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<pre><font face="Arial" size="7" color="#FF0000">A History of AristoCAT</font></pre>
</div>
<div align="left">
<pre><font face="Arial" size="5" color="#FF0000"><b>THE DEC YEARS</b></font></pre>
</div>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Hartford State Technical College, the first of five two-year
engineering technology colleges operated by the
State of Connecticut, opened its doors in 1946 as the
Connecticut Technical Institute. By 1961, known as
Hartford State Technical Institute, it had moved into
its present building on Flatbush Avenue. This
building was expanded in 1969, which was about the
time the institute became a college. Grom Hayes, hired in 1963 as the first librarian,
guided the library through its formative years. On his
retirement in 1976, the present librarian was hired,
and sought to continue Mr. Hayes’ effort with his
help.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
New England states have never been known for their
support of public higher education � Connecticut
usually comes in between forty-fifth and fiftieth on
any survey � and by the late 1970’s the lack of support
to the library was beginning to hurt its ability to
provide service to the college. That near-total cessation of spending left the librarian
with a lot of time on his hands, and he began to
wonder if the college computer, located very close by,
could be induced to do any work, perhaps helping to
fill in a clerical position recently lost.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
The first project was to learn a programming
language, an opportunity provided by the college in
1978. From this meager start came a very crude
program to print catalog cards, a program which had
all manner of limitations. Mr. Hayes, a bachelor with no living family, came to
work every day for the first two or three years and
freed up a lot of time for the development of these
programs.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Next came the inventory of AV equipment, which
recently had been consolidated in the library after
being scattered randomly throughout the building.
The new librarian, in fact, had been hired partly
because of his AV background. Periodical back issues
came next, but shortly after this
system went online the computer suffered a severe
and extended down period which resulted in the loss
of everything. The AV and periodical programs were
typed in again, the hard way, but the catalog card
program seemed too long and inefficient to be worth
the trouble. Instead, a whole new approach was
developed, resulting in a much more versatile and
considerably shorter program. (In addition, the
neophyte programmer also learned a lesson about
running backup tapes.) By this time, the librarian was
hooked on computers and began to live for the
machine, to the mild annoyance of the college
administration.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
During the spring of 1980 the Board of Trustees
named the library after Mr. Hayes. Most of the
faculty were in favor of this decision. By late
fall of that year the systems had grown
sufficiently complex that it was hard to keep track of
what did what and how it all interacted, and it became
necessary to draw up a systems manual which would
explain what was going on. The first version of that
manual was finished in March 1981 and comprised
some twenty-five pages, about a quarter of its
maximum length before being put online.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Around this time the entire uncataloged backlog was
printed in call number, subject, and tracing order
using the SEARCH system. SEARCH proved
exceptionally difficult to use, and was further
developed during the following several months. The
backlog was done again in December 1981; this time
SEARCH proved to be much easier to use, although it
was still not what it might be. The backlog was run
again in March 1982 and this time seemed to work
fairly well.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
The circulation and daily report systems were
developed during the summer of 1981, and went online
that fall. By November most but not all of the
bugs had been worked out of them. By January 1982
the circulation file had grown large enough to be split
into student and faculty groups, and the annual report
section had to be made into a program separate from
the daily report.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
During the latter half of any school term in those days
it was difficult to get a terminal to use, with the result
that several days might elapse before the circulation
program was updated. If something was checked out
and returned within this time, it would not be put on
the circulation list and consequently would not show
up on the annual report. Therefore, a program called
UPDATE was created to allow such material to go
directly to the annual report so that a more accurate
record of the year’s activities could be kept. UPDATE
may also be used to add borrower names and addresses
to the name and address file.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
In January of 1982 a decision was made to abandon
the card catalog altogether and expand the SEARCH
listings to include publisher and collation. To this end
a simplified version of CATCAR, called SIMCAT, was
developed. SIMCAT proved much more manageable for the
creation of machine-readable files than CATCAR, and
by May about two thirds of the collection had been
converted to machine-readable form. Both SIMCAT and the circulation program were
improved with the addition of built-in editing
capabilities during the spring of 1982. In addition to
the ever-present operator error, a condition called
“keyboard bounce” had begun to create too much bad
input. With keyboard bounce, the spring in the key
does not respond positively enough, and the input is
duplicated. If this happens to the carriage return key,
there will be a null string waiting for the next input
statement, the terminal will store that null string in a
buffer and assign it to the next request for input.
Thus it becomes necessary to allow for correction.
Also during the spring of 1982 a general purpose
editing program called EDITIT was developed. This
program allowed changes to be made in any file,
including the coded circulation files. EDITIT was
eventually discarded as other editing procedures took
over.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
As the 1981-82 academic year drew to a close, a system
to urge faculty members to return their library
materials was created. This event resulted in the
return of several items, and also generated some good-natured
ribbing by the faculty about being hounded
by the computer. Nonetheless, many things came
back, and with a minimum of effort. When the academic year was over, the automated
overdue notice writing option was declared a success.
The year ended with two books not returned, as
opposed to a dozen or so in previous years.
The president of the college was pleased to receive a
thorough annual report in June, and commented
favorably on it. This report, from initialization to
delivery, took less than half an hour. It became apparent that the circulation record portion
of the annual report should include the title as well as
the call number of things checked out during the year,
and the change was made. The data was put in
shelflist order on the 1985 report: prior to that it had
been in order of checkout</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Not all was rosy during the 1981-82 academic year,
with regard to these systems, however, as it became
apparent that periodicals control was not effective.
This is fitting, of course, as periodicals control is
typically the most difficult of all library operations.
The ordering and requisition systems also developed
some serious problems during the year. During the early summer of 1982 an attempt was
made to convert the circulation file to a virtual array,
as it had grown large enough to cause problems in
core memory. The virtual array version, however,
required so much extra time to execute that the idea
was abandoned, and another solution was sought. An
attempt was also made to restructure the program to
make renewals and deletions easier, but as of
September this had yet to succeed. Some progress was made during the summer,
however. The periodical titles were printed on labels,
to see if that would work better, the idea being that a
label still on its backing sheet would indicate an issue
that hadn’t come in yet; PRECAT was modified so
that data on new books would have to be entered only
once; a program to finish the cataloging of these
materials, FINISH, was developed; the entire
collection was converted to machine-readable form;
and a new cataloging program, CATLOG, was
developed to format these new records. The SEARCH system, which had proven itself with
some two thousand uncataloged books, was not
adequate for the entire collection. One problem was
the need for additional information: since the output
would now constitute the library’s main catalog, two
more fields — publisher and collation — were added to
each record. This extra information meant that only
about seventy-five records could be sorted at one time
instead of a hundred and forty. This need for smaller
files plus the greater number of records put an
intolerable strain on the system, which proved to be
very difficult to use. Some solutions to this problem
were worked on during the fall term.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
By December some progress had been made, but the failure of an
expected additional forty-four terminals to arrive and
subsequent overbooking of classes kept any advances
to a minimum. It was decided during the fall term that accessions
would be handled by one of the cataloging programs,
and that the record created for each acquisition would
be the authority from which other programs would
follow. The new circulation system was finally put online in
December. Christmas 1982 saw a partially successful system,
making life easier in many ways but still not living up
to its potential. A Christmas gift that year, however,
was the emergence of two potential collaborators, one
in Oklahoma and one in Georgia.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
The extra terminals and a general upgrading of the
system arrived in January 1983, and managed to
consume several months. Much of the winter and
early spring was taken up with an attempt by the
developer to finish a doctoral dissertation, further
cutting into the time available for work on these
systems. Some work was done on the problem with
the SEARCH system, but as of June nothing concrete
had been developed. A program to search the
circulation record, and some fine-tuning of other
programs, was about all that was accomplished during
this period.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
With the aid of printouts created by these systems, a
physical inventory of the entire collection was
accomplished during the summer, which at least
created the illusion of progress. Very little real progress was accomplished during the
remainder of the year as the doctoral dissertation
seemed to consume almost every waking moment.
An attempt was made to create an online catalog by
setting up several virtual arrays to be searched with a
binary search, but after several months of work this
project was abandoned as it required too much
running time to create the arrays. Instead, the entire
catalog was converted to a virtual array and indexes
were set up to access that array. At the end of the
year, the catalog was accessible by index, a big
improvement in speed, but the program to sort the
indexes was not yet operational. The dissertation was finally completed in February
1984. Much of the remainder of that month was spent
recovering from the effort.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Programs to sort the indexes were developed and
refined during the spring months, and by June there
was a complete set of indexes and a binary search
program to access the data with them. The indexes
could also be used to create a printed catalog. The
need to trade off running time with storage
requirements in the creation of these indexes meant
that only thirty-two bytes of data could be put into
the array elements to be sorted. This is not enough to
include the author’s full name, the title of the work,
and the date of publication, but enough compression
was accomplished to create a catalog that was about
ninety-five percent useful.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Also in June, the developer married his long-standing
sweetheart Gail in an outdoor ceremony overlooking
a small pond. Friends and relatives came from
everywhere, and it was wonderful.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Most of the problems with indexes and sorting times
were eliminated very dramatically during the summer
when the PDP-11/70 was dismantled and replaced by a
VAX-11/780 the following autumn. With the PDP
went the virtual arrays, as RMS relative files supported
by the VMS operating system seemed superior. There
seemed to be a feeling that virtual arrays were on their
way out, although no one ever said so, and in any
event the relative files are much more efficient in that
they are extended as needed and need not be pre-
extended by dimension statements which waste vast
amounts of space. The VAX went into service in
September, and by December all systems had been
modified to meet the new requirements. This turned
out to be quite a job, as VAX BASIC is substantially
different from BASIC-PLUS, and the entire concept of
relative files is different from virtual arrays.
Additionally, the VT100 terminals used ANSI-standard
screen formatting and all that was changed from the
VT52 method. The new online catalog did more, ran
faster, and used about half as much disk space as the
old version.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
In November 1984, a doctor listening to Mr. Hayes’ chest
heard something he didn’t like and hustled the
old man directly to the hospital. That night, he
suffered a massive heart attack and was rushed to
Intensive Care within seconds. Had he been at home
he would certainly have died.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Further development and refinement on all systems
was accomplished during January and February of
1985, and a new circulation system, using indexes to
make life easier, went online in April. In retrospect,
it is interesting to note the relationship
of systems to hardware limitations. The old and very
cumbersome SEARCH batch system of the past was
necessary because of the limited amount of storage
space, and when space was increased it became
possible to improve speed and convenience. Those
early stages seem impossibly crude by current
standards, somewhat like comparing a 1910 open car
with a brand-new GT coupe. But in both cases it was
the best we could do at the time. By 1985 the scheme of distributing programs to other
potential users or collaborators began to look like it
was not working, and the process was disbanded.
Some dozen such interested parties had received the
programs, some getting source code and some object
code, but none of these parties contributed any real
suggestions.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
As the year progressed it became apparent that the
concept of a Main Entry, necessary for catalog cards,
was a problem with the computer. The user had to
know whether a particular author or editor was the
main entry or an added entry, as these were located in
two different places in the record. During the
summer this was changed so that all those involved
with the production of a book were put in one place
and all title variations in another, thus doing away
with the entire concept of a “main” entry. As with all
major changes, that turned out to be more involved
than was first thought, and the beginning of the
school year in September saw the new system only
partially in place.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
The above is an example of what Marshall McLuhan
called the “rear-view mirror” effect: as new technology
is developed, it uses the content and style of the old
technology until new forms become apparent. Thus
the screen for the Grom Hayes catalog, in its early
days, looked like a catalog card. With the exception of an online editor, these
problems had been ironed out by about the middle of
September, and the teaching faculty were invited to
use the system and offer comments. Many small
difficulties were reported and fixed, and the system
went up for public use on October 3rd minus the on-line
editor which was fixed later that month. On
December 12th, 1985, a reception was held for the
new system, at which time the card catalog was
officially closed.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
One of the problems reported by the faculty was the
capitalization of titles. We had been using the
customary library practice of capitalizing only the
first word, except for proper nouns, and this proved
to be too confusing. The files were rewritten so that
all main words in titles were capitalized.
Books and non-book materials (pamphlets and AV
software) had been in two separate places, and these
were consolidated in the fall of 1985. The data was
written to the same file as the books by a program
called NONBOOK; consequently SIMCAT was
renamed BOOK.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Further refinements were made during the winter of
1985-86 and throughout 1986. One of these was a
process to allow catalog requests to be entered without
regard to capitalization, a major improvement from
the standpoint of user friendliness.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
During the spring of 1986 an offer of true
collaboration was received from Kauai Community
College in Hawaii. The personnel there seemed
sincerely interested, and an agreement was reached to
work together on the project, which involved a one-week
visit to the campus. Many changes and
improvements came from this collaboration, most of
them in the area of portability, the ability of programs
to be used in another setting. A large number of the
programs were rewritten to access data files (.TXT
files) containing corporate and personnel names
instead of having those names embedded in the source
code. By Thanksgiving all systems, with the
exception of the annual report, were thought to be
truly portable and were awaiting a test of this notion.
As the overly-severe winter of 1986-87 reluctantly
gave way to what passed for spring in New England
that year (the rain wasn’t as cold), another two or
three collaborators turned up and appeared to be
actually using the systems, and another visit to the
college in Hawaii was made.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Mr. Hayes suffered a massive stroke in September
1986 and was forced to discontinue his visits to the
college.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Improvements made during this period included a
wholesale change capability and a way to automate
the due date of borrowed material. Initial planning
was begun on a method to do away with the indexes,
for faster running speed, and a project to clean up
subject headings, author entries, and titles in
anticipation of an authority file, was begun. As data
entry had been done by several people in the past, the
database was a mess: various spellings and
abbreviations, equipment failure, typos, and a general
lack of standardization made searching difficult.
Hand-filing of cards, for example, will eliminate the
difference between “&” and “and,” but the computer
doesn’t see it that way. Much of the summer was
spent resolving these issues. Printed catalog backups had been done with three
printouts (authors, titles, subjects), each one
containing the data for the entire collection. As these
printouts began to exceed a thousand pages they
became unmanageable and it was necessary to break
them into smaller pieces. The program creating these
backups was rewritten so that each letter of the
alphabet would have its own printout. The difficulty
of this change was underestimated and it managed to
consume most of the summer. A character known as a backslash (\) had been used to
separate fields within a record, but one of the users
had been putting backslashes into data, causing the
system to bomb out. This problem was resolved
during the fall of 1987, when the system was rewritten
to the way it should have been in the first place, using
a nonprintable character for this purpose.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
During that autumn some legal problems with the
State of Connecticut surfaced. The State maintained
that it owned the systems but would show no interest
or cooperation in their further development, which
put a severe crimp in the activities of the library. As
of spring 1988 there was no resolution to this
problem, but development continued anyway: the
ability of the system to search SEE and SEE ALSO
references was greatly increased, and all filenames
were changed to logical names to make file
distribution easier. Additionally, the annual report
was made portable.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Periodicals control is a big problem in almost all
libraries and is a difficult problem for automation
systems generally. It resisted development at the
Grom Hayes Library until May 1988, when a system
was finally put into place that would allow for the
issues which had been checked in online to be polled
for anticipated next arrival. If that arrival date is
earlier than the present date the system will flag the
title and automatically write a letter to the
subscription agency. During the late summer the library obtained a new
edition of Library of Congress subject headings, which
involved a massive project to change the records to
conform to the new versions. From that came a new
procedure, SEEREFUPDATE, to handle changes in
SEE and SEE ALSO references. Autumn of that year saw a new way to search by
subject: the main online catalog program may be
asked to list all online subjects, allowing the user to
enter a line number associated with any individual
one. This is helpful for users who aren’t sure how the
subject they want is worded, an important advantage
with often-outmoded Library of Congress usage, and
for those users who can’t type. It also has the
additional advantage of matching an exact subject,
which cuts down on the number of extraneous
matches.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas the maximum
accession number allowed was expanded from five to
eleven digits, ultimately ending up at fourteen.
Frank Moulton, the hard-working and loyal assistant
since 1982 and the only other staff member, quit in
January to pursue a master�s degree in Library Science,
putting a severe and nearly fatal crimp in the library’s
ability to do much of anything, and making the
testing of new systems and modifications very
difficult. Frank had a genius for seeking out
weaknesses in new programs. He would finish the
degree on time and get a job at Green Mountain
College in Vermont, an ideal location for him.
Connecticut, the richest and cheapest state in the
Union, would not replace him.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
The CATCAR system was dropped from general
distribution in the spring of 1989 although it is still
available on request. The purchase and requisition
systems, and the annual report, were developed to the
point that they could be sent to other sites. Further
activity during the year was limited to fine-tuning
some existing programs.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
On February 15th, 1990, the tough little bird who had
beaten back death so many times finally ran out of
time: Grom Hayes died at the age of seventy-nine.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
During the spring of 1990 the number of call number
headings available was increased from nine to seventy-eight,
and several refinements to many programs were
also made while the number of headings was being
increased. A user pointed out that the separate notes
record was not accessed by the two-key search, and
this oversight was corrected. The two-key search was
also expanded so that location could be the second
key. Also increased in 1990 was the number of two-letter
codes available for titles that don’t need call numbers
and are stored by accession number. The old two-
letter codes were “hard-wired” into applicable
programs, and were limited to about a dozen AECT
codes. This number was expanded to a hundred and
thirty and the whole thing put under user control: i.e.,
the user could define both the codes and their
equivalencies. With two-letter codes and location
keys completely independent of each other, programs
that access the catalog (FIND, INSEARCH, and RCAT)
now displayed the location for all items.
The command procedure that updates the catalog was
rewritten so that it wouldn�t delete any files. There
had been problems with files being deleted and then
the procedure bombing out, leaving a completely
unusable catalog, but now if the process failed for any
reason the old files could be restored. Deletion would
now be done with LOG.COM, which also allowed the
user to resubmit the process for that night. The
circulation program, CIRC, was modified so that
mistaken entries could be deleted during the edit
cycle. All of these changes required that a new piece
of documentation be maintained, and sent to users
with new versions. Accordingly, a page entitled New
Features was created, and all changes added to it.
During the autumn, the diagrams showing how the
files interact were improved. These diagrams had
been ignored for a couple of years and were somewhat
out of date.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Finally, in November 1990, the legal problems were
resolved as a new contract was approved with the
State of Connecticut, giving the developer the right to
distribute the systems. This new contract ended more
than three and a half years of legal maneuvering.
Autumn and winter of that year saw a new statistics
package developed for the purpose of keeping better
track of what’s going on. When anything is cataloged,
searched, edited, or circulated, a report is sent to a
statistics file, which may be augmented with daily
figures and any purchasing activity. The manual was
converted to a two-volume format in
February 1991, since the user’s manual had been sent
out separately and the new arrangement seemed more
logical. A new program, LOOKNOTES, was
developed to check the accuracy of notes records, and
the WHOLESALE editing program was expanded to
include the ability to edit call numbers. The spring
of 1991 was one of those one-in-five events
when warm, balmy days were followed by cool
nights, and weekends even were actually warm and
sunny. During this great time, the periodicals check-in
program was expanded to allow entry of titles by
more methods, allowing three different types of title
entry by the user. And screen messages, such as the
dreaded “Please Wait,” were made fancy with the
addition of graphics and blinking.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
As spring turned to stifling summer — including three
days of 101-degree heat — the MENU program was
expanded to allow for changes in the appearance of
the FIND screen, and to allow for changes in the text
files to be made more easily. The program that
created book catalogs was restructured so that it put
titles where they belonged without fail, at a cost of
greatly increased running time. This activity made the
developer wonder how many other applications out
there favored running time over reliability.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
During the autumn of 1991, the first cooler-than-normal
autumn in several years, a new program was
created to make a duplicate of a record if only a few
minor changes needed to be made, and it would be
easier to do that with TCHANGE rather than enter
the data from scratch with BOOK or NONBOOK.
Another new program printed a list of titles with dates
of publication earlier than whatever year the user
enters, and a third new program allowed the user to
see what had been posted to the circulation record on
any particular day. But the major project during that autumn was the
consolidation of about a dozen programs used to
delete outmoded data from various files. The
proliferation of separate programs had created a mess
that was too difficult to understand, and these
programs were put into one program called DELETE
to handle any data that needed to be removed from
any file. Similarly, several programs designed to handle notes
records were consolidated into one program called
NOTES. Both NOTES and DELETE have extensive
help screens built in. Along with the NOTES
consolidation came a new way to update records when
something has been discarded or found missing on
inventory. The new system was somewhat slower but
worked a lot better.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
FIND was reworked just before Christmas to provide
direct access to subject list searching, making direct
search by subject another option, and author-title list
search was developed later. January 1992 saw the installation of a brand-new
computer, a VAX 4000/300, the size of a television set
and many times faster than the 11/780 it replaced.
The new machine allowed fine-tuning changes to be
made which would not have been worth the
compiling time otherwise. As New England experienced another non-winter (is
global warming going to kill us or not?), author-searching
in FIND was expanded to include direct
access to lists of names with associated titles. The help
screens were also expanded at this time, and help
screens were put in BOOK, CIRC, COUNT, MAG,
MAGIN, and NONBOOK. The MENU program and
MAG were expanded as well.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
After spring in winter, we had winter in spring with
one of the coldest Aprils ever, and more snow the last
week in March than all winter. It was the coolest
spring in twenty years in New England. As all that
was going on, the plan from the distant past to do
away with indexes for faster running speed was
resurrected. After some three weeks of intensive
work, the system was sufficiently operational to
discover that the decrease in time was only marginal
and did not justify further development. The project
was put on hold a second time. The college obtained a new dial-in number with the
ability to handle twelve remote users. Several new
programs were developed: SEQUENTIAL, to convert
the database to a sequential file which could then put
in any other form; BUY, to create and maintain files
and print them for attachment to a purchase
requisition for those business offices which require
special forms but will accept an attached list of actual
items; WHATWEGOTADD, to add the amounts in the
WHATWE.GOT file; and LABELS, consolidating all
label-printing programs into one. A sequence of
screens describing their operation was put into BOOK,
COUNT, NONBOOK, CIRC, MAG, and MAGIN;
CIRC was modified to show that anything declared
lost in circulation is missing from the database;
DAYCHECK was expanded to allow search of the
circulation record by title as well as date; local help
screen handling from MENU was improved and the
program was expanded; and improvements were made
to AVEQ and AVSEARCH. Also, the PRECAT system
was expanded and improved, as some intensive use of
it revealed a few flaws here and there. PRECAT was
added to MENU, which was rewritten to use arrow
keys instead of numbers for user input.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
During its 1992 session, the Connecticut Legislature
voted to integrate the Technical College system fully
into the Community College system, making
Hartford State Technical College officially a thing of
the past as of July 1st. Much of the year was spent
dealing with, or trying to deal with, the confusion and
uncertainty caused by this move. Nonetheless, several
programs were revamped along the lines of MENU, to
use arrow keys for input. During the autumn, like the summer colder than
normal and making everyone wonder what winter
was going to be like, the separate notes record was
done away with as notes were integrated into the main
record. This move allowed the notes field to be
expanded to nine lines of sixty-five characters each.
Also during this time, the main entry programs BOOK
and NONBOOK were integrated into one program
and revamped so that they poll the database for
existing copies of an entered title. If one is found, a
duplicate record may be made and new entry avoided.
The winter of 1992-93 did in fact turn out to be colder
and snowier than those of the past few years.
During the January break, a new feature was added to
FIND so that the “not found” screen would display
the nearest matches the system could find and allow
the user to see any of them. Often these near matches
compensate for spelling errors and syntax quirks, a
common problem in an engineering-school
environment where bad spellers are legion. Also, the
option that writes letters to borrowers with overdue
material was expanded to print that information in a
single list. The combined college was renamed “Capital
Community-Technical College,” and the librarian
spent quite a bit of time at the other campus, away
from systems development. An online user’s manual was created during the
winter, and this was expanded from time to time. An
index was added to it as a massive blizzard, billed in
the media as “the storm of the century,” buried most
of the East Coast. City streets in Hartford looked like
eighteenth-century oxcart trails afterwards. A
demonstration option was added to BOOK. DELETE,
LABELS, and NOTES were rewritten to conform to
the current practice of using on-screen arrows, and all
customizing options were consolidated into a program
called CUSTOMIZE.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
On Monday May 10th, 1993, the developer
was presented with his first grandchild, a joyful five-pound
bag of sugar named Julie Elizabeth, sporting
the bluest eyes and sweetest face ever seen (not that
the developer is prejudiced).</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Until the summer of 1993, the systems had been
known as the “Grom Hayes Systems” (or “Grom
Hayes Library Automation Systems”) after the name
of the library where they were developed. At that
time the name was changed to “Atlantic Rim
Information Systems,” and a corporation was formed
to distribute them. All initial processing programs
were consolidated into one program, and
“precataloged” titles, those without call numbers and
subject headings, were put into the database, doing
away with PRECAT and FINISH. Circulation
programs were similarly consolidated, and all
user-interface screens were reworked for consistency and
greater ease of use. Author authority checking was
added to FIND, which was also expanded to include
linear searching by any key. Further consolidation of
functions was done during the autumn and winter, to
the point that the user need know the purpose of only
fourteen programs. All other programs were either
incorporated into or run by one of these. The winter
of 1993-94 was the severest ever in
Connecticut, and set several records. As the snow fell
and the wind blew, however, the initial processing
program was expanded to convert MARC records to
the Atlantic Rim format, and plans were under way to
convert the other direction as well. Some style
inconsistencies in FIND were put right, but a few of
these remained as of June 1994. Work on the systems
during the spring of 1994 was seriously impeded by
the merger of the two colleges and the need for the
developer to spend a large part of the week at the
other campus.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
By this time most of the personnel involved had
grown to hate the merger, not just the technical
college people who were taken over and no longer had
any say in their professional lives, but the community
college people as well who found themselves with
extra duties. Perhaps in time the merger will be
declared a success, since history is written by the
winners, but as of this writing it’s hard to find anyone
who thinks so. After a few weeks of pleasant spring weather, the
worst winter in Connecticut’s history turned into the
worst summer ever, with “misery index” figures in the
oppressive range almost every day. July was the
hottest month in the history of the state. Air
conditioning in the library made life bearable,
however, and work during this time mostly involved
putting style inconsistencies right. This turned out to
be a much bigger job than originally thought, and it
became clear that it would not be finished in time for
a general release of the product, scheduled for autumn
1994. A new online user’s manual was developed to
reflect all the consolidation of programs, and to reflect
the new philosophy that help screens should be in the
programs they serve instead of a central help program.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Finally, after two years and two months of living with
the “merged” institution, the developer had had
enough and retired from state service to devote full
time to these systems. The State, however, chose not
to honor its contract with the developer, claiming that
the contract expired on his retirement, leaving the
developer with the option to sue the bastards. The
developer’s attorneys assured him that he would win,
based on the wording of the contract and its
interpretation under English Common Law pertaining
to contracts, but that it would cost at least ten
thousand dollars in legal fees to do it. The developer
was left with a new appreciation of lawyer jokes
(QUESTION: What’s the difference between a catfish
and a lawyer? ANSWER: One’s a dirty, scum-sucking
bottom-feeder, and the other’s just a fish.) However,
the feeling among computer professionals in New
England is that the State is doing the developer a favor
by forcing conversion to a PC-based platform, since
the Digital Equipment Corporation is looking more
and more like a sinking ship, and many other DEC
independent software vendors have abandoned the
company.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="5" color="#FF0000">
<b>THE MICROSOFT YEARS</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Therefore, the autumn of 1994, the nicest autumn in
years with warm, sunny days and cool nights, saw
Atlantic Rim acquire a new PC and begin the process
of converting everything to Windows and Visual
Basic. Neither subject is known very well by the
developer after all that DEC experience, but life goes
on. By New Year’s Day 1995 the developer was
comfortable with Windows and began to work on
Visual Basic, a somewhat tougher project. The
decision to abandon DEC seemed to be justified on
May 9th when a colleague telephoned with news
that the Digital Equipment Corporation was pulling
the plug on VMS. With it will surely go Vax-BASIC
and whatever else is left of DEC’s proprietary software
systems, the end of an era. Digital denied the
allegations. The project to convert all this to Visual Basic
proceeded during the non-winter of 1994-95 and the
cool July but brutally hot August. Some interesting
aspects of developing in Visual Basic were beginning
to become apparent; for example, the language offers a
built-in function to add a specified number of days or
weeks to a date (i.e., what will the date be in four
weeks?), instead of the couple of hundred lines of code
required by Vax-BASIC, plus a few other such
functions. On the other hand, some things are
missing, such as a text format function. Programs
were not replaced line for line, as the opportunity to
rethink everything led to differences in what features
were placed where. By December, much colder and
snowier than usual and looking more like northern
Vermont than Connecticut, <i>Find</i>, <i>Mag</i>, and <i>Process</i>
were ready for beta testing. A language change from
Visual Basic 3 to Visual Basic 4 was made in
November, and this wasted a couple of weeks as the
myriad bugs in the new version — how can Microsoft
get away with such flawed products? — were dealt
with.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
What we’re dealing with here is a “paradigm shift,”
that almost-clich�d expression meaning that
everything you know is obsolete. Programming is
now “event-driven” instead of “top-down,” which
means that nothing happens until the user does
something, and the appropriate code is hung on the
event. Clicking on a command button, for example, is
an event and will trigger whatever code has been
assigned to it. This isn’t too hard until you get into
some of the finer points when it becomes apparent
that the old way just isn’t going to work. This,
combined with bugs in the language, means that two
or three days can be spent getting some small but
critical detail to work. Also, as the alert reader
may have noticed, the new
paradigm uses more lowercase letters, and programs
are now written as <i> Find</i> instead of FIND, for example.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Version 4 of Visual Basic comes in 16- and 32-bit
types, for use with Windows 3.1 and Windows 95,
respectively. Systems development continued in
Windows 3.1 as it appeared that Windows 95 was not
being widely enough accepted and that a switch to it
would reduce the potential market. The winter continued more severe than usual in
January as the great “Blizzard of ’96” dumped a couple
of feet of snow on the entire Northeast. Philadelphia
got more snow in twenty-four hours than it normally
gets in an entire year, and Hartford saw about a foot
and a half on top of what was already equal to the
seasonal average.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Atlantic Rim purchased a commercial software
package with the idea of sorting indexes faster than
could be done otherwise, but that turned out not to
work. The developer of the package blamed the
problem on Microsoft. Perhaps this is why Microsoft
dominates the market: hundreds of third-party
vendors need the company as a scapegoat for their
own failures, and the fact that millions of users have
trouble with Microsoft products gives this excuse a
credibility not normally found.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
As more winter storms set a new snowfall record in
February, progress on the programs continued to be
made. Sorted indexes became available in March, and
the new <i>Find</i> program was almost complete. As the
zillionth winter storm spewed out a lethal mix of
snow, rain, freezing rain, sleet, and anything else wet
and cold, the only system not operational was
circulation.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
In April, the developer made a trip to the one
remaining active VMS client, in Syracuse, New York,
with a batch of diskettes to install the current versions
of the programs. Some ran and some didn’t, but
everything became operational after about six weeks
of phone calls and diskettes sent back and forth.
Faster sorting of indexes was finally accomplished, the
computer went in for a major upgrade — a Pentium
processor, more memory, and a 1.6-gig hard drive —
and the existing set of programs, seven by now,
seemed to work with the exception of circulation.
The upgrade created a lot of software problems that
wasted several days being tracked down; apparently
no change of any kind can be made to a modern
computer system without some unforeseen
complexity causing trouble.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
While the upgrade continued to cause problems well
into July, much cooler and wetter than usual, an
inventory module was created which allowed an
inventory to be made and entered in five steps which
could be done one at a time or all at once. The
beginnings of a true Boolean search system were put into <i>Find</i>,
a major improvement but also a major project.
A lot of fine-tuning was done into August, including
the addition of a tool bar with icons to <i>Find</i>.
Some statistical capability was added during the
autumn, and a serious attempt was made to finish the
circulation system which had been allowed to
languish. None of this was helped by a major failure
of something called the registry (not to be confused
with Windows 95’s registry, apparently), and a
subsequent refusal of the system to allow the
developer access to his own programs. That problem was fixed in November, along with a
balky CD-ROM drive that had to be replaced, but the
problem afforded a chance to finish the circulation
system. <i> Find</i> was modified so that images, pictures, and other
graphics files could be associated with printed records
and displayed along with them. The ability to process
these images was added to Utility, which was
completed during the holiday season. January and February of 1997, milder and dryer than
normal — sorry, average; “normal” is a word that
doesn’t apply to New England weather — saw the
completion of Boolean searching capability in <i>Find</i>, and
additional features and debugging in <i> Utility</i> and <i>Circ</i>.
<i>Find</i> will now check the circulation record to see if a
searched item has been checked out. A ten-day winter
vacation to Florida during these months cut into
development time, not only during the ten days but
for a couple of weeks afterward as the developer’s
mind was still on vacation. Some serious problems
with <i>Mag</i> surfaced which were corrected towards
spring.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
One of the differences between the time-sharing world
of olden days and modern reality is the use of
individual workstations and networks instead of one
central CPU. What that means to these systems is that
two separate hard disks may be involved, a local disk
and a network disk, and files must be distributed
accordingly. Also, a local user may not have the
ability to write to the network disk. If only a single
machine is used, there is no problem. Programs must
reflect all these considerations, and much of the spring
was spent doing it.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
The computer underwent a major housecleaning in
June, in which the entire machine was reformatted
and a new operating system, Windows NT
Workstation, installed. Reformatting is the equivalent
of painting and recarpeting an entire house,
everything taken out and put back later. Needless to say,
Windows NT did not install without
problems. First, the multiple-booting choice failed to
come up. When that problem was resolved, finally,
the system appeared to load but would only result in
something known as the “Blue Screen of Death,” or
the “Dreaded Blue Screen” (or, perhaps, the “Dreaded
Blue Screen of Death”), a densely-packed memory
dump and error screen that effectively means <i> game over</i>.
The Windows 3.1 side was all right, but with
the 1.6-gig drive reserved for Windows NT, not all
functions could be restored. Visual Basic and the
programs were restored, though, and development
continued. <i>Find</i> was renamed <i>ARSearch</i> and <i>Help</i> was renamed
<i>ARHelp</i>, a change made necessary by the use of “Find”
and “Help” as common words in Windows 95.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
The problem with Windows NT turned out to be a
virus, and that was resolved. During the summer, the
work area was painted and carpeted, and the disorder
created by that was also finally resolved. August was
spent putting the issue of local and global disks in
order, and creating legitimate help files with the use of
RoboHelp. RoboHelp turned out to be a pretty good
product, and professional-looking help projects were
created without too much trouble, but RoboHelp has a
way of throwing bizarre errors into your lap from left
field, and a lot of telephone calls and e-mail messages
were sent to San Diego.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Next was the creation of an install set, for which
InstallShield was chosen since it seemed to be the
standard for that type of thing. This was also a major
project that took several weeks to complete, involving
more long-distance telephone calls. It seems to the
developer that these products could be made easier to
use, but perhaps not. While all that was going on, a lot of reorganizing and
debugging continued to take place, some of it from
problems revealed by another trip to Syracuse, New
York, problems corrected this time through the magic
of e-mail and attached files. It’s amazing how a
program that’s been unused for a few months won’t
work when tried again, usually because some obscure
change in a data or system file somewhere has been
made and forgotten about. <i>ARHelp</i> was renamed <i>IntroCat</i>,
to reflect its new function now that the
traditional help files were in place.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
The install set was completed around Christmas,
delayed somewhat by a cocktail of bronchitis and
pneumonia going around Connecticut that the
developed managed to get in on. December and about
a week into January were pretty much a lost cause.
News media reported that the Digital Equipment
Company was bought by Compaq, effectively putting
a complete and final end to it. The winter of 1997-98 turned out to be a non-winter,
one of the warmest on record. New York City, about
a hundred miles to the west, had its first snowless February
ever, although March tended to make up for some of
it. During this time, a web page began to be
assembled, to be hosted by Erols Internet, Inc., which
would also become the new internet provider.
Needless to say, none of it went smoothly, although
Erols’ technical support was a lot better than most.
In March, a visit to a library using another system
resulted in a browse capability being added to <i>ARSearch</i>. When a user had found the desired record,
the user could now browse forward or back through
the titles in shelflist order. This visit also resulted in Circ and Serials being renamed as
<i>ARCirc</i> and <i>ARSerials</i>, to create a more unique reference. <i> ARCirc</i>
was expanded to provide for fines to be charged, a
feature that seemed to be a competitive necessity.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
April saw another upgrade of the system, including a
whole new computer and a 17-inch monitor, all tied
together with a Belkin OmniView switch that allows
one monitor, one mouse, and one keyboard to manage up
to four CPU’s. Windows NT was finally up and
running, and a network was begun. Installing the
network resulted in reformatting the hard drives on
the old machine, meaning that everything had to be
reinstalled. System Commander was put on this
machine, allowing for dual-booting between Windows
95 and Windows 3.1. Also during this time, internet
access and e-mail was enabled on the NT box. Getting
all that to work smoothly took about a week, except
for a problem with the video driver on the Windows
95 side which refused to work at all and which made a
complete mess of the system. It was taken off and
ultimately replaced with a video driver made by
SciTech Software, found on the Internet. The
network problem lingered much longer.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
At the end of May a temporary web page — created
with Microsoft Publisher — was installed on the Erols
server. The temporary page had a URL of <i>www.erols.com/atlantic-rim</i>.
Eventually a more
detailed page will be created with FrontPage 98 and
installed under Atlantic Rim’s own domain name.
A new modem on the NT machine would not work,
and the system was without e-mail and internet access
for a while. This problem resulted in about a million
error messages, most having to do with remote access
service. Finally, with professional help, the problem
was resolved, and the domain name <i>www.librarysystems.com</i>
was registered to the company. During the spring and summer of 1998 the major
thrust was an attempt to find a business partnership to
sell the systems, but by August this had yet to come
up with anything. Systems problems continued to
take an amazing amount of time. One of them
involved Word 97, the latest Microsoft word
processing program, proving so full of bugs that it
could not be used to print the user’s manual, which
had to be done on Word 6 and then transferred to the
NT box. An attempt to replace the A: drive on the
older machine resulted in a blown power supply,
taking the machine out of service for a few days. The
new web site, created with FrontPage 98, was almost
ready by the end of summer, as was a new wholesale
editing feature in <i>Utility</i>. Another feature developed
at this time was a simplifed form of the database entry
program called <i>ARLite</i>, which was restricted in the
amound of data it could input. <i>ARLite</i> was designed
for smaller institutions like church and synagogue
libraries which didn’t need the heavy-duty features
of <i>Process</i> and couldn’t afford the full system.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
On August 21st, an agreement was signed with
Millennium Capital Quest, a marketing and
consulting firm in Wolcott, Connecticut, and Raleigh,
North Carolina. Millennium promised to promote
the AristoCAT systems and to locate a licensing
partner for a future agreement. Also on that day, the new web site was ready but
Erols, the internet service provider, could not host it
without a change to Atlantic Rim’s account. Erols
assured the developer that it would make the change,
and even sent an invoice, but didn’t get it right.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
A new printer, a Hewlett-Packard 890C, was installed,
after a lot of nonsense involving the first one bad out
of the box, and the second one unacceptable due to
print skewing, that is, the right side of the text came
out higher than the left. Finally, after much research
and discussion, the 890’s little sister, a 722C, was
installed. The industry seems pretty much unanimous
that H-P is the best, but apparently once in a while
they issue a turkey. The latest change in the programs was an attempt,
proving to be very difficult mostly due to
AristoCAT’s initial design, to make them
independent of the user’s resolution. The programs
were designed for a resolution of 640 by 480, meaning
that higher resolutions displayed small screens in the
upper left-hand corner. This does not look good, and
an add-in called ReSize was installed. ReSize adjusts
controls on a form to match the new size, but doesn’t
change the size of the forms, meaning that an
incredible amount of reprogramming had to be done.
Naturally, this project uncovered a new problem, a
major flaw in the structure of <i>Process</i>. Rewriting the
program took a couple of weeks. But during
this time, a new web page written with FrontPage 98
was posted. The installation of ReSize went well until the last two
programs, when so many problems surfaced that the
whole thing had to be abandoned and screen sizes
returned to the way they were, with the exception
that the user could choose whether the smaller screens
(if using higher resolution than 640 x 480) were
centered or in which corner. The issue of resizing for
higher resolutions may be resolved in the future, or
maybe not.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
At a meeting in December, the developer got an idea
for allowing the user of <i>ARSearch</i> to input a text file
and read it as a display screen, the idea being that
additional information relating to a title could be kept
in such a file. This was done during the next few days.
Most of late autumn was taken up with
MARC-to-AristoCAT conversion, something that was
operational in the VAX-VMS version but had never
been switched over. It’s always amazing how difficult
something like that is, converting from one form of
Basic to another and from one operating system to
another. The conversion project was finished during the
winter, and a feature to allow users to customize
screen colors was initiated. This forced some
consistency of style on the whole set of systems, not a
bad thing, and this project finally concluded around
the beginning of March. Also added at this time was a
simple feature to print “wish lists” for accessions.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
While that was being done, one of the hard drives
threatened to fail, resulting in a trip to the local repair
shop. The machine was out of service for a week, due
to complexities with dual-booting between Windows
95 and Windows 3.1, and to some other problems.
When the machine came back, a few days were spent
restoring it to its previous setup, and then the other
machine, the one with Windows NT loaded, went in
because of a software failure. No one at the shop,
including two — count ’em, two — NT experts could
make it work, which turned out to be the final straw
with about two years of NT frustration and the system
was removed and replaced with Windows 98.
Microsoft has taken a lot of hits from industry over
NT, including an increase in LINUX and UNIX
installations, and Atlantic Rim�s experience would
indicate that Microsoft is either going to have to make
the damn system work or forget it. As of this writing,
there�s no indication that NT will ever be anything
but an overly-complicated disaster. With Windows 98
available, the 16-bit Windows 3.1
version of AristoCAT was closed in March to further
development, except for bug fixes. All new features
will be added to the 32-bit version.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Nothing at all was done during the summer, as the
developer and his wife drove to Alaska via the Alaska
Highway in their 1998 Camry, an eight-and-a-half-week
trip of thirteen thousand miles, plus another
thousand miles of boat riding. It was magnificent, the
trip of a lifetime.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Back at the ranch, in September, the 32-bit version
was broken into two 32-bit versions, one labeled
version 2.5 for Windows 95 and Windows 98 and
developed with VB4, and the other labeled version 3.0
for future use, developed with VB5. The impetus for
this came from the failure of Windows 3.1 to display
option buttons, checkboxes, and other graphics items
properly, and the failure of Visual Basic to allow
runtime distinctions for them, requiring two versions.
Version 2.5 is nearly identical to version 2.1, the 16-bit
version, except for some graphics, including an ability
to change background colors, and the 32-bit
architecture. Version 3.0 will be the site of future
improvements, including some kind of Internet access,
but as of December 1999 nothing had been done with
it. The web page was expanded somewhat during this
period.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
The remainder of the winter and the following spring
saw mostly tweaking and minor improvements,
except that a pricing policy was finally established and
posted to the web site. Testing and debugging took a
great deal of time during this period. The marketing
firm, Millennium Capital Quest, said that it had found a
buyer for the systems and would arrange a meeting
during a trip to Florida. The trip to Florida came and
went, but phone calls to Millennium were not returned,
and no meeting took place. It became apparent as a
result that the arrangement with Millennium would never
yield any positive results. During the spring, three diagnostic programs were
developed to check up on the installation procedure
and other aspects of the system. These programs
noted where everything was on a user’s machine
and looked for essential files, reporting on the results.
After some testing, the programs were integrated into <i>ARUtilities</i>.
Also during this time it became necessary
to give the 16-bit systems and the 32-bit systems
different names or they would conflict in the ARSystem
directory. Many had separate names anyway due to
the 8-3 limitation of Windows 3.1.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
As the excessively wet spring of 2000 turned to summer,
the display screen in <i>ARSearch</i> was revamped for greater
functionality and a better appearance, and <i>ARCustomize</i>
was expanded to allow greater control of authority files, a
project that turned out to be more difficult that it should have
been. The web site was also improved during this period.
Summer continued cool and wet, the wettest on record in
some places, and the user’s manual was revamped in the
form of a PDF file with print large enough to be read on
screen. This will be distributed along with the programs
instead of a printed manual, which no one reads anyway.
A printed version will be available. Prices were lowered
dramatically, in line with what seems to be happening in
the software industry generally.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
The utilities program was expanded to include various
diagnostic and repair functions, as these things never
seem to work when first installed on other machines.
The developer’s audio CD collection was entered,
uncovering all manner of bugs which were fixed as
they appeared. The addition of a CD-ROM burner just before Christmas
allowed distribution in that form, and also made it possible
to distribute more documentation and demonstration files
than before. Further testing during this period turned up a
few more bugs, which were eliminated in turn. The hope of
eventually releasing a bug-free product remains strong,
along with a hope for peace in the Middle East and the
elimination of world hunger.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Beginning in later September, a long-running soap opera
involving laser printers began when the QMS Desklaser,
used for the past two years, burned out its fuser unit.
Since a replacement fuser costs almost as much as a
new printer, and since the developer wasn’t all that happy
with the QMS in the first place, a decision was made to buy
a new and better laser printer. Some research into the
project resulted in a new Okidata Color 8, which arrived in
early October, but three weeks later, after a dozen or so
calls to tech support, the printer could not be made to work.
The vendor insisted that Atlantic Rim’s software created
a conflict, which is certainly possible since everything is
made by Microsoft, but whatever the reason, the Okidata
was accepted for return by the company and a Xerox
Tektronix 850N purchased from another vendor. The 850N
installed easily and seemed to work fine, but after about a
month the developed noticed that its “solid ink,” really just
wax, wouldn’t stick to the paper. Ink that doesn’t adhere is
unacceptable, and after a number of phone calls and visits
to the vendor’s office, the 850 was traded in on a Tektronix
750N, a true laser printer. Xerox wouldn’t take the 850N
back because more than a month had passed, never mind
that the month included Christmas and New Year’s.
Finally, though, a deal was made with the vendor and
the 750N arrived. It took about a week to get the 750N
adjusted and working properly, or at least seeming to
work properly, by now early February 2001.
</p>
<p>
In prehistoric times, like seven or eight years ago, both
inkjet and laser printers were fairly crude compared to
now, and you could use any kind of paper in a laser printer.
Now, with millions of inkjet printers out there, a market
for specialized paper has developed, and there are all
manner of products available which will either mess up
a laser printer or just plain not work. Laser printers, of
course, have gotten fussier about what’s fed into them,
and some specialized things like labels have to be
specifically formulated for laser printers and can’t even
say “inkjet” on the box, according to a Xerox representative.
Another sale was made in March, but a potential sale was
apparently lost when the software exhibited too many bugs
during a demonstration.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
In early to mid March, a local entrepreneur named Tom Basti
responded to an ad for a business partner, and several
meetings were held. Tom had a lot
of good ideas about advertising, marketing, and the user-friendliness of the product,
and many changes were made. Among these were dropping
the <i>AR</i>- prefix from module names, changing <i> IntroCat</i>
to <i>Introduction</i>, and rewriting <i> Introduction</i> completely
to start a potential user off correctly. The
initial input program, <i>Process</i>, was completely rewritten to
allow for all the complexities it had acquired over the years.
The new version seemed to pick up every bug and gotcha ever
seen in Visual Basic, and hours were spent fixing all kinds of
minor problems. The printer continued to act up sporadically,
but Tektronix has good customer support and always got it
running. Apparently nothing in the computer business can be
expected to work reliably.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
By late spring it was apparent that a problem known in
programmer circles as DLL Hell was a real issue and would
have to be addressed. This is a situation in which a program
or system works fine in the developer’s environment, even if
a separate machine is dedicated to it, but won’t run on the
client’s machine. As of midsummer the situation had yet to be
resolved, but around Labor Day the effort began in earnest.
July was pleasant but August was hot and humid, reaching 102
one day, a record. Most of the rest of the month was in the
eighties and nineties, with about nine hundred percent humidity,
as miserable a month as the developer could remember.
The new Process continuing to be filled with bugs
was finally fixed in September with the help of a customer
who was given a discount for his trouble. Autumn that year was
much warmer than usual. A serious effort was begun in November
to finish the <i>Statistics</i>
module, simplifying it some and standardizing the manner in
which data was collected. Usage numbers are cumulated
from <i>Search</i>, <i>Circulation</i>, and
manual input of seven items of the user’s choice.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
It had become apparent for a while that the design of the systems’
interface, based on Windows 3.1, was looking dated and needed to be
modernized. The color choices offered the user were dramatically cut
back and most screen text went to black on a pearl gray background.
Font sizes were reduced from 10-point bold to 8-point regular for
the most part. Reducing the font sizes involved resizing most labels
and text boxes, and the project took longer than expected. This, of course,
meant that all the documentation was also outdated and had to be fixed.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Xerox started to charge for tech support, a bad move since the 750N printer,
never very good, finally exhibited too many problems
and was replaced with QMS’s newest DeskLaser, with a price of under a thousand
dollars. This turned out to be a very good machine and seems to have
at least temporarily put an end to the printer soap opera. Xerox is in
trouble financially and it’s easy to see why.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
The summer of 2002 was the third hottest on record, with one drawn-out
heat wave after another. Most of the development during this period
was concentrated on fixing bugs and smoothing out the user interface.
As this miserable summer turned into a cold autumn, the packaging of
the product — what the user gets — was cleaned up and made more attractive.
The computer went in for another major upgrade, ending up split between two
CPU’s with a LINUX-run server. The system was out of service
for about a month, and the process resulted in discontinuing the Windows
3.1 version of AristoCAT. No one seems to be using Windows 3.1
anyway.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
Development during the winter consisted mostly of eliminating bugs and improving
reliability, and improving conversion capability. A client had its records in
Microsoft Excel format and needed conversion, and a potential client was heavily
into MARC records. This latter project went well for the most part but threw the
developer a number of curves and the sample MARC file didn�t seem to follow its
own rules. In the manner of weather having to average itself out, the hot summer
turned into an extremely cold and nasty winter.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
The major project during the summer of 2003, cool and wet for the most part except
August, was to improve demonstration capability. A program especially designed to
demonstrate the working systems was introduced and sent out to potential clients.
This was fine-tuned during the following months. A new version of <i>Process</i>, designed
to be easier to use and less confusing, was developed during the autumn. Of course,
it didn�t seem to the developer that the old <i>Process</i> was that confusing, but the
word from potential customers said different, and there�s no arguing with that.</b></font>
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
January of 2004 saw Windows XP installed, resulting in a couple of casualties,
including <i>OmniPage</i> and the installation system, fewer than the developer expected.
XP, as advertised, needed less rebooting, but seemed to provide the �Not Responding�
error more often. The installation problem only became apparent
after a while, but finally a new installation package was obtained after some
indecision between InstallShield and Wise. The systems would <i>seem</i> to install on XP but
wouldn�t run reliably and, in the time-honored way of Microsoft, gave no error messages
but simply froze the machine and messed everything up in a random manner. Needless
to say, perhaps, the new installation package would not install itself and the usual
zillion phone calls and e-mails went back and forth to InstallShield. It sure would
be nice if you get something that ran without all this trouble, but perhaps that�s
in a class with getting one�s youth back.
</p>
<p>
The machine used to test changes before sending CD-ROM�s to potential customers
died during this period and was ultimately replaced with an old machine donated by
a member of a local computer club. The previous owner�s wife wanted the stuff
out of the house.
</p>
<p>
<font face="Arial" size="3"><b>
A deal was made with a firm called Beta Breakers to test the systems professionally
and thoroughly. Beta Breakers turned up a number of errors and bugs which were either fixed
or accounted for in documentation.
</p>
<p>
Circulation and periodicals control systems got a lot of attention during the fall of 2004 and
subsequent winter as one new client was particularly interested in these. The demonstration
package was fine-tuned and cleaned up a little.
</p>
<font SIZE="3">
<p>Not much happened after that. The developer was getting too old, approaching
seventy, and the ocean of problems finally became insurmountable. By 2006 the
enterprise was effectively dead.</p>
<p>So, what went wrong? The main problem was underestimating the difficulty of
dealing with Microsoft. After DEC, a closed proprietary
system in which everything is managed by the same people, who took the kind of
pride in their product that the old Ma Bell crowd did, Microsoft was impossible.
If you�re under about fifty you don�t remember the Ma Bell ethic, but they
wanted everything to work as well as it could. Microsoft is open to third-party
programs, many written by crooks and conmen. And Microsoft itself is
business-oriented first and foremost, interested in dominating the market and
not really concerned with the quality of its products. It�s like the used-car
business just after World War II, in which Earl �Madman�
Munz once famously said, �You get the full guarantee. If the car breaks, you
get to keep both pieces.�</p>
<p>Programmers' primary motivation is to write a procedure in as few lines as
possible, and to impress their colleagues with how smart they are. There�s no
motivation for reliability unless management insists on it, which Microsoft
doesn�t. �My grandmother could write code like that,� is the usual taunt,
said of something the least bit kludgy. But reliable code is by nature kludgy.</font><!--msnavigation--></td></tr><!--msnavigation--></table></body>
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