Several fields which were relevant to the original Starlink Software Environment (SSE) are not used with ADAM. The fields are described here so that the ideas behind them may be preserved and because they may still be found in old software and documentation.
The ADAM application program to be run is determined by the user interface when the appropriate command is issued. The program then finds the corresponding Interface Module (see Appendix B). The SSE worked in a different way – the user interface found the Interface Module first and the Interface Module defined which executable image was to be run. The Program Specification fields controlled the name of the program to be executed when a request to run an application is received, and where to find the executable image.
There are 2 Program Specification fields: PROGRAM and EPATH.
This Field Specification gives the name of application program to be executed when the user invokes this Interface Module. It is still accepted by the system but has no effect.
The field is of the form:
where progname is a character string (or reserved word) which is the name of the executable image
without the ’.EXE’ file extension.
This field specification provided the search path for locating the directory in which the executable image of the application program was to be found. It is still accepted by the system but has no effect.
The field is of the form:
where dpath is a character constant listing the order of search through subdirectories. The directory
specifications in the path are separated by semi-colons. A null path indicates the current directory.
Note that logical names must end with a colon.
This field provided a search path for data system object names. It is no longer accepted by the system. The field specifier was of the form:
where resolution-path was a character string giving a list of resolution path specifiers separated by semi-colons. Each specifier was a data-system object name.
Then if the parameter DISPLAY was given the value ARGS, the system attempted to use the object TEMP.DEVICES.ARGS then, failing that SAI_USER:DEVICES.ARGS and so on. (Note that ADAM no longer uses a ‘DEVICE dataset’ object when opening graphics devices.)