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GCG SHELLS
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Has anyone used the "Menu shell for the GCG programs" that appears in
this month's issue of CABIOS? (CABIOS vol 7, No 4 PP 457-460 (1991))
If the authors are reading this, can they tell us if it is available for
anonymous ftp anywhere?
(As the stated charge is only $15 for a supplied tape perhaps we could all
save ourselves time and money by ftp-ing? Please :-) )
The authors are:
Christoph J.Gartmann and Ulrich Grob
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Immunbiologie,
Stuebeweg 51,
D-7800 Freiburg, Germany
Does anyone have an e-mail address for them?
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U.K. (AFRC = Agricultural & Food Research Council)
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I'll post this to the list in the hopes of stimulating wider comment.
We've obtained the shell and have been using it for ~2 months. It seems to
work fairly well overall, though experienced users have usually returned to the
command line interface, since it's more efficient once one knows where one is
headed. The shell is constructed using the MENUE system, a commercial product
of the Max-Planck-Institute. It's basically a text menu tree, which accepts
single character selections to navigate among menus, or program names to
execute applications immediately. Coverage of the v7.0 distribution is good,
but, since only binaries are supplied, it is impossible to add site-specific
applications to the menus.
There are a few trivial annoyances in the current version, some of which the
developers say may be fixed in the next release. The menus are presented in
inverse video, which MENUE does not reset on exit. This can be circumvented
using a command file to execute the image and then reset the terminal, unless
the user logs out directly from the shell. Fkeys are not well documented on
screen, so it's a good idea if all users have a copy of the manual. Finally,
the inability to customize menus may create difficulties at some sites.
That said, I'd conclude with the comment that the package performs its basic
tasks well, and would likely be a useful option at sites which have a number of
users who are unfamiliar with the GCG package. It will also ease things a bit
for VMS-phobes, though they'll still have to deal with output files, data
files, and the like. It coexists happily with the traditional command line
interface, and for US$15 and a minimum of maintenance, how wrong could one go?
The shell is not, to my knowledge, available for ftp at present, though if the
developers agree, I'd be willing to set this up here. It would seem to depend
on whether the fee is designed to cover processing time, or to recoup a minimal
licensing fee. As the documentation notes that the shell is shareware, I
expect the former is true, but I'll wait for comment from the developers.
For those who wish to contact him directly, email addresses for Christoph
Gartmann are IN: gartmann at vms.mpiib-freiburg.mpg.dbp.de
X400: S=gartmann;OU=vms;O=mpiib-freiburg;
P=mpg;A=dbp;C=de
PSI: PSI%026245761030173::GARTMANN
Hope this helps.
Charles Bailey
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! Dept. of Human Genetics / Howard Hughes Medical Institute
! University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine Rm. 430 Clinical Research Bldg
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! 422 Curie Blvd. Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA Tel. (215) 898-1699
! Internet: bailey at hmivax.humgen.upenn.edu (IN 128.91.200.37)
!------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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From: NAME: Terry Farra
FUNC: Science Administration
TEL: x206 <FARRAH at A1@GENOME>
To: UUCP%"info-gcg at utoronto.bitnet"@MRGATE
The e-mail address for GCG-menu as stated in their documentation is:
system%vms.mpiib-freiburg.mpg.dbp.de at relay.cs.net
I recently installed GCG-menu on our system and tried it out. I was
hoping it would be a useful tool for gently introducing novices and
occasional users to GCG. My feeling is that GCG-menu doesn't help
overcome most of the obstacles that these users face. I haven't seen
the CABIOS article. But from reading the manual and using the program,
this is my evaluation of GCG-menu: it is a tidy bundling-together of
GenManual and the GCG programs themselves. If one can't figure out
what one needs to know by using GenManual, GCG-menu isn't going to
help.
If I'm missing something here, I'd love to hear about it. Anybody else
tried out GCG-menu?
Terry Farrah (farrah at immunex.wa.com)
Immunex Corp., 51 University St., Seattle, WA 98181 206-587-0430
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Here are the developers comments!
The GCG-menu is shareware for the following reasons:
The fee is desigend for both, to recoup a minimal licensing fee and to cover
processing time. Therefore it's shareware.
GCG-menu has been designed using MENUE (which is commercial).
GCG-menu does not provide the full functionlity of MENUE. But therefore it
is almost free.
The fee gives us the opportunity to distribute it and in addition we want to
know who is using it. As a counter-move we provide an e-mail support and the
program is virus- and worm-free.
About the functionality:
Our shell does not replace the "GCG Program Manual" nor the "GCG User's Guide".
This we think is almost impossible and not even desirable. One has to
understand, what e.g. a WORDSEARCH does, calculating similarities. But the
access to the programs is more easy. In our instute we have lots of
unexperienced user's (which often haven't seen a computer before) or
'VMS-Phobes'. And those people feel more comfortable when they have a more
friendly environment. We agree, that it is more efficient to use the VMS
command line interface. But there you have to remember all the commands and
qualifiers and you must know, what this is - a command and a qualifier...
GCG-menu is more inviting to use the programs and to read the manual.
The GCG-menu provides an alternate access to the functionality of GCG. And the
user may decide which way he prefers. Furthermore the shell avoids questions
like 'what is the programm called to switch the plot device?',
'is there a program to read EMBL sequence files?', 'how do I get help?' and so
on. You may then answer 'Try and see...'.
Customizing is not possible, because then you would need MENUE. It is still
true that user's have to know what is a file, how to print it and so on. But
this is a GCG-inherent problem. At our institute normal user's don't see the
dollar prompt anymore. And in this environment we had to integrate a software
package (GCG) which uses a command line interface. So we created GCG-menu.
If you would like to organize your VAX in a similar way, this means much more
than only organizing GCG, that's organizing VMS. Our solution to that is MENUE.
If you have something similar, GCG-menu is a solution to integrate GCG in a
more user friendly environment.
Regards
Christoph Gartmann
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Christoph Gartmann Phone : +49-761-5108-465 Fax: -221 |
| Max-Planck-Institut fuer PSI : PSI%026245761030173::GARTMANN |
| Immunbiologie X400 : S=gartmann;OU=vms;O=mpiib-freiburg; |
| Stuebeweg 51 P=mpg;A=dbp;C=de |
| D-7800 Freiburg RFC : gartmann%vms.mpiib-freiburg.mpg.dbp.|
| FRG de at relay.cs.net |
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