VISIT REPORT
UMRCC
IUSC Famulus Working Party
22 June 1983 L.Burnard
[UMRCC]
The 'reasonable subset' of the package still
hovers tantalisingly on the horizon. After slippage due as much to
compiler problems as to general lethargy, it now seems that October
will be our best date for a test version.Further
modifications to the common block structure as described in my working
paper of 15 June were discussed and agreed. A lengthy argument about
how strings should be delimited in commands ensued. My (I thought)
uncontentious view that *can't* was a lot simpler to understand than
'can''t' eventually carried the day.Some reorganisation
of the way the routines are distributed across filestore and some sort
of mechanism for agreeing and implementing bug corrections were felt
to be necessary. I agreed to undertake the former, but not the
latter.I tried (unsuccessfully) to get some helpful
suggestions on what to admit to about the package when I address the
IUSC Workshop next month. We did agree that some sort of centralised
distribution and a licence agreement would have to be worked out. The
future willingness of PLU to act as distributors for not very
profitable packages being cast in doubt following the appointment of
their new director, I expressed the view that OUCS might consider
acting as distributors for the new package, provided that some help in
maintenance would be forthcoming.Some progress had been made in communications!
Thanks to the fabled Cambridge Ring, I had managed to send lots of
files to the Rutherford. It was hoped to send them to Edinburgh, and
also suck them back from the same later on this
month.