Re: file management with XyDos and DOS & UNIX

["Mimi Gauthier LeBien" iamiriam@xxxxxxxx]

Jordan, I appreciate your response. I've worked in DOS quite a bit, but am
less familiar with the UNIX system.  A file management system may be
something I could introduce to the company as something separate from the
other kind of "intranet" type of management I feel needs to happen. I'll
look up information for ZTree. It sounds along the lines of QDos. By the
way, whatever happened to QDOS?

Basically - the company has ended up with a huge amount of mish-mash, cut
and paste "styles" of file management and tracking. They receive dictations
from 100s of doctors all over the country and then farm out the dictations.
Every transcriptionist sends the reports in different ways - some through
e-mail, some send floppies by mail and some send via PCAnywhere.  To
complicate matters, many of the doctors insist on working in MSWord so that
they can correct their own documents....and we're not going to find many
doctors who will learn XyWrite, no? So there's the issue of conversion
here, which we have all visited over and over on this mail list.

I respect the transcription coordinator's purest committment to XyWrite, and
personally I prefer the program, but in the overall picture - I'm not sure
this works best for the rest of the business and its needs.

So, if any of this makes sense to any out there, and any out there feels
like giving input or steering me to someone who might have a better handle
of this type of challenge, I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks again,
Mimi Gauthier LeBien

----- Original Message -----
From: "J. R. Fox" 
To: 
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 8:51 PM
Subject: Re: file management with XyDos and DOS & UNIX


> Mimi Gauthier LeBien wrote:
>
> > Okay - I have an off topic query... The company I work for uses
> > XyWrite DOS for all documents. They produce hundreds of documents
> > daily or weekly (in the transcription department). The rest of the
> > office is run on a UNIX or MDX system. Might anyone out there have
> > any ideas as far as getting DOS and UNIX to speak to each other so
> > that file management could be much more, what can I say,
> > manageable? Is there a way to do this without bringing in Windows
> > monster? I would even be interested in looking at a file management
> > system that would be on the internet. Somet type of system that
> > could keep track of documents - when they are started, when they are
> > finished, who did the document, where they are at any time,
> > etc....that type of thing. I would appreciate any feedback.
> >
> >
> > This is not really my area of knowledge -- someone like Robert would
> > likely have a much better command of the subject -- but I'll take a
> > shot at it anyway. As I understand it, the various flavors of UNIX
> > are, in their native state, rather arcane and technical, not much
> > like other OSes we tend to be familiar with. For this reason,
> > different desktop Shells have been developed over the years, to make
> > basic tasks more accessible to ordinary users. KDE is one of the
> > better known of these. I'm reasonably sure there must be some
> > decent VDM (DOSbox) options now for Unix / Linux. Almost certainly
> > some decent file managers too. (There are apparently also some
> > means for running Win-32 app.s under Unix, though the details of
> > this are unknown to me. Certainly there are some different
> > emulation layers out there. Just this morning, I received a URL for
> > a new one from Germany, which is expressly for running OS/2
> > emulation under Unix, thereby giving access not only to native OS/2
> > app.s, but also to the DOS and 16-bit Win app.s that OS/2 has always
> > run very well). If all you needed was good, basic file management,
> > I expect it would be possible to get ZTree running under Unix.
> > However, it sounds like you need audit trails and other features
> > characteristic of full-blown document management and archiving.
> > There have been systems for that (enterprise level, and no doubt
> > expensive; Xerox offered one), but I would expect them to be Win-32
> > based.
> >
> > Jordan
>
>