[Info-vax] Why so much Unix envy?

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> wrote:

(snip, I wrote)

>> I am not sure what does and doesn't qualify, but TeX, and
>> related programs, used the Command Definition Utility, such
>> that you had to tell DCL about it with a .CLD file. It then
>> accepted DCL-like command options.

>> I would call that a VMS program, but others might disagree.
 
> Yes... But TeX was not originally written for VMS. And the question here 
> was what programs were *originally* written for VMS, but written with 
> ease of porting to other operating systems in mind.

But VMS TeX was originally written for VMS, though that is somewhat
obvious. 

But someone went through and put in the VMS system calls for
use with CLD so that it would parse command options the VMS way.

Otherwise, it just wants a command line and parses it out
itself, which normally contains the name of the file to
process.

> The existence of a CLD file is rather irrelevant from that 
> point of view. :-)

-- glen