|
Remember. We're meeting at
SGI January - April 2000
New Directions! Silicon Graphics at 6200
LBJ Freeway
The mission of the DFWUUG is to promote interest in and an understanding
of UNIX All meetings are open to the public without charge.
The group meets the first Thursday of the month, with the exception of those
months where the Thursday falls on or near a holiday. Everyone is cordially
invited to attend. For current information, please check out the user group's
web site www.dfwuug.org.
Bio:
Jay Schulist is currently employed at
TurboLinux as a Senior Software Engineer and leader of the Networking
Group. Schulist began his Linux work by creating extensions to Appletalk
and Novell for the Linux kernel. Since then Schulist has created numerous
networking layers and drivers for Linux, including Localtalk, TokenRing,
IBM Channel, IEEE 802.2 and miscellaneous enhancements. Besides Schulist's
work at TurboLinux he is the Linux-SNA Project Leader. Schulist's efforts
in the SNA arena include full APPN and LU
6.2 protocol implementation along with a large number of other IBM SNA Standards and
APIs.
Summary:
The talk will be based on the latest 2.3.x kernels
and will focus on the general implementation of networking layers within
Linux, using the Linux-SNA networking layer as the example. Included will
be discussion of the Linux networking layer structure, the tying of the
networking layer to the kernel, the implementation of standard APIs using existing kernel
facilities, and buffer management (including the use of the new Advanced Kernel Buffers (skb
pools).
President's Podium
by Greg Pratt |
Top
|
|
This month's message
will be short and to the point. Elections for the new board will be held
at the March 2nd meeting. Following are the candidates and their positions
It has been a pleasure
working with the current board and I have had a great deal of personal
satisfaction meeting and working with many, many members of the
DFWUUG.
I look forward to the
elections and congratulations to the nominees!
Greg
Software-Related Accountability
Group
by John Keohane -- DFWUUG Member |
Top
|
|
Programmers and DBAs
and others with software-related work experience might be assisted in
reconnecting their careers by a "software-related" account- ability group
out of Career Connection. (www.careerconnection.org)
Though limiting
membership, and limiting weekly meetings to a maximum of ten people, this
group has sent 25 people out to full-time jobs in the last 6 months,
including two former officers of the DFW UNIX Users
Group.
How it works is
this. For one thing, it
operates by discussion. It
also operates with expertise.
Everyone in the group has software-related WORK experience. Everyone in the group has email,
and a phone number to call without dialing long-distance. And everyone in the group is
looking for a "software-related" job.
This last point might
interest some of you. At
least five people from Alcatel have been members of this group, and all
but one wanted software related jobs. The exception was one who had
chosen to become a farmer.
Have you ever heard
that joke about the difference between the pig and the chicken in the ham
and eggs? The chicken's
involved, but the pig is committed.
The would-be farmer came to one meeting, and was like the chicken
in the ham and eggs. He had
all kinds of ideas of how other people should reconnect THEIR careers in
software-related jobs.
Perhaps it is needless
to say that the qualifications for joining this group morphed into
including not only "software-related" work experience, but also the goal
of a "software-related" next job.
Each meeting of this
group lasts for just 90 minutes on a Saturday morning. Typically there
are 8 to 10 at a meeting, and time is strictly controlled. Everyone
gets five minutes, and the privilege of using a five minute timer where
the 1 inch letters move from 5 to 4-3-2-1-0.
Veterans go first, new comers next, the discussion leader is
last. Anyone with a personal
job offer to announce gets to go first of the first.
As far as use of the 5
minutes, that's strictly up to the participant, and the range has varied
from help on resumes to use of bulletin boards, to talk of
recruiters.
You've already probably
figured that 5 times 10, or even 6 times 10 only gets to an hour.
Other time is usually invested in continuing some conversations. For example, if four people are
intensely discussing bulletin boards, there may be additional time devoted
to bulletin boards, but always the discussion leader will keep an eye
on the clock. After all,
the discussion leader's 5 minutes are last.
Enough for
now!
Email me:
keohane@prodigy.net
or Phone (evenings): (972) 690-8092
John
Keohane
C C++ JAVA
Book Review : DocBook:
The Definitive Guide
by
Christopher Browne
If you are a member, you are eligible
for a free O'Reilly book. For more details, you must show up at
the meeting.
|
Top |
|
Special thanks to O'Reilly books
DocBook is an SGML
DTD designed for creating technical documents. DB:TDG is a comprehensive
reference to DocBook.
That may be an
accurate summary, but does little to indicate why anyone would
care.
Consider:
Documentation for UNIX systems are getting deployed in many forms. nroff. HTML. PDF. Info. Sometimes plain text.
Unfortunately, these forms each suffer from significant
problems:
- nroff is widely
for production of man pages, but offers little opportunity to interlink
related documents, and is so biased towards text that inclusion of
pictures is problematic.
- HTML "fixes"
the picture problem, and is all about hyperlinks.
Unfortunately,
*managing* those links in a complex set of documentation is
problematic. It is easy
enough to validate and maintain links inside a single page; if there are
many HTML pages, moving text from page to page will break links unless
there is tight discipline in the manipulations
done.
Furthermore, it is
inherently a "nonlinear" form, so that if you need to print off a copy,
this poses a grave challenge.
People like to build
and read attractive HTML documents; unfortunately, the format is not
inherently terribly rich in the kinds of objects it can display, so that
people are left building complex <TABLE>s and using font
manipulations in order to indicate differing varieties of headers,
titles, and other "document components."
It is common for
"real world" deployments of HTML documentation to enforce further
structure by authoring the material in some other
form.
- PDF is an
interesting format for the deployment of complex, picture-rich
documents, but is certainly not a form in which to *author* documents,
and linking presents similar dilemnas to those presented with
HTML.
- Info was pretty
slick ten years ago, and copes reasonably well with management of a rich
set of kinds of hyperlinks, as well as with presenting documentation
both online, in hypertext form, and offline, in a linear printed
form. But it offers minimal
graphical functionality, and many seem to *despise* the user interface.
- TeX and LaTeX are
useful for generating purely printed documentation; while printed output
can be downright *gorgeous,* they are not terribly suitable for
producing online documentation.
DocBook provides
solutions to all of these issues by its clear separation of authoring
and presentation, and by providing a rich set of tags for structuring
documents.
--> It provides
about 300 distinct tags for different sorts of document
components.
This rather daunting
list includes:
-
High level
structuring elements, such as parts, sections,
chapters
-
"Block" elements
like paragraphs, and specializations such as diagrams, itemized lists,
bibliographic entries, program listings,tables, and such
-
Inline
"properties" such as indicating emphasis, or that a fragment
represents an acronym, URL, email address, quote, function, or GUI
element
-
Links can be
attached to any of these and provide considerably more sophistication
than the HTML <a href="#FOO"> construct.
From a "UNIX man
pages" perspective, it is interesting to note that DocBook includes a
<REF> environment that was designed specifically to provide
equivalent functionality to nroff.
There is a utility out there called rman for transforming man
pages into DocBook, which would be a step to help integrate them into an
interlinked document set.
The value in this is
in being able to deploy output in several forms. The book comes with
tools to turn the documents into well-styled HTML and RTF with
considerable ability to customize appearance; TeX and Info transforms
also exist; support for *roff and text forms are being
prototyped.
A particularly
useful deployment of DocBook would be in producing integrated
documentation sets that combine reference material, formal "man pages,"
and tutorials. Furthermore,
this provides a structured way of putting together more comprehensive
collections, such as more sophisticated versions of the "Linux
Documentation Project" books.
For those that are
looking for "hot" acronyms, the book includes the most extensive
treatment of DSSSL (a Scheme-based style language) that I've seen; there
is an XML version of DocBook under way that some find
usable.
The chapters break
down thus:
-
Getting Started
with SGML/XML - 15 pgs
-
Creating DocBook
Documents - 39 pgs
-
Parsing DocBook
Documents - 9 pgs
-
Publishing DocBook
Documents - 25 pgs
-
Customizing
DocBook - 22 pgs
And then 454 pages
that comprehensively treat each of the elements (tags) of DocBook. This could be exceedingly
boring, and that is fairly common with SGML material. Fortunately, the examples are
chosen with some sense of humor, so that while it may not all be the
most fascinating of reading, it is not as bad as reading a phone
book.
<http://www.xml.com/pub/1999/10/docbook/docbook-making.html>
documents
that DocBook is in
use at present for authoring of:
DocBook: The
Definitive Guide represents the first comprehensive reference, with
added bonuses of including a CDROM that not only includes usable tools,
but also throws in the text of the book in DocBook form, as well as
including transformations into HTML as well as a fully searchable
"WinHelp" form.
The full text is
available on the web at <http://docbook.org/>, so that you can
"read before you buy;" this is effectively an "open source"
book.
--
Those who do not
learn from history, loop. cbbrowne@ntlug.org - <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
Conference on Java March 27-30, 2000 Santa Clara, California
See their Web page at http://conferences.oreilly.com/
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Gary Lelvis - Program Chair |
Top
|
|
-
Future Guest Speakers
-
April 6--Jay Urbanski or Egan Ford of IBM will be here to talk about Project
Beowulf. This is the project where IBM coupled together a large number of
Intel processors running Linux and matched a Cray T3t-900-AC64 benchmark.
This material was previously presented last spring at the Linux conference
in Atlanta.
Dear Members:
The DFWUUG Program Committee will begin regular
monthly meetings again to develop program ideas and schedule speakers.
All members are invited to attend and make their opinions known. Perhaps
you have ideas for a type of program we have not had before. Perhaps you
have contact with
Unix gurus who might be willing
to speak to the group
Here are the
details:
Who: DFWUUG Members and any other interested parties.
What: Monthly meeting of the DFWUUG Program Committee
Where: At the Hofbrau Brewpub on Belt Line in Addison.
The pub is located on the south side of Belt Line just west of Midway
Road. It is right next to Sam's and can be reached by going through the Sam's
parking lot.
When: Wednesday, January 26, at 7:30 PM.
Why: To enjoy a brew or two (only $1.00 on Wednesdays),
talk about UNIX and plan future DFWUUG programs.
Gary Lelvis
DFWUUG Program Chair.
DFWUUG Leadership and Volunteers
Who to Contact |
Top
|
|
-
Abacus Technical Services
Abacus Technical Services, a Woman’s Business Enterprise, is currently
seeking the highest caliber UNIX professionals for contract assignments as
Abacus employees. All positions are in the Dallas Metro Area.
Abacus Technical Services’ mission is to provide quality staffing services,
promoting the highest ethical standards while building positive relationships
with clients and candidates.
Contact an Abacus Technical Services’ recruiter for
information about outstanding UNIX opportunities. Please call 972-644-4105 or
send your resume to:abacus@abacustechnical.com. Visit Abacus on the web at www.abacustechnical.com
.
-
Administaff
-
Aerotek, Inc.
-
Argus Connection, Inc.
UNIX Placement 817-329-8053 or 8058 Join our Pack!!
-
August Associates
-
BrightStar
Information Technology Group
-
Capital One
-
CoComp, Inc.
- And a special thanks to Compaq (formerly Digital) for month
after month providing facilities and extra staff to host our meetings. We are
truly grateful!
-
Comms People
-
D-Tech Corporation
-
Computer
Horizons Corporation
-
Dallas Technology Group
-
Dalmac Companies
-
Datasys Computer Corp.
-
Decision Consultants, Inc.
For information, please contact Susan Johnson at 972-386-8777.
-
Fidelity Investments
Job Page
-
Frito-Lay, Inc.
-
GTE
-
HCL Technologies
-
Hex.Net Superhighway
Since 1995 Hex.Net has been providing business-class Internet service to
the DFW metroplex. Hex.Net specializes in assisting Linux users and is proud
to host many client's Linux webservers.
-
Hewlett Packard
Hewlett-Packard is proud to sponsor DFWUUG!
HP's Richardson R&D lab offers the opportunity to do development on
the HP-UX kernel. We have positions for HP-UX operating system development,
test development, test technicians, and simulator development. See
http://www.jobs.hp.com for HP job listings,
and contact resumes@rsn.hp.com or
call Dean Sablotny at phone 972-497-4894 / fax 972-497-4626 for more
information.
-
HIE
HIE is a provider of enterprise application integration (EAI) software and
services that allow disparate systems to share information with one another.
In addition to our EAI solutions, we offer many Education courses of interest
to IT professionals across all industries (courses such as UNIX Essentials,
Programming with Perl, and Programming with Tcl). Check out our CBT and course
listings at http://www.hie.com/html/education.html.
-
IMI Systems
-
Information Systems Consulting Corp.
-
Interface Teknologies
-
Invincible Technologies Corp.
-
JCPenney
From our sophisticated on-line order entry and point-of-sale capabilities
to our auto replenishment of merchandise to one of the largest private
telecommunications networks anywhere, it's a world of change when it comes
to technology. At JCPenney you'll work in an environment that encourages
individuality and new ideas, fostering growth, advancement and personal
development.
For career opportunities with JCPenney, please contact Alicia Boyd at JCPenney
Co., P.O. Box 10001, Dallas, TX 75301-8115; FAX to (972) 431-2320; or EMAIL
to: amboyd@jcpenney.com For more
information on JCPenney, visit
http://www.jcpenney.com
-
Maxim Group
Jobs Page
-
Metamor ITS
An International, IT Consulting firm with offices across the nation employing
approximately 4,000 Consultants. We have the large client base and flexibility
to offer the project you need to move your career forward. For a job that
offers excellent benefits, competitive pay and great training, contact Lisa
Statzer at 972-455-3403 or 800-527-4907 ext. 3403.
4000 McEwen Road South, Suite 200
Dallas, TX 75244
-
Neiman Marcus
Neiman Marcus is currently accepting resumes for UNIX System Administrators
with 3+ years of experience inclusive of shell scripting knowledge. Fax resumes
attention: Lisa Blunt 972-401-6690.
- Network
Appliance
-
Raytheon Systems Company
Raytheon Systems Company (RSC) is a global leader in defense electronics
and complex integrated information systems. Applying technology to project
realities, we deliver electronics solutions. In defense missions, we give
our fighting men and women the tools they need to succeed. In federal and
commercial projects, we help our customers use technology to address complex
issues like air traffic control and environmental management.
Job Page
-
Renaissance Worldwide Inc.
-
SCB Computer Tech
-
Specialized Systems Technology, Inc.
-
Sprint Paranet
-
Stonebridge Technologies
Stonebridge Technologies, Inc., with headquarters in Dallas, Texas, is a
regional systems integrator focused on providing its clients with solutions
to their business problems based upon open systems technologies. Stonebridge
has developed strategic relationships with the industry's leading open systems
manufacturers and currently has a staff of over 160 associates trained and
experienced on open systems client/server technologies, products and
services.
Job Page
-
Tandy Corporation
- Veritas
Software
As the leading provider of enterprise-class application
storage management software, VERITAS® Software ensures the continuous
availability of business-critical information by delivering integrated,
cross-platform storage management software solutions
-
Our Web Service Provider: Texas Metronet
Unix Guru Universe
http://www.ugu.com/
How Computer Programs
Work
http://www.howstuffworks.com/program.htm
Perl Tutorial:
Start
http://agora.leeds.ac.uk/Perl/start.html
|
