News

Ed de Moel, chairperson of the Mumps Development Committee (MDC) has just published a new book on M. The book, called "M[UMPS] by Example", is aimed at those already familiar with M, but who need a reference that dissects each and every aspect of M, explaining their loaded variants.

One can consider this work as a combination dictionary, encyclopedia and text book about M. This book will normally lie next to you as you develop your programs. Got stuck, need to check whether a particular solution already exists, don't know if you can do that operation with a command; fish out "M[UMPS] by Example" and get all the information you need. Besides commands, Mr. de Moel's work delves into error messages, special variable, functions and other topics.

This book also answers a question that was asked several times in the context of the process that culminated in the approval of the latest set of ANSI standards: "what are the differences between this standard and its predecessors?". For each aspect of the language that has been subject to change, the complete evolution, from the first ANSI standard in 1977 to the next standard; all the modifications that have made it into the language standard, or may ever be a part of one of the suite of M[UMPS] related standards, are itemized and explained in this book.

Having chosen this "evolutionary" approach, the author is quite aware that there will probably never be a "final" text for this book. This print of the book contains all information that was available by its printing date: January 1997. As the world continues to change, so will the information for this book, and it is expected that there will be newly printed editions of this book at two or three year intervals, depending on the level of interest.

The author will continue to keep the interactive version up-to-date, at http://www.radix.net/~demoel/mdc/index.html#m2. Meanwhile, the "paper less" world is still a thing of the future. Much as I like the "interactive" version, there are many times when I prefer the paper copy, which allows me to make notes in the margins, or put little post-it notes in places where I'll remember to look for the "finds" I made in this document.

MUMPS of Georgia User's Group members receive discounts on most products purchased at metro Atlanta CompUSA stores! For more information about this offer of how to become a member of MGA please communicate with mga@mindspring.com.

MWM will be introducing a reader service. We plans to launch it officially in our first anniversary issue (December 5, 1997). More information about this project and how you can help are listed in the section A Project to Z.