How about a User Script Storage area.

[Brian Goad]

How about a place where we could put scripts (tcl, java, KSH, etc..)  that we write for others to use or learn from?

Topic

[Sandy McQuay]

Yeah that would be great!  I don’t want to have to reinvent the wheel if I don’t have to!  And I learn a lot by looking at somone else’s code.

[Jim Kosloskey]

If you just post your requirements as they come up, you will get offered to you scripts already in place which address your challenge to some degree.

That worked quite effectively on the listserve and I think it can work in this forum as well.

The key might be to have one forum where requests for Tcl solutions could be made.

Perhaps the Tcl forum might be the appropriate place.

What do the rest of you think?

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

[Anonymous]

I agree with you when it comes to the day-to-day frustrations…i.e. “how can I make this work!?!?”.  But it would be nice to have a browsable index of solutions that have worked for others.  This would help spawn some ideas and might also keep the number of repeat requests for the same thing down.  For example, scripts that cycle the logs and smat files on a nightly basis are common requests.

This would not be limited to TCL scripts though.  Many people ask about alert configurations and the like.

Maybe a FAQ would be good along with a “canned solutions” area.

Thoughts?

[Rick Brown]

I think Jim has a great point.  

If you do a search on your problem you would find the solutions/scripts offered in previous posts.  If you didn’t find a viable solution you would create a new topic and try to find a new solution.

[Brian Goad]

With all due respect to Jim, (and I of all people respect him very much) it was NOT very efficent on the listserv. We would routinely see the same request over and over again. Maybe months down the line. It would be alot more efficent for the user to have a location to search for code for tcl, java, alerts, KSH or what ever and if nothing is found to meet the needs then pose the question to the group. I believe that we are dealing with an intelligent group and feel that with a few pointers in the right direction they can learn to solve there own problems.

Also it seemed to me that only a small percentage of the users on the listserv answered questions on a regular basis. Very often they would be responding to a question that they have responded to many times before, but now being asked by someone else. If we as a group maintain a standard to hold ourselves to then the ones that were being bombarded on the listserv might be able to get some work complete on projects that they have on their plate.

Just my 2-cents.

Besides it is your server Rick.

[Rick Brown]

Brian,

That is one of the main reasons why we created this forum for you guys.  The problem with the list server was not being able to search through previous answers.  Many people deleted these emails on a daily basis.  There were also many people who couldn’t keep every message that was posted on the list server.  This resulted in the same questions being asked over and over.

Now that we have the forum we can do searches.  I hope as we go along folks will do searches to try and find their answers before posting.  That is the most powerful feature of this community.

[Scott Lee]

We had the capability to search the archives before.  If that was under-utilized, why would this ‘forum’ format be any different?

❓

[Jim Kosloskey]

Brian,

No offense taken. I am all for the unfettered exchange of ideas and experiences.

I will relate some experiences I have had regarding repositories of user contributed code.

I have, in the past, been very active in a number of major computer related user groups (worldwide groups for major manufacturers such as Computer Associates, IBM, etc.).

In many of those groups the need also existed for sharing of extension code.

What started out as an informal exchange eventually became a drive for a formal exchange.

In some cases the owner of the user forum was a manufacturer or the incorporated user group itself. In virtually all cases, due to legal concerns, the owners of the forum would not allow a formal repository (normally an FTP site) to exist within their environment and I had to agree.

Some groups set up an FTP site on their own independent of the forum but referred to in forum content and then the fun began.

First of all, it is a fair amount of work to manage such a repository and sometimes there is no one who will take on the responsibility. Once one is built, it is critical it be maintained.

Then there are the eventual requirements placed on submitted code. The code must function well and not cause problems (all of the caveats in the world does not seem to overcome this eventual requirement and for some reason people are more tolerant of code received from an individual as an attachment than of code downloaded from a repository). The code must be structured in at least a basic way ( author, date-written, update comments, lots of comments, variables declared at the beginning of the code, one function per line of code, etc.

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

[Author]

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