[Info-vax] VMS on remote desktops

[FredK]

"Bob Koehler" <koehler at eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org> wrote in message 
news:g$Kq5usCaR52 at eisner.encompasserve.org...
> In article <ian2st$876$1 at usenet01.boi.hp.com>, "FredK" 
> <fred.nospam at dec.com> writes:
>>
>>
>> Note that from my perspective Alpha and Integrity is my target as opposed 
>> to
>> VAX.  The "new" desktop as opposed to the "old" (but I am interested in
>> understanding how many people don't use CDE and why).  "Recent" versions 
>> of
>> DECwindows.  Types of usage - exporting VMS applications or the VMS 
>> desktop.
>> Mixing native remote desktop applications (Linux/UNIX/etc) and VMS
>> applications.  Keyboard issues.  Font issues.  Locale issues (and non-US
>> country issues).  Setup issues.  Security issues.  Even testing issues 
>> :-)
>
>   VAX is still important to us.
>
>   The CDE desktop has two drawbacks that prevent us from using it:
>
>      1)  Adding scripted features is poorly documented and difficult,
>      compared to using DCL extensions in a script called from FileView.
>      The documentation doesn't even address scripting, it just goes
>      into what code you have to add to your C application.
>
>      2)  The CDE combines "window manager" with "session manager".
>      When not using CDE we can pull up multiple independent sessions
>      from the background menus on Xterminals et. al.  When using CDE
>      the whole X server gets taken over so that one can only
>      communicate via the first client.
>
>   And, of course, there are still a hell of a lot of systems out
>   there that want to exchange "MIT Magic cookies".
>

VAX isn't going to change - if you want Magic Cookies, Kerberose, et al - 
Integrity and Alpha.  Not really much that can be done about it.  But 
information on setup and such is still useful.

Long ago I did a bunch of stuff in customizing CDE and the front panel - 
connected with things we were doing for the DII/COE stuff (BTW - there are 
magic logicals that will allow all of the CDE/Motif GUI interfaces to look 
like UNIX including UNIX path names - which is the reason I was hacking in 
an area outside of the X11 server  itself).  Most of the CDE documentation 
was non-OS specific - and pretty bad - almost none VMS-specific.  But 
strange as it may seem there was a lot of functionality I never knew 
existed.   I always wanted to go back and do some work to show how to do add 
stuff and change things around - but never had time (now I'd have to figure 
it all out again :-).  I've worked with customers who do extensive use of 
the CDE workspaces - and love/hate it.

It all is this strange divide between GUI and command line.  On the one 
hand, I use the Windows GUI all the time - not only do you have little 
choice - but heck it is useful and mostly intutive.  But on the other hand, 
on VMS unless I'm testing something - I never use things like FileView - 
even though it isn't horrible.  UNIX folks tend to be the same way - they 
have a fancy Gnome desktop littered with xterms - and then a web browser for 
everything else... not *too* much different than how I use (and it looks 
like many here use) VMS - even when using a remote client to get to VMS.