[Info-vax] "Shanghai Stock Exchange" and OpenVMS
Bill Pechter
pechter at bandit.pechter.dyndns.org.pechter.dyndns.org
Thu Jan 29 02:15:23 EST 2009
In article <ba9770e9-3ef4-4ff7-ad21-cbd65e08b25e at n2g2000vbl.googlegroups.com>,
AEF <spamsink2001 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>On Jan 28, 11:44 am, billg... at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
>> In article
><b9489278-4168-437b-85e5-fff095da5... at l38g2000vba.googlegroups.com>,
>> AEF <spamsink2... at yahoo.com> writes:
>>
>>
>>
>> > On Jan 28, 1:46 am, Michael Kraemer <M.Krae... at gsi.de> wrote:
>> >> AEF schrieb:
>>
>> >> > New! From IDG books: DOS for Dummkopfs.
>>
>> >> That should be "Dummköpfe", but Umlauts are not everybody's
>> >> strong points.
>> > That's what it is in English. I even checked atwww.webster.com. Do
>> > you expect me to write "Deutschland" instead of "Germany"? "Republique
>> > francaise" instead of "France"?
>> >> Back to the point: Neither VMS Help nor Unix man pages
>> >> are appropriate for learning either OS from scratch.
>> > The VMS User's manual is.
>> >> They are meant as a reminder for forgotten keywords and such.
>> >> If you have no clue about those OS, both help systems
>> >> are next to useless.
>> >> I had to work on VMS before I knew Unix and found
>> >> VMS, its filesystem and its HELP less intuitive.
>> >> So Unix was a progress.
>> > I find the man pages dense and visually difficult to read (an example
>> > of poor typography).
>>
>> As I have said in the past, (and aparently at least Michael agrees) it's
>> all a matter of opinion as I find quite the opposite.
>
>OK.
>
>>
>> > And the ones I have usually show several versions
>> > of the same command with the differences specified in the name of the
>> > command via different paths. You know: path1/cp, path2/cp, etc., where
>> > path1 and path2 may be very similar in appearance. Which one is the
>> > one I will be running if I just specify cp? (This is intuitive?)
>>
>> It is to people who use Unix for a living. And, apparently college
>> freshman.
>
>OK, it was late night when I've been posting these things. OK, it's
>the one that's in the PATH. I'm just starting and for some reason I'm
>just not in the Unix PATH frame of mind yet. (Maybe it's in part
>because I hate the PATH trains!) But why the multiple versions of some
>commands? Why the following?
>
>SYNOPSIS
> /usr/bin/ls [-aAbcCdeEfFghHilLmnopqrRstuvVx1@] [file]...
>
> /usr/xpg4/bin/ls [-aAbcCdeEfFghHilLmnopqrRstuvVx1@]
> [file]...
>
> /usr/xpg6/bin/ls [-aAbcCdeEfFghHilLmnopqrRstuvVx1@]
> [file]...
>
>Why three versions?
Posix compliance...or single Unix spec... something like this...
I don't have a Solaris box handy right now.
Say... the first one is the standard Unix one from SunOS5/Solaris 2.6.
The second is the Posix or Unix 93 standard one, the last is the Single
Unix Spec 2001 edition
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399
By setting your paths up you can get the expected response for your application
which may be looking for a certain version of the utility.
/usr/bin/ls
____________________________________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Availability | SUNWcsu |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| CSI | Enabled |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Interface Stability | Stable |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
/usr/xpg4/bin/ls
____________________________________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Availability | SUNWxcu4 |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| CSI | Enabled |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Interface Stability | Standard |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
/usr/xpg6/bin/ls
____________________________________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Availability | SUNWxcu6 |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| CSI | Enabled |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Interface Stability | Standard |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
>
>>
>> > Someone at work showed me a website which reformmated the man pages
>> > into something much easier to read. Can't be just me who finds the
>> > original man pages visually difficult to read.
>> > Also, I find English words much more intuitive and actually mostly, if
>> > not partly, self explanatory.
>>
>> Once again, matter of opinion. And really rather Anglo-centric, don't
>> you think? So, then, how useful was VMS in Germany or France?
>
>How useful is the term "awk" in any language! At least VMS words are
>somewhat self-evident in one language! In what language are cp, rm,
>mkdir, awk, sed, mv and such just normal words? So by your criterion,
>Unix isn't useful in any language!
>
>>
>> > I don't find that to be the case for 1-
>> > and 2-letter commands and options. VMS commands and qualifiers and
>> > keywords and such are mostly self-evident as to what they more or less
>> > do or specify, aside from the fine details.
>>
>> Nothing about computers is "self-evident". It's a business with its own
>> jargon and terminology. I mean, why do those doctors use words like
>> "apendicitis" and "carcinoma"? Why don't they just use English like
>> everyone else?
>
>To keep us in the dark. You see, the doctors take a special course to
>write illegibly and the pharmacists take the corresponding course to
>decode it! Actually, there is a real need for such strange words as
>normal English words simply don't suffice for all the numerous medical
>terms needed. The same isn't true for CLI commands. We're not talking
>organic chemistry or here.
>
>>
>> > VMS terms are like those in photography: What does the enlarger do? It
>> > enlarges (the image)! What does the developer do? It develops film or
>> > photographic paper. What does the focusing knob do? What does the stop
>> > bath do? It stops the developer from developing. The fixer bath
>> > "fixes" the film or print so that you can turn on the light without
>> > destroying the image. And then there's the print washer and the print
>> > dryer. Can you guess what they do?
>>
>> And let's not forget the F-stop! :-) yeah, that's real self-evident.
>
>Yep. Touche'.
>
>>
>> > Now suppose they were instead named
>> > by Unix type abbreviations. You'd have no or little idea what any of
>> > them are or do without looking them up.
>>
>> And if I were a professional photographer, I would have done that in the
>> process of becoming a professional photographer. What's your point?
>
>I'm not really sure. I think we've gotten to the point where none of
>us actually know just what we're arguing over. In this instance I was
>trying to show through photography what it's like in another context
>to learn new terms if said terms are described in "English words" as
>VMS is. As I said, not all photography terms are self-evident, and
>some are only partly self-evident.
>
>>
>> > Now, admittedly, the existing
>> > photographic terms aren't fully self-explanatory, but at least you get
>> > a pretty good idea of what they do (well, to varying degrees). OK,
>> > "lens" isn't self-explanatory at all; you have to learn that one! And
>> > "focusing" may be a challenge for some.
>> > Well, I'd think the photographic terms, as they currently exist, are
>> > more intuitive, right?
>>
>> Those of us who are not into photography would tend to disagree. :-)
>> I have a number of cameras. I used to develop my own pictures and
>> even used a lot of experimental high-speed film back inthe old days.
>> (I did a lot of sport photography.) But I have never been as interested
>> in it as, say, my brother. As a result, most of my cameras now languish
>> on the shelf while I do what photo taking I do with a $100 Kodak digital
>> I got on sale at the PX.
>
>OK, whatever.
>
>> > The file systems are another story. I haven't learned how you can have
>> > different disks in the same single file system. As a user I suppose
>> > that's fine, but in VMS the system manager can set up logical names to
>> > reference directories so that the user (or even the programmer in many
>> > cases) need not be concerned with what the underlying device is.
>> > Being intuitive is not the end-all be-all. What can you do with the OS
>> > is also important. Of course we _were_ discussing looking stuff up,
>> > but you referred to "progress", which opens up a whole new can of
>> > worms.
>>
>> Yeah, Unix is still "progressing" and VMS is languishing in the a corner
>> somewhere waiting for HP to finally pull the plug on the life support
>> system.
>>
>> > Some things in Unix I find very cool, like using output of one program
>> > as input for another. But VMS has some very cool things, too.
>> >> And, since you mentioned physics labs a few posts ago:
>> >> in these facilities one usually has a local primer
>> >> for newbies. Anyway one will need only a very small
>> >> subset of an OSs capabilities to do physics work.
>> > It's only reasonable anywhere a user starts work to have a local
>> > source of how to get started, be it a tutorial session; a newbie
>> > manual, "local guide" (Latex style name), a primer, or whatever you
>> > want to call it; or something else. And that's true more generally:
>>
>> We used to do that, but found it unnecessary more than a decade ago.
>
>Need specifics here. Do users not have to be given usernames and
>passwords, for example? Users who have never used Unix before somehow
>become instantly productive on day 1? I suppose these users could also
>do brain surgery on day 1 without having gone through medical school.
>Just look it up what you need with Google!
>
>>
>> > When you start a job, someone shows you around, right? And show's you
>> > the ropes, so to speak, right? And what you're expected to do, right?
>>
>> Not anytime lately. I am a professional and when I am hired it is
>> expected that I will walk up to my desk and begin functioning right
>> away. That's what separates the professional from the intern.
>
>Sorry, bad term: "the ropes". I meant that you are told which desk is
>yours, what your phone number is, where to get your badge, what your
>responsibilities are, what software is running on what, what your
>usernames and passwords are, whom you report to, etc. I suppose you
>show up on day 1 with this all telepathically absorbed or you Google
>it.
>
>Again, apologies for using the wrong term. I was thinking more
>generally.
>
>>
>> I have been doing this professionally for over 30 years. I have had
>> to learn new langauages, new OSes and new architectures. No one has
>> ever offered to hold my hand. I have been given tasks and, as a
>
>That's what I should have said instead of "showing you the ropes"
>which, come to think of it, isn't totally inappropriate. "The ropes",
>besides just being given some tasks (which I would think would have to
>include particulars of your new work environment that you almost
>certainly wouldn't know ahead of time), could be a description of how
>things work at your new workplace. When I started work at a particular
>non-profit organization in the 90s, "customers" and employees had to
>fill in forms and they had people type in this form data on a machine
>similar to a keypunch, but it uploaded the data to an IBM machine, on
>which we ran some secret commands dictated to me by a guy who looked
>and talked like Elmer Fudd, then copied the massaged data to a 9-track
>tape, loaded that tape on a tape drive hooked up to a pdp11/70 (of
>which we had four for various purposes), which from there was
>Permitted to a VAXcluster, which then ran through some third-party,
>possibly home-grown app, and then finally something was printed on the
>old green-bar paper which would never fold properly on its own. And
>then there was the secret box buried God knows where in the cabs on
>which you had to use some really strange incantation of commands and
>various knob settings for different modes (all of which were cryptic)
>to broadcast to the users that things were down and intentionally
>write that the machine was expected to be up in an hour (we put down
>an absolute time, not "1 hour"), when we in fact knew that it would be
>several hours at best. So we had to update it every hour. I asked my
>supervisor if we could just be honest about it say "sometime later
>today" but he said no, we have to do it this way.
>
>Now you are going to show up to work day 1 and somehow already know
>all this? You're going to waste "precious company time" trying to
>learn this on your own? Are you going to pour through manuals we
>didn't have (well, maybe we did) about an IBM OS from the distant past
>with disk drives taller than most people just to figure out what the
>three or four secret commands you need are instead of letting Elmer
>Fudd simply tell you? You're going to find that secret, tiny box and
>the correct keyboard (or whatever it was) on your own while employees
>are left in the dark as to when the system will be back up. (Which, as
>you just read, was the case anyway! But at least they got _some_
>message.)
>
>It's things like this and which desk is yours and all that other stuff
>above that I meant by "showing you the ropes". I didn't mean that you
>become a Unix apprentice. I meant that you are shown the particulars
>of your new work environment. Again, I apologize for having used the
>misleading term.
>
>> professional, I have been expected to accomplish them. And, at least
>> up to this point, I have been very successful at doing that, which
>> is probably why I have never had to worry about being unemployed.
>
>Well, be happy you have a job at all with today's Financial Debacle!
>
>>
>> bill
>>
>> --
>> Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves
>> billg... at cs.scranton.edu | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
>
>Ain't it the truth: Tyranny of the majority.
>
>> University of Scranton |
>> Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include <std.disclaimer.h>
>
>AEF
>
Bill
--
--
Digital had it then. Don't you wish you could buy it now!
pechter-at-pechter.dyndns.org
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