3 Installing Eloquence on Windows

Customizing the Eloquence Configuration Files

This discussion assumes that the Eloquence software has already been installed on your system. The information in this section is directed to the system administrator for the Eloquence software.

NOTE: The configuration steps mentioned here are not related to Eloquence database operation. If the only Eloquence component you intend to use is the database, you can skip this section.

Before Eloquence can be used, its resources must be configured. Eloquence programs usually don't use system resources directly, instead they rely on a mapping of paths, printers and device files in Eloquence configuration files.

There are two different levels of configuration:

System global

This is achived with the eloq.config configuration file which is located in the Eloquence configuration directory.

User specific

This is achived with the eloq.rc configuration file which is located in the home directory of the user.

The Eloquence configuration files are read by the eloqcore process when it is started. The configuration files are processed in an order such that more specific definitions override the more general ones. So a system global assignment can be overridden from a group specific configuration file, a user specific definition will override group and system global definitions.

The system global configuration file eloq.config is located in the etc subdirectory of your Eloquence installation (for example C:\Program Files\Eloquence\etc\eloq.config). In addition, the etc subdirectory contains the eloq.config.sam template file which is updated during installation. The template configuration file provides complete inline documentation and is included at the end of this chapter for your reference.

Eloquence resource configuration

Eloquence resources go back to the "dark ages" when a precedessor of Eloquence was implemented in hardware (called HP250/HP260 at that time) and the resources definition actually were real OS resources. Since programs depended on a program independent resource configuration and it is a convenient mechanism anyway, the concept was kept. Instead of real devices Eloquence resources can be mapped to whatever is appropriate. Eloquence is of course able to access native operating system resources directly.

Since the following names are not commonly used, let's define them first:

VOLUME
A VOLUME is the Eloquence concept of a directory. Instead of using the path directly, it is possible to assign an identifier for a path and refer to it in a symbolic manner.
MSI
This is a short form of MASS STORAGE IS and species the default VOLUME on which paths should be related unless an absolute path or another VOLUME is given.
PRINTER
A PRINTER is the Eloquence concept of an output device. A PRINTER is identified by a number and could be mapped to a device file or to a sequence of commands.
The device numbers 8 to 10 have special predefined meanings:
8: Display terminal.

9: Bit bucket (Eloquence equivalent of /dev/null)

10: Local terminal printer

The eloq.config configration file

The eloq.config file provides system global definitions and is usually copied during installation from the eloq.config.sam template file in case it is not already present.

The user specific configuration file

To provide user specific definitions, you could install a user specific configuration file in the home directory of the user. Consider we would like to have a specific configuration for the user mike, you would perform the following steps:

  1. Change to the home directory of the user (the directory where the HOME environment variable refers to):

C:
cd \home\mike

  1. Copy the default eloq.config.sam configuration file to the home directory of the user and rename it to eloq.rc.

  2. Use a text editor, such as notepad to edit the file

notepad eloq.rc

Eloquence Installation and Configuration - 29 OCT 2004