anger or ju
Reply-To: kirby@xerox.com
Organization: Xerox Corporation, Webster NY
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 18:07:38 GMT

In article 27798@netcom.com, mzimmers@netcom.com (Michael Zimmers) writes:
> In article <1992Dec11.060807.1@mdcbbs.com> royce@mdcbbs.com (Royce D. Myers EDS/Unigraphics) writes:
> 
> >CMM provides a focus that Deming doesn't, with studies and rationale to 
> >back it
> >up.  I really don't understand this objection to the CMM; it's just a 
> >tool, not
> >a grade.
> 
> Oh yes it is.  As was mentioned in earlier articles in this thread,
> numerous DoD agencies have begun using results of SCEs based upon
> the CMM as criteria for bidder selection.  Whether or not it was
> ever intended for it, the CMM is becoming a union card.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Michael Zimmers                                    |  Home:  408 996 1984
> SoftHelp                                           |  Work:  408 996 1965
> Software Solutions for Open Systems                |  Data:  408 996 1974


The CMM *is* intended to be a grade.  The Departement of Defense established the
Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mello University with the express
intent of developing a system by which the DOD could "grade" contractors.  This
would allow them to determine the credibility of a contractor when biding for
complex software systems as well as helping the contractor improve their performance
in developing software systems.

I see nothing wrong with establishing a reasonable grading system to understand
if companies have serious software development capabilities.  If I were the DOD
or even a large company seeking to contract out a large software system I would
look at the development process of the company that was bidding on the contract. 
Requiring a CMM evalutation to help understand that capability is certainly
reasonable.  

The problem is when any grading system begins to mandate specific technologies that
might not be appropriate to an individual company.  To establish higher levels
of the CMM, it requires a serious ammount of overhead.  Should a company discover
ways to achieve the same results but with a different process structure, any
CMM-like grade should understand that and take it into account.  We don't want to find
ourselves in the situation where a CMM audit becomes a listing of overhead personel
and complex documents where the larger the number of overhead and the more pages
of "standards" documentation becomes the grade.  (i.e. My grade is higher then yours
because I have more pages of docs and more people who don't really do anything).

If anyone else has an better ideas how a large company or the DOD can be sure that
software developed for it will be done right the first time, I would love to hear
it.

Mike Kirby
Xerox Corp
E-mail: kirby.roch803@xerox.com
From: jka@windshear.larc.nasa.gov (J. Keith Alston)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: CASE tools ???
Date: 12 Dec 1992 14:16:48 GMT
Organization: NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA  USA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: windshear.larc.nasa.gov
Originator: jka@windshear.larc.nasa.gov


Hi,
  I'm looking for books or articles that talk about CASE tools.
  Not necessarily specific products, but generally what CASE tools
  are or are supposed to be. Any help would greatly appreciated.
  I'll attempt to monitor this group, but would rather have e-mail.
  
-Keith Alston
-- 
J. Keith Alston jka@windshear.larc.nasa.gov
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
From: bryant@ced.utah.edu (Bryant Eastham,MEB 3116,581-5353)
Subject: Re: C CODE LAyout
Reply-To: bryant@ced.utah.edu
Organization: Center for Engineering Design
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 92 19:52:13 GMT

In article 7416@dove.nist.gov, bagwill@swe.ncsl.nist.gov (Bob Bagwill) writes:
>: In article 944@seq.uncwil.edu, herbst@seq.uncwil.edu (R.T. Herbst) writes:
>: >
>: >On the subject of C CODE layout.
>: >I require my students to use the following format. 
>: 
>: Why in the world would you REQUIRE students to use a particular
>: coding style? Coding style is one of the things that makes each
>: programmer unique and lends some "art" to this thing we call
>: programming!
>
>Why do children have to follow a handwriting style when they learn
>to write?  Why do they have to learn spelling conventions when they
>learn to spell?  Why can't every child invent their own script and
>their own unique way of spelling words?  Artistry is more important
>than legibility!
>
>--
>bob bagwill	i rite this wei bekuz aim artixic

[By the way, R.T. Herbst did not write the statement about "art",
 I did.]

If we are going to say that coding style is on the same level as
english spelling, then we should be able to have a "style checker"
just like we have a "spelling checker". Unfortunately, coding style
is nowhere near as standardized, and I continue to argue that it
should not be taught as though it were.

Bryant Eastham


Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
From: davidal@comm.mot.com (UK702 DavidAlexander)
Subject: Re: Value of High Code Coverage Metrics in Testing - Request for Opinion
Organization: Motorola Land Mobile Products Sector
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 09:58:03 GMT

In article <1992Dec14.072812.13689@syacus.acus.oz.au>, paulb@syacus.acus.oz.au (Paul Bandler) writes:

<preamble deleted>
 
|> I believe we have a tool to measure the %BFA 'Branch Flow Analysis' but
|> of course the engineers are responsible for producing the test cases to 
|> exercise the code.
|> 
|> I have 3 questions:-
|> 
|> 1)  Do people think that this is a valuable metric?
|> 2)  Is it a cost effective excersize to get engineers to achieve a particular
|>     %BFA as a completion criteria?
|> 3)  What is a realistic %BFA to aim for?
|> Paul Bandler

BFA is a valuable tool for testing. %BFA, as with all unitless numbers, is
of a more dubious nature.

%BFA does not tell the person looking at it which paths were not tested
and why. This is important because engineers could, subconsciously or
otherwise, use their quota of untested branches to avoid testing the more
complex/niggly areas of code.

The nature of the testing is also important - only if you are programming
in an interpreted language where syntax must be checked by execution,
is executing every line of code useful by itself. (You can
run through every branch of a square root function but it won't
test for what happens with a negative parameter. There is always a
temptation to say that a line i++ 'passes because it increments i' without
checking when it shouldn't.)

As to cost effectiveness this is so dependant upon the available tools,
maintainance costs, whether or not testability was built into the code etc.
that any global statement would be rash.

A realistic %BFA target is again dependant upon specific circumstances.
I don't know if anyone has done any work to find out the %age of
defects found, against testing coverage and time taken but I would
be interested to find out. The benefits of higher percentages are not
linear and certainly peaks.

Setting %BFA as a part of completion criteria is probably worthwhile but
getting dogmatic about it is probably not. BFA is very useful for helping
engineers see where more testing is required it is not that useful as an
exam mark for the testing.

-- David

========= All opinions are mine and not necessarily Motorola's ============
=  @mail : David Alexander, Channel Tunnel Software, Motorola, Lyon Way,  =
=                           Camberley (ZUK20), Surrey GU15 3QG, U.K.      =
= Email : (Internet) davidal@comm.mot.com  Motorola X400-gateway : CDA004 =
= Telephone : (office) +44 (0)276-413340   (home)+44 (0)276-24249         =
===========================================================================
From: srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Self-defeating DoD software reuse policies
Date: 12 Dec 92 20:33:51 GMT
Organization: The World

What you are implying then is that either the DoD realizes this, and lies
about it reliance on a private sector reusable components business (and
continues to waste tens of millions of dollars studying and implementing
their reuse beliefs), or that the DoD doesn't realize this, and therefore
the reuse program managers should be demoted and/or sued for fraud and
incompetence.

In either case, or any case, the DoD is wasting tens of millions of dollars
on software reuse with a very poor understanding of the economic implications.

Greg Aharonian
-- 
**************************************************************************
Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimiztion
P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178
From: kirby@xerox.com (Mike Kirby)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Is SEI's CMM being used in Anger or ju
Date: 13 Dec 92 17:59:34 GMT
Reply-To: kirby@xerox.com
Organization: Xerox Corporation, Webster NY

In article 24371@den.mmc.com, jhull@vulcan-gw.den.mmc.com (Jeff Hull) writes:
> In article 28064@spectrum.xerox.com, 
> kirby@xerox.com (Mike Kirby) writes:
> |>...  To establish higher levels
> |>of the CMM, it requires a serious ammount of overhead. 
> 
> I don't think so.  Certainly, most of the current DoD contractor
> community have corporate cultures that will drive them in the
> direction of overhead positions, voluminous standards, etc, but
> "required?"  I think not.
> 
> Smaller companies will have one person take ownership of the CMM
> process & encourage "working engineers" to contribute & will 
> create superior results because of their approach.
> 
> 
> ---
> -- -- -- --  --
> 	   _   _
>     /_    / ) / ) Jeff Hull           j.hull@vulcan-gw.den.mmc.com
>    //_) -/- -/-   1544 S. Vaughn Cir  
> /_/ \_/ /   /	  Aurora, CO 80012    303-977-1061
> 
> No matter where you go ... there you are.
> #include <standard.disclaimer.h>


I reached this conclusion from both a "gut feel" after reading the CMM documentation,
as well as from the Hughs article 

Humphrey, Watts S. Snyder, Terry R., Willis, Ronald R, "Software Process Improvement
at Hughes Aircraft,"  IEEE Software, July 1991. 

On Pg 18, They say:

"Because implementation of the proposed actions was estimated to require a 2 percent
increase in the division overhead rate it took ..."

Now 2 percent isn't a whole lot, but I believe that is 2 percent over whatever their
overhead rate was to begin with.  Hughes had already started down the road of
establishing software processes and had a Software Engineering Technology Council
that was supposed to do such work.  

I would love to see some numbers?  Or just hear some war stories. There has got
to be someone out there from a level 3 or above group that has some experience
in the above issues.  If you cant post, send e-mail.  I promise I won't tell :-)

Mike Kirby
Xerox Corp
E-mail: kirby.roch803@xerox.com
Newsgroups: comp.text
From: gilbertd@sunflower.bio.indiana.edu (Don Gilbert)
Subject: Does your word processor know RTF (Rich Text Format)?
Organization: Biology, Indiana University - Bloomington
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 23:17:17 GMT

I am looking at RTF (Rich Text Format, specified by Microsoft)
as a possible  cross-platform, cross-wordprocessor interchange
format for documents.   

My criterion is that the format should be the most likely to be 
readable and editable thru software currently available to
biologists.   It needs to support symbols, super/subscripts,
various fonts, fontstyles, fontsizes, and general page
formatting.

These scientists use Macintosh, MS-Dos, MS-Windows and various 
X-Windows platforms (roughly in that order of popularity,
X-Windows is probably a minor fraction for wordprocessing).  
Among the commonest word processors on Mac, MS-Dos and
MS-Windows seem to be Microsoft Word and WordPerfect, which
support RTF.  There are other Mac word processors (WriteNow)
that support RTF.  I have heard that WordPerfect on Unix
computers supports it, but am not sure of this.   NeXT has some
built in support?, as well as thru WriteNow. 

Anyone who knows of other word processors that can read/write RTF
format, please advise me.  I'll repost a summary of responses.

Platform       Wordprocessor             Version
--------       ---------------          ----------------
Mac            Microsoft Word           3,4,5 (current)
Mac            WordPerfect              1?, 2 (current)
Mac            WriteNow                 2,3 (current)

MS-DOS         Microsoft Word           ?
MS-DOS         WordPerfect              ?

MS-Windows     Microsoft Word           ?
MS-Windows     WordPerfect              ?

NeXT           WriteNow                 ?
NeXT           WordPerfect              ?

Sun            WordPerfect              ?

OtherXWindows  WordPerfect              ?


-- 
Don Gilbert                                     gilbert@bio.indiana.edu
biocomputing office, biology dept., indiana univ., bloomington, in 47405
Newsgroups: comp.text
From: julied@aix.rpi.edu (Diane Maria Julien)
Subject: Processing Text
Followup-To: schwartz@brs,com
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 13:54:38 GMT

Posting this note on behalf of a friend. Send replies to Dave Schwartz at 
schwartz@brs.com (and here too if you wish :-))

----------

I am interested to know what kinds of text processing applications people
are using out there.  For example, a common text processing application
would be converting the text file for a paper version copy of a book into 
a file that could be loaded into an online display environment.  Or, 
processing the indices of multiple books into one master index.  What
kinds of other things are people doing out there?

Also, I'd be interested to know what languages/utilities/programs you
use to effect the processing.  For example, do you use a C program or
a Pascal program? 
Newsgroups: comp.text.frame
From: hodges@huckleberry.sfsu.edu (Jack &)
Subject: Re: Frame 4.0 (Was Re: No 4.0 for NeXT???)
Reply-To: hodges@huckleberry.sfsu.edu
Organization: California State University, Sacramento
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 19:04:17 GMT

In article <1992Dec14.030417.1072@cbnewsk.cb.att.com> noraa@cbnewsk.cb.att.com  
(aaron.l.hoffmeyer) writes:
> 
> Well, since I'm not using a NeXT box, this doesn't concern me (now),
> but I would think that Frame Technologies could ill-afford to abandon
> this platform-just because of the negative publicity of abandoning
> members of an established customer base.  It's the kind of thing that
> will make users of other platforms wary of Frame's propensity to just
> turn away from a decent-sized group of customers because the
> bottom-line was not everything they had hoped.  I mean, what's next?

Sun Open Look :-)

I agree that this is a scary point of view from a user's point of view,
and my posting was intended to make that clear. I bet Frame is planning 
to dig in with Mac, Windows, and Sun X and hope they can survive. 
Personally I believe that the NS486 would be a wise choice simply because 
it is a much nicer user interface and provides the same functionality 
as any Unix/X box. Of course, it does not have the appeal of X, and, of 
course, Jobs and Sun hate each other so a port to Sun would be a dream,
but it would make more sense in terms of future growth than something
like NT (to me). The most frightening thing about Frame even
considering abandoning a platform/user base is that the most attractive
thing about FrameMaker is its cross-platform compatibility. For example,
we were considering trying to get a site license for FrameMaker, here,
simply because we could run in on HPs, Suns, Apollos, NeXTs, Macs, PCs,
and even in batch mode on a VAX. If they start dropping platforms,
then that idea goes up in smoke, which is REALLY disappointing. I am
hoping that, whatever Frame says to us, that they secretly have every
intention of continuing support for their various platforms. As you say,
they ARE making plenty of money, so the scare tactics are a bit confusing.

> 	* The graphics tool has always been a pet-peeve.  Frankly, I
> 	  think it bites too.  However, with live-links to CorelDraw, I
> 	  think I can work around this one.

Live links are a reasonable idea whose time may have come for Frame Tech.
As long as their look and feel is not compromised, and as long as the
package(s) chosen work equally well on all their supported platforms, I am 
all for it. Corel Draw? It only works on a couple boxes to my knowledge.
I should think a broader platform package would be more in line with
Frame's original intent: cross platform dominance.

Since Frame promised Bibliographic support two years ago, maybe it would
be wise for them to do as Microsoft has done in pairing up with EndNote
as a third-party option. I do not really care, personally, how or where
the support comes from, as long as the price doesn't increase, since I
am not the one who claimed to be the PREMIER book preparation package.

Jack Hodges
Newsgroups: comp.text.frame
From: wk5w@brain.med.virginia.edu (William Katz)
Subject: Re: Bibliographies and Latex
Organization: Medical Scientist Training Program, Univ. of Virginia
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 04:26:37 GMT

In article <1992Dec11.192857.6864@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> rwl@server.cs.Virginia.EDU writes:
>In article <Bz21vG.1yE@cs.bham.ac.uk>, dma@cs.bham.ac.uk (Denis Anthony) writes:
>> In article <1992Dec8.191345.28744@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> wk5w@brain.med.virginia.edu (William Katz) writes:
>> 
>> Get fmbib from :-
>> 
>> Host server.cs.virginia.edu
>> 
>>     Location: /pub
>>       DIRECTORY drwxr-xr-x        512  May 23 1991  fmbib
>
>
>I must add that the true author of this work is Craig Marcus from
>Carnegie-Mellon University.  All I did is create a shell-script
>front-end for it which invokes an additional program to also handle
>bibliography databases from bib/refer format as well as the Scribe
>format which the true fmbib uses.
>
>I believe that Craig has written an updated fmbib, but the version
>archived in cs.Virginia.EDU does not yet use that updated version.
>
>

Heh.  It is true that you often don't know what is at your own college :)
I had no idea that fmbib was on a server right across campus.

Anyway, does anyone have the address for Craig Marcus so I can see
if there is an updated fmbib available?

Thanks to all the people that responded to my request on bibliographies
and LaTex!

-Bill
From: Bill_Chiles@transarc.com
Newsgroups: comp.text.frame
Subject: Rebinding Commands ?
Date: 17 Dec 92 14:35:22 GMT
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

I couldn't find anything in the user manual or online help concerning
rebinding commands.  Is it really true with all the sophistication this
program possesses that they released it without the capability to customize
the keyboard shortcuts?  Doesn't Microshit's Word at least have this
feature?

My biggest problem is that the half dozen or so common Emacs bindings must
be the same in my document system, or I constantly invoke funny commands
instead of convenient commands like "forward word", "delete word backwards",
"backward word", etc.  Yeah, the line motion commands work fine as do
character motion and character deletion, but word operations keep costing me
cognitive overhead at the implementation level (that is, from my brain to my
finger tips).

Bill

P.S.,
     Apologies if I stupidly failed to find this in the manual.  I just
can't believe keyboard customization is missing.
Newsgroups: comp.text.frame
From: bsmart@bsmart.TTI.COM (Bob Smart)
Subject: Re: mail merge
Reply-To: bsmart@bsmart.TTI.COM (Bob Smart)
Organization: Citicorp+TTI
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 01:28:46 GMT

I've had good results with a third-party product called UniMerge, from
Refined Reports, Inc.  You can contact them at:

		mmark@bedford.progress.com

Their program works with Frame and Interleaf, and it can merge flat data
or query directly into various common databases, including Oracle and (I
think) Ingres.

---------

A fanatic is someone who does what he knows that God would do if God knew the
facts of the case.

Some mailers apparently munge my address; you might have to use
bsmart@bsmart.tti.com -- or if that fails, fall back to
72027.3210@compuserve.com.  Ain't UNIX grand?
Newsgroups: comp.text.frame
From: corman@Ingres.COM (Anthony Corman)
Subject: Creating Postscript files  
Reply-To: corman@Ingres.COM (Anthony Corman)
Organization: Ask Computer Systems Inc., Ingres Division, Alameda CA 94501
Date: 18 Dec 92 22:07:25 GMT

We frequently need to create Postscript files for an entire manual
or manuals; we've just bought FM for X Windows because it will
enable us to do this in a batch. (Am I correct in assuming there's no
way to batch this process on Macintosh?)

(1) I can use fmprint to print a book to a Postscript file, right?

(2) A print settings file is just a FM file from which fmprint
    reads print settings; it's not some special formatted file, right?

(3) If I print a book to Postscript using fmprint and omit the print
    setting file, does fmprint use the print settings for the book file?

(4) Do I get one great big Postscript file combining all the files
    in the book, or is one file created for each file in the book?

Re (4), I'm assuming that one big file is created. Is there any
easy way to fmprint a book to Postscript and create 1 PS file per
file in the book? 

If not, tell me if the following would work:

Create a script that:

- Dumps the book file to MIF
- Grep the MIF file for file names and output to a text file
- Use sed to transform the list of files to a series of fmprint commands

One problem with the above plan is how do I specify different filenames
for the PS files? The files generated on the Mac have embedded spaces in
the filename (chapter TOC, for example). Any problem when I move them over to
the X Windows environment?

Thanks for any help

Tony Corman
ASK/Ingres Technical Communications

Newsgroups: comp.text.frame
From: myhui@bnr.ca (Michael Hui)
Subject: more intelligent footers in Framemaker
Organization: Bell-Northern Research Ltd., Ottawa, Canada
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 04:21:38 GMT

I place variables in the standard fashion in my footers to
refer to the current 1Heading and 2Heading lines' contents,
as is already done in many of the Frame-supplied templates.

What I want to do is to have these variables reflect the
entire collection of, say, different 2Heading lines on that
page, rather than just the first one. In my document, often
I have more than one paragraph of 2Heading on a page. It's
misleading to have the footer present only the context of
what's on the top of the page.
-- 
Michael MY Hui  ~{~}  myhui@bnr.ca  Ottawa Canada
Newsgroups: comp.text.frame
From: davidl@ssd.intel.com (David Levine)
Subject: Re: Cut and Paste Query
Organization: Supercomputer Systems Division (SSD), Intel
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 19:34:08 GMT

In article <1992Dec16.113639.23550@sei.cmu.edu> ask@sei.cmu.edu (Alan Koch) writes:
>This is a known bug in the Macintosh version of FrameMaker when running under
>System 7.  Specifically, the VERY FIRST time you try to put something on the
>clipboard in FrameMaker after rebooting under System 7, it silently fails.
>
>This is fixed in the current Macintosh bug-fix version (3.0.1)
>At least, according to the release document -- I haven't tried it yet.

In my experience it is fixed if you cut with Command-X, but is NOT
fixed if you cut with Control-W, Control-U, Control-K, etc.  Grr.

- David D. Levine, Intel Supercomputer Systems Division == davidl@ssd.intel.com
  The only thing worse than not spell-checking is believing the spell-checker.
From: campbelr@hpcuhe.cup.hp.com (Bob Campbell)
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 18:10:20 GMT
Subject: Re: Crashing Framemaker
Organization: Hewlett Packard, Cupertino
Newsgroups: comp.text.frame

We have also been having table troubles.  We have experienced trouble
with large tables (> 250 rows) and files with numerous (> 50) moderate
sized tables.

Frame has been of no help, but we now are comfortable editing MIF files
directly to salvage data :-(

Maybe it is time to look at Interleaf again . . .
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Campbell                Some times I wish that I could stop you from
campbelr@cup.hp.com         talking, when I hear the silly things you say.
Hewlett Packard                                    - Elvis Costello
Newsgroups: comp.text.frame