STATEMENT OF POLICY

                             FOR

                RSX-11M UNSUPPORTED UTILITIES

 This  tape  (or  disk,  or  whatever)  contains a set of programs and
 subroutines developed by

                    Phil Stephensen-Payne,
                    c/o Systime Ltd.,
                    Concourse Computer Centre,
                    432 Dewsbury Road,
                    LEEDS LS11 7DF,
                    England.

 The  majority  of  them  are modifications of programs taken from the
 DECUS  library,  although some have been written from scratch. All of
 them  are  available under the standard DECUS policy that they may be
 given  to or used by anybody as long as they are not sold for profit,
 and so on.

 In  addition  an  attempt has been made in all these programs (though
 not  always  successfully  when modifying other people's programs) to
 maintain  a  set  of common principles so as to present a common user
 interface at all levels. The implementation of these is assisted by a
 set  of  'boiler-plate'  files  - a discussion of which will be found
 elsewhere. The principles adopted are as follows:-

 1.  All    programs  shall run on a standard RSX-11M (V3.2 or later),
     with  the  only  restrictions  being  on the selection of various
     SYSGEN  options (e.g. the inclusion of parent/offspring tasking).
     A  number of programs have, in the past, adopted the principle of
     modifying  the Executive to make the programs run better. This, I
     believe, leads to far more complications and bother than they are
     worth  and  all  such  modifications  have  been omitted in these
     programs.

 2.  All  privileged  programs  shall run on any RSX-11M configuration
     (restricted  as  above)  without  needing  to be rebuilt for each
     system.  Standardly  privileged programs that reference Executive
     labels  are  rebuilt for each system so as to incorporate the new
     addresses  of those symbols. I have, in general, adopted a new (I
     think)    policy   of  having  each  program  dynamically  access
     LB:[1,54]RSX11M.STB  to  determine  the  values of these symbols.
     This  does  naturally  make  the  program  marginally  larger and
     marginally  slower, but means that task images can be transported
     from  system  to  system  - and also that an unwary user, running
     such  a  program without rebuilding it, will not crash the system
     (as usually is the case).

 3.  It    is  assumed  that  most  of  the  programs  will be used on
     'largish'  systems  (except,  of  course,  for programs like PIN,
     whose  whole  essence is their small size). This means that while
     size  restraints  are  always  borne in mind, it has usually been
     thought  better  to  have,  say,  a large number of comprehensive
     error messages, than to economise on space by using messages like
     'ERROR  12'.  In  addition  some  of  the programs assume various
     things   about  their  environment  (such  as  the  inclusion  of
     parent/offspring  tasking)  which  might  be omitted on 'smaller'
     systems.

 4.  A    standard  'multi-user' utility (like SRD) will have a source
     file  name  of  xxx.MAC  (SRD.MAC)  and  similar  for objects and
     such-like; will be assembled and built by xxx.CMD (SRD.CMD) which
     will  itself  generate  any  further  files  needed  and  will be
     installed  as  ...xxx  (...SRD).  'Single-user'  utilities  (like
     DSRDMP)  will  follow  similar  guidelines but will have names of
     more   than  three  characters  and  will  not  be  installed  as
     'multi-user'.

 5.  Each    utility  will  follow  the standard RSX-11M guidelines of
     allowing it to be invoked by any of:-

            xxx commandline
            xxx <CR>
            RUN $xxx

     and  will accept indirect command files as commandlines in any of
     the forms above.

 6.  Each  utility  that  prompts  the user for input as decribed in 5
     will provide help in response to either

                    xxx /HE
            or      HELP xxx

     The writeup on BOILER.MAC supplies details on this. The help file
     will be called xxx.HLP.

 7.  Each    utility will (hopefully) be accompanied by a file xxx.DOC
     which  describes  its operation and makeup. Part of this document
     is  intended  as  a  User's Guide and part as a guide for anybody
     wishing to modify the code.

 8.  Each  utility  will,  as  far  as  is  possible,  be written in a
     structured  fashion  to  make  future  modification  simpler.  In
     particular,  all  programs  (whether in Assembler or a High-Level
     language)  will  have a comment on every line of code, as well as
     at the head of each section.

 9.  All  files  that  form  part  of  any  utility  or  game  will be
     transferrable  on  magtape  via FLX without requiring any special
     switches.   This is rarely important, but occasionally data files
     are required in a special format that FLX could screw up.

 10. Assignments  and patches at taskbuild time are kept to a minimum.
     A  common error in a utility that doesn't seem to work is to find
     out  later  that  it assumed that, say, LUN 1 was assigned to the
     terminal  whereas in fact it was left to default (to SY:).  There
     are  some  programs  (e.g. DSRDMP) which use a unit in such a way
     that  the  user  needs to be able dynamically to reassign it, and
     then  any  default  must  be specified at taskbuild time - in all
     other cases such assignments must be 'hard-wired' with an 'Assign
     LUN' directive.

 I  would  be  very  interested  in  any  comments on any of the above
 points, or on any of the enclosed programs.  The above address should
 reach me for the foreseeable future.