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From: thompson@PAN.SSEC.HONEYWELL.COM (John Thompson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: APRs (FLAME ON)
Message-ID: <9104082143.AA24021@pan.ssec.honeywell.com>
Date: 8 Apr 91 21:43:20 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 51

The subject says most of it -- I'm ticked at HP's APR 'resolution' method.
Consider FLAME ON through this whole thing.

I sent in an APR in mid October of 1990 (it was not a high-priority one,
so I'm only mildly upset at the 6 month turnaround).  Basically, the problem
is that "/com/lst" doesn't handle wildcards correctly.  If you give it a
wildcarded pathname that doesn't exist, then it gives an lst of the current
directory (Unix users - 'lst' is more-or-less 'du').  I feel that this is
an error, as I certainly didn't _ask_ for the current directory.  I got a
response today (April 8).

Problems I have with the response -
1) HP/Apollo is actually having someone HAND TYPE the APR responses!!!  Now,
   perhaps I shouldn't gripe, but it seems wasteful to make somebody type
   in the e-mailed forms again, after they had a computer print them out.
   (I know that it's hand typed, because we've found errors (typos) in the
   US-nail response.)

2) Even though it was a low priority APR, I think 6 months is too long.
   (It says that it's from 3/26, and the postmark is 4/5, so I guess you
   could argue that the response people only had it for 5 1/2 months.)

3) Their response is that this is not a bug -- it is working within specs.
   The comment was that "When the wildcard specification has no match, as far
   as lst is concerned it is quivalent (sic) to mot specifying any pathname."
   THEY GAVE ME THE BEHAVIOR, AND SAID THAT IT'S OKAY, SINCE IT BEHAVES LIKE
   IT BEHAVES!!!!!
   If "dlt bad?*wildcard" deleted the current directory, you can be _SURE_
   that it'd be a bug!  When I ask for a disk usage of a wildcard, I do
   not expect to get the current directory!  Therefore, the behavior isn't
   expected!  Therefore, it's wrong!  The help file (which they also quoted)
   says that "When no pathname is specified the default...."  This is fine;
   however, I specified a pathname!  I told it in no uncertain terms what I
   wanted, and it shouldn't offer me something else if it can't find what I
   told it to give me.

This would normally only irritate me slightly.  However, we have not received
any responses to APRs lately that have been timely _OR_ satisfactory.  Any
bug in the Domain/OS (Apollo side of HP) product arena has been found to be
"working within specifications," or else "the documentation is in error."
We just got a new 400t in, with the HP flavored manual "Getting Started With
Domain/OS."  
I'm looking forward to the _real_ manual -- "How We Finished Off Domain/OS."

-- jt --
John Thompson
Honeywell, SSEC
Plymouth, MN  55441
thompson@pan.ssec.honeywell.com

Me?  Represent Honeywell?  You've GOT to be kidding!!!