2015 Meeting
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Comet Mobile Update
Justin reported that it has been submitted to Apple for approval to be distributed thru the iTunes App Store.
Louisa is anxiously awaiting Apple's approval. She has completed an app for a customer that does process serving and has another customer wanting a mobile app as well. She hopes to begin work on that soon. She related how much fun it was to write programs for the iPad. Come on, Apple, give us the thumbs up!
It was also mentioned that since there are now so many sizes of devices to be supported that it may be necessary to include an API call to test the screen size in case adjustments for that are required for the IB program.
Robert reported that CometMobile doesn't come up on his new iPhone 6.
Products that may be discontinued
Jim proposed that we discontinue support for the following products:
CometConnect - This product allows customers to rent CA sessions on one of our virtual CA hosts. We feel it's neither fair to the few customers we have nor to ourselves to continue in this business. Some customers expect 24/7/365 support. We don't have staffing to do that. And, there are so few customers that it is just not profitable for us to continue paying for the virtual machine and spend the support time required for it. We will no longer accept orders for CometConnect. Service for current customers will continue thru the end of this year.
Disaster Recovery - This product provides automated backup and manual verification for Comet customers thru one of our virtual CA hosts. While the backup process is very reliable we don't feel the liability of providing a full replacement configuration in the event of a devastating disaster is offset by the revenue from the small number of customers using the service. There are other automated backup options available by companies who are experts in this business. Three were discussed at the meeting: Louisa recommended Nordic Backup https://www.nordic-backup.com/ Dave recommended Agility Recovery http://www.agilityrecovery.com/ For a full IT solution you should consider Symbio Systems. They host and protect our servers. Contact Julian Sutter at http://www.symbiosystems.com/ We will no longer accept orders for Disaster Recovery. Service for current customers will continue thru the end of this year.
CometPDF It's difficult supporting a product that we don't have source control of. The latest versions of Bullzip have made it very difficult for us to provide a seamless install program for Comet. The overwhelming opinion of the attendees was that they really liked CometPDF and were willing to do more work themselves to get it installed. Everyone requested that we not drop support for it. We agreed. It will most likely be necessary for new users or those wishing to update the Bullzip software to do so directly from Bullzip's web site.
A couple of side notes about PDF printers: Alan recommended Bluebeam as an alternative to Adobe for those who are willing to pay for a pdf generator. He reports that it does work with Comet. One word of caution, there's custom code inside of CosP for every pdf generator we've supported so it can get info about the printer configuration. This won't be available for Bluebeam. You may see a message in your CosP log it's not a recognized PDF printer driver. Here's a link to more info: http://www.bluebeam.com/
Marc reported that the latest version of pdfFactory doesn't work with Comet.
Comet As A Service Interest in dropping support for it is based on our impression that almost nobody is using it and we haven't kept up to date on it. Robert and Greg both said they are using it successfully and requested that we continue support.
Comet16 Almost everyone still has Comet16 customers. We agreed to continue to distribute it in the release package but it will remain as it is today. No further fixes or enhancements will be made.
SSL Relay SSL Relay was replaced by Stunnel when the OpenSSL Heartbleed bug was discovered last year. Stunnel is an SSL encryption wrapper between the client and server. Jim will release documentation and the files required for you to get and install your own SSL certificate from companies such as GoDaddy. You can get info on stunnel here: https://www.stunnel.org/index.html It uses OpenSSL which is updated as required to keep ahead of the bad guys. The SSL Relay certificate/installation service will no longer be sold by Signature.
UltraEdit for IB
The .490 release of Comet includes an updated CometUESetup.exe. This has an added InternetBasic.uee file that can be used to install a basic toolbar for IB compilation and QDIR registration. This is required for the newer versions of UE. The previous CometUESetup.exe reportedly worked fine for UE versions thru 16. We tested the new one on UE version 21. Instructions for using the .uee file are shown on the CometUESetup.exe display.
It was pointed out that the Internet Basic Development Platform download page still had the older version of the install program. This has been updated since the meeting: http://www.signature.net/download/Internet%20Basic%20Development%20Platform/ You can also find the install program in your Comet executables folder.
Jim walked everyone thru the process for creating a new toolbar: Advanced->Configuration->Toolbars/Menus->Customization. Then click "Customize Toolbar". There was discussion about the value of buying the unlimited releases version of UE. This entitles you to all future versions at no additional charge.
Comet32 version of WDL
Greg requested that a version of WDL be released that allowed for longer strings, specifically cosCtlText$. It's length is currently limited to 254 in Comet16. Doing this would not be as simple as just changing the declaration. It will take research much deeper into the system. It would also require your dialog programs to be compiled using Comet32.
Security and File Servers
There was discussion about the need for a way to force the logout of a user from the Security Server. This is required to free up license counts associated with a user who disconnected improperly, preventing another user from logging in. We are going to investigate a way to implement a regular ping packet from Comet to the Security Server. Then if we haven't heard from a user for a specified period, they can be logged out automatically. We have to consider the impact on the file server. The user should be logged out of there as well to close open files. There is currently no communication between the security and file servers. We'll have to consider the ping solution there as well.
Greg requested that a more detailed message be displayed when a user is denied security, i.e. no license available, or duplicate nodename, or...
Greg requested a way to access from a client a list of connected nodes and their login time. This info is currently only available from the Server's UI under View->Users.
There was also discussion about how to logout users who are still connected to the server and have left Comet running unattended. Use of the (SessionTimeout) mmemonic was suggested. It works with both Comet16 and Comet32. You tell it how many minutes are allowed to pass with no mouse or keyboard activity before Comet will automatically shutdown. http://wiki.signature.net/index.php/SessionTimeout This should not be used in batch programs that may run for long periods of time without mouse or keyboard activity. Someone asked what happens if you use this on session 0. Would it shutdown all sessions on the node? Since the meeting I tried it. It only shuts down the one session, not all of them.
Digital Code Signing of Comet Executables
Jim reported that beginning with 2015 versions, Comet executables will now be digitally signed. Not only will this prevent the "Unknown Publisher" message from being displayed, we also hope it will prevent some warnings or false positives from virus scanners.
TRACE statements
There was discussion of the TRACE statements. You can find info here: http://wiki.signature.net/index.php/Trace A couple of enhancements were proposed. A new TRACE PAUSE statement will be added. This will cause trace to pause as if the user clicked on the trace window "pause" button. It will also display a message to let the user know it has paused. Clicking "Next" or "Resume" will continue program execution as expected. There will also be a new TRACE GOSUBS option to turn off tracing in subsequent GOSUBs. This should make the output easier to read when debugging dialog programs and others that use API libraries. The source lines inside the API won't be shown in the output.
Robert complained that tracing of some of his larger programs overflowed the output window. Brian mentioned the TRACE FILE statement. Seems this statement has been implemented but not documented. It sends the trace output to the specified file: TRACE FILE <filename> dir=<dir> This statement is now included in the wiki doc for TRACE.
Dashboard API
Barb discussed the Dashboard API programs. Demo programs included with the API can be used to draw pie charts, guages, horizontal and vertical bar graphs, and line graphs. Jim showed the dashboard programs that we'd written for the brewery as further examples of what can be done. The next major update to the API could include an option for output to a PDF printer rather than to the screen. You can get more info here: http://wiki.signature.net/index.php/Dashboard_API
Miscellaneous discussion
Louisa asked if Comet could interface with Microsoft Office so she could send email through Outlook or make an Excel spreadsheet (not just a .csv) from within her Comet program. Several people suggested she should be able to find a script to do the email by googling it. Another suggestion was to check out csv-to-xls converters from http://download.cnet.com/windows/
Greg asked if we could implement a way to have Comet.exe do a shellexecutewait of a specified program prior to actually running Comet. This goes along with a feature that was added way back in Comet 2011 to optionally copy additional files to the user's %temp% folder before starting Comet. It uses a text file you create in the Comet executables folder called CometUserFiles.dat. The file is in .ini format, with [sections] followed by a list of files. The sections are: [Optional], [Required], [CA Optional], and [CA Required]. You can read more about how to implement this here: http://wiki.signature.net/index.php/Comet.exe_options We will discuss Greg's request and decide if and how to implement it.
Greg requested that we add the date and time to the messagebox displayed by Comet32 when an unhandled Comet error occurs. His customers send him screenshots of these errors and having the date and time displayed would save him from having to go to the ErrLog program to find out when the error occurred. We will take a look at this.
Dave requested that the font size be increased in the DX program. Some of his users find it too small to read. Greg reported that they used to get complaints about the fonts in their dialogs so they've implemented 4 different dialogs for each program. They launch whichever one is best depending on the user's screen resolution. We'll see what we can do about DX.
Louisa reported that node names longer than 8 characters can't be used with Comet. We'll look in to that.
Symbio Systems
Once again we were treated to an enthusiastic presentation by Julian Sutter about the IT solutions offered by his company, Symbio Systems. From their website: "We have a unique approach to providing IT services that ensures our customers IT systems are always available, cost-predictable, and securely accessible from anywhere, all backed by a team of seasoned IT professionals that are available 24/7." In addition to hosting our own virtual servers, Symbio is also host to a few Comet Cloud customers. Their experience with these customers makes them uniquely qualified to make recommedations for the best virtual configuration for a Comet installation. In addition to hosting servers, the ultimate experience is their hosted desktop service. Each user has their own copy of Windows that they can connect to from a PC, a thin client, or even a mobile device. For more info visit: http://www.symbiosystems.com/
Next time...
Finally, we discussed the location for the next Comet meeting. While several cities were suggested, the two that got the most enthusiastic reaction were Nashville and Key West. We're looking at Fall of 2016 for that. Stay tuned!
