Sharing information

This is what the net and the web is all about (at least, until e-commerce became tantalising).

Information provided in this section is not directly related to the services of Docu + Design Daube. But we want to share our experience with the tools, methods etc. we use. Also some 'research' work (such as the NLA paper) is kept available to the public.

The dragon fight: Windows 95 … XP

My computer experience started 1965 with Fortan on an IBM 1620 machine. Together with my colleagues we introduced the personal computers before IBM jumped on the bandwagon and Microsoft started. So you can imagine that I have certain ideas about how a computer should behave …

Another dragon: hardware

MS Office experience

MS Office is omnipresent and hence also problems with Office programs are omnipresent. One of the reasons for this is that too many people believe that the Office suite is fit for any task in the world …

Internet and web related stuff

Since the WWW evolved from the SGML world of which I know the developer personally (Charles Goldfarb from IBM) D+DD made it's debut on the web with HTML code written manually. I'm still an advocate of clear HTML code and not a fan of gimmics. IMHO content is key. Although I'm not a web guru I share my experience with You.

SHARE Europe and other user groups

The author of this site, Klaus Daube was active in SHARE Europe from 1984 to 1994. My first participation at a conference was 1982 seeking support in document processing on mainframes. Active participation in this volunteer led organisation let me learn much about "sharing experience".

This section is also the place to publish old conference papers (scanned) on request:

• GML on Micros and Mainframes, paper from 1984 (PDF, 360 KB) - requested april 2000.

National Language Support

European users of (not only) IBM equipment faced many problems related to character and code issues. Some of these are not solved even in the year 2000! A SEAS paper (see below) adressed these issues in 1980. This was the starting point of a long lasting initiative for national language support (NLA) in information systems. The ultimate outcome was a White Paper which not only impressed IBM, but also other vendors (even M$ …).

• User Experience with Communications, paper 1980 (PDF, 185 KB)

Nomograms and alignment charts

Since my studies as a mechanical engineer I was fascinated by graphical calculations, because most input data in engeneering is not that accurate that it requires a desktop calculator. In those times there were no electonic calculators – it was the time of slide rules which provide at best 4 figures for the result.