W dniu 2011-06-13 06:18, Tony Harminc pisze:
On 12 June 2011 16:06, William Donzelli<[email protected]> wrote:
So when filing these things away on the shelf, would it be safe to
assume that the initial S or G or whatever the first letter of a four
character alphanumeric prefix is, can be ignored? For example, would:
S100-1234-0
G100-1234-1
S101-1234-1
S101-1235-1
G101-1235-2
Yes. The first character (always a letter, to my knowledge) is called
the "Use Key". The values I know of, with their "old" definitions are:
G - Generally available to anyone at no charge
S - Sell to anyone. Available to IBM customers free of charge in
"quantities sufficient to meet their normal needs"
L - Licensed material. A use charge applies in some cases, but the
manual remains the property of IBM.
Z - IBM Internal Use Only. Not (in theory) available to customers.
[Use Key "S" items led to a number of problems in the old days,
because the branch office was billed internally for its customers'
orders for them, but evidently lacked the authority to refuse them. In
the 1970s the university where I worked started ordering S manuals for
students, and selling them at the list price, while getting them for
nothing from IBM. The BO tried to charge for them, I pointed out the
official wording for Use Key "S", and some diplomacy ensued, which
resulted in staffers being able to order S books free, but with an
agreement that we would not sell or give them to students. Since then
IBM's policies on charging for manuals, and of course the very
existence of paper manuals, has changed a lot.]
The Use Keys came into use somewhere in the late 1960s. Before that,
the same numbering system was used, but without the Use Keys, so it
makes complete sense to sort without respect to the first alpha
character as you show above. But if you have a mix of numbers with and
without, you need to parse it determine what you have. Of course the
trailing revision number may not be present, and on occasion there may
be no dashes.
There was historically, from observation, some method to the second
and in some cases subsequent characters after the Use Key, though I
never saw it documented. And that too seems to have changed over the
years.
A few things from memory (failing rapidly):
Second character:
A - hardware books
BOF - Bill Of Forms - order number for a group of manuals
C - the most common letter for software manuals (operating systems,
compilers, etc.)
G - Redbooks (formerly the various System Centre, ITSO, etc. books of
various colours)
H - Less mainstream Program Products mostly
N - Technical Newsletters (updates to manuals). See also Q and T.
Q - Pseudo order number for an old version (so GQ23-9876 might get you
GC12-3456-5 when the -6 version was current)
R - IBM Education - course material
T - Same as Q except one version older. (Or maybe I have Q and T backwards)
V - Audio/Visual stuff, films, slides, presentations, later video tapes
X - Reference Cards, booklets, summaries
Y - PLMs (logic manuals)
Z - found only as ZZ - IBM internal use only
n - (numeric) general overviews and more salesy than technical pubs.
Also some things like binders and other non books. But some very old
technical pubs without a use key were all numeric.
Not true (or no strict tule). Evidence: ZG24.... books about GDPS are
available to GDPS users. I found the document references in some redbook
(SG24, available for everyone).
BTW: I think, that the prefix rules were never strict and oftenly a book
migrated from one category to another without changing doc number.
Other examples:
Magstar (HW)
GA32, GC35
3172(HW):
GA, GC, SC, GX, S131 (*not* sale publication, parts catalog).
MQ (SW):
GC and SC
Unix System Services (SW):
SA, GA
ES9000 (HW)
GC only
DFSMS
SC, GC, GY - I think GY is for formerly licensesd (LY) manuals)
G550 - Infoprint Transforms from AFP for z/OS (SW)
G550 - PSF Messages & Codes
S544 - Infoprint Server
SV40 - Dependent LU Requester Architecture Reference (not a video,
although the book contains many diagrams in "text mode")
SB11 - COBOL and CICS Command Level Conversion Aid (SW)
Redbooks: SG24, GG24, GG66
Program Directories: GI, GC
Conclusion: THERE ARE NO STRICT RULES.
Prefixes can used as some clue only.
--
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Lodz, Poland
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