= --- === --------------------------------------------------------------------- ======= -L- -I- -B- -E- -R- -E- -T- -T- -O- FEBRUARY 1998 ========= ======= The iMatix Newsletter Volume III Issue 2 --- === --------------------------------------------------------------------- = Copyright (c) 1998 iMatix - distribute freely Back issues at http://www.imatix.com Comments to: editors@imatix.com Programming -- Technology -- Finite State Machines -- News -- Other Stuff == COMMENT ---...-.-...-.--...-.--...-.-...-.....---..-....--.--..-.-.---.-- So, Compaq finally went and bought Digital for a fistful of dollars. Digital was one of the firms that launched the computer revolution, with their PDP-1 in 1961. The first was sold to Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), who pretty much invented the Internet; the second was donated to MIT, who pretty much invented the hacker approach to programming and life in general. Back to today, and a company that's been selling PCs for 15 years swallows-up one that's been selling minicomputers for 37 years. This says a lot about the profit margin on Compaq PCs. It also says much about the future of this business. I'm never one to reject a good conspiracy theory, so let's look at the pieces... Digital was (and still is) respected in many areas: a strong operating system (VMS), fast CPUs (Alphas) and the technical skills required to sell large computers to large businesses. Microsoft bought Digital's operating systems teams to help develop NT. Intel bought Digital's Alpha chip. Now Compaq has bought the rest of Digital. If Digital was well-known for making superb hard disks, we'd probably see Seagate swimming around there somewhere. A minute's silence... The concept of a Microsoft-Intel-Compaq axis being able to flatten any other computer company, including the last of the old timers, IBM, is interesting if not particularly savoury. The battle is headed uphill, to the territory of the Large Machines. Expect to see new servers from Compaq, stuffed with 4 to 32 Alpha CPUs, working in tight clusters, and running NT only. The fight between NT and Unix is already over (Unix lost, I'm sorry to report). The next round is between M-I-C and IBM. Pieter Hintjens Antwerpen 1 February 1998 == NEWS -..--.-.-.-..--.-.-....----.-.---...---..-.-.-----...-.---.-.-.-.--- Garcon! Plat du Jour!! Our ever-active web crawlers, Pixel and Rasta, dug-up an obscure site called 'zdnet' that apparently chose Xitami as their pick of the day, way back in prehistoric 1997! Their review of 7 January was... well, we were pretty happy. This is what ZDNet said: "Xitami is a personal web server for Windows 95/NT. Versions are also available for Windows 3.x, OS/2, Unix, and OpenVMS. The server features browser-based administration, FTP service, customizable error messages, and detailed logs and supports a selectable port (80 or higher) for the service to run on. The author claims faster speed than with many other web servers, but no difference in speed was evident during review. The server expects to find web pages in the \WEBPAGES directory (or subdirectories as appropriate) created during installation. Security features are available but require manual editing of text files in the web server's application directory. Java and CGI (Perl/Rexx/Awk) support is included, but ISAPI and NSAPI interfaces are not (the documentation indicates that a future release might support this). Documentation is included in HTML format. If you're looking for an easy-to-configure web server, take a look at Xitami." 3.700 people downloaded Xitami to try it out. We got maybe twenty more e-mails. l'Addition, s'il vous plait! - Volume served by www.imatix.com each day: 160 Mbytes. - Number of new hosts served each week: 2.500. - Number of different countries served: 85. - Country we never heard of before: Niue. - Top three domains: .com (21%), .net (17%), .de (8%). - Monthly downloads of Libero software: 600. == FEEDBACK -..-.-.-.--....-.-.-.--..-...-.--.-....-.-.--...-.-.-.----.-.--- This month, a selection of e-mail from our users... (Needless to say we chose a balanced selection of the most positive, enthusiastic and nice e-mails.) (It's either that or the 'This Is Not A Spam' stuff!) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date sent: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 18:19:17 -0600 From: Ron Crain Xitami is a diamond! For months I have been playing with web servers that I can run on the same W95 machine as my web editor. (I like to completely use and verify the site before it is deployed.) I tried Netscape servers - too big, Frontpage - too bad, MS Personal Web server - too erratic, etc. The best solution was a compromise to run Apache on a LInux box on the network, but that was still overkill. Xitami is just right. The built-in ftp makes it easy to build a complete site, and make a trial deployment to the server and test before having to do it live. I began writing code on 8080, z80, under CP/M, and I have never lost an appreciation for small, tight, well written programs. I hope to find the time (and a project) for trying Libero and your other efforts. FWIW, After much effort, I believe I have the perfect web site development environment: Homesite, Macromedia Dreamweaver, WS_FPT, CSE3310 Validator Xitami All I need now is a good link checker. +~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+ | Ron Crain | rcrain@tfs.net | | American Heartland Corporation | CIS 70011,307 | | P.O. Box 3025 | (913) 780-2800 | | Olathe, Kansas 66063 | (913) 780-3516 Fax | +~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date sent: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 00:42:29 -0700 From: Jeff Wolkove Subject: FYI - Xitami is a workhorse ...but I'm sure you knew that already. I don't know what kind of users you have using Xitami, but here's a story for the doubters out there. I just spun off part of my site to a second site, and got listed on the search engine last night about 1:00 AM. In the past 23 hours, my clunker 486 served up over 3 gigs to over 4300 visitors. Kinda scary, actually. I have to cut down on what's online or I'll be in trouble with the cable company very soon. Xitami has not even hiccupped. I'm very impressed and glad I stuck with it. Why do you give this away for free? HOW DO you guys make your money? Just from selling sources? Sorry, maybe it's none of my business, but If Libero can do what you say, then why not package it up with a sleek manual and sell it? Forgive me if I ramble. Have a good weekend. Jeff - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date sent: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 03:16:30 -1000 From: "rex l. manzano" Subject: thank you! wonderful products! WONDERFUL!!! . . . and a TRUE gift amidst this nauseatingly commercialized world of the internet !!!...a rare find indeed!!! who are you people? to whom do the undeserving (myself included) owe this incredible generosity? thank you! thank you!!! rex - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date sent: Sun, 25 Jan 1998 16:25:22 -0500 From: Stan Buchanan Subject: The most exellent libero First, let me say I love your libero product! I have been trying out the windows gui interface recently, and just wanted to ask a (perhaps dumb) question: How do I get capital letters into a state or module name? For example, when I try to make a module name like "Send-DISC-Frame-to-LME" it gets munched into "Send-Disc-Frame-To-Lme" which is not as clear. I need to put these abbreviations in all caps for clarity. Any ideas? Thank you! Stan <<- - - ->> Hi Stan, :-/ Well, this is one of those areas where Libero is just too damn smart; it will always convert names into what it considers to be a standard style. You are of course right that LME should not be spelt 'Lme'; the only benefit of Libero's approach is that all spellings are consistent. You will have to accept this price for using Libero ;-) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Date sent: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 00:20:41 -0800 To: info@imatix.com From: Dan Weinlader Subject: Libero Very nice program, I have built many FSMs with it. I created my own schema so that the FSM is event driven and found it amazingly easy to do. However, one small problem that might just be my lack of understanding. Why do I get error messages with this trivial dialog? -- start -- B: (--) Event0 -> A + OP1 A: (--) Event0 -> B + OP0 -- end -- The output of Libero 2.30 running on NT 4.0 is: d:\>lr test.l LIBERO v2.30 (c) 1991-97 iMatix Options file 'lr.ini' not found lr I: processing 'test.l'... lr E: next state cannot be 'b' lr I: building test.d... lr I: building test.i... Why can the next state not be 'b'? I apologize in advance if this is in the documentation, I did not see it when I looked. Thanks in advance for you time and help. - Dan Weinlader, Kaylon Technologies Test drive Powermarks at http://www.kaylon.com/power.html <<- - - ->> Hi Dan, The 'B' state is the dialogs initial state: Libero starts the program in the first state in the dialog. Now, although the kind of loop you describe is perfectly valid, it means that you can enter the initial state several times. This is just confusing (to the reader), so Libero does not allow it. This is one of those things that seemed a great idea at the time. == TERMINATE THE PROGRAM -...---...-..----....-.---..---...-...---.-...---.- Fun with languages... This is what we got when we translated a Spanish web site page into English using AltaVista's (now Compaq-owned?) site: "Xitami Multithreaded Webserver 1.3c - Powerful server of Web multithreaded that executes under Windows 95/NT. Soporta hundreds of connections simulta'neas,y the best thing: he is gratuitous! FREEWARE".