[Info-vax] OpenVMS graphics - once more

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-08-24 06:18:53 +0000, terry+googleblog at tmk.com said:

> On Sunday, August 23, 2015 at 4:37:13 PM UTC-4, David Froble wrote:
>> But, the browsers available, for free, run on Linux.  This is through 
>> no effort, as far as I know, of those supporting Linux.  Could be wrong.
> 
> That would seem to be the case. And somehow I doubt Microsoft is 
> funding development of the Firefox version for Windows.

Ayup; Microsoft is funding IE maintenance and Edge development, and 
wants search traffic sent to Bing.

Google was reportedly providing the majority of the funding up through 
2014, with Yahoo likely now the major source of Mozilla funding; this 
funding for the default browser search settings in some geographies.

> This is a difficult situation to address. There seem to be 5 possibilities:
> 
> 1) Do nothing (no browser on VMS)
> 2) Hope that VMS becomes popular enough that a browser maker will 
> handle the VMS port at no charge (unlikely)
> 3) Write an emulation layer for something (Windows, Linux, etc.) that 
> is "good enough" to run a browser intended for that platform on VMS 
> (expensive, doesn't necessarily address plugins)
> 4) Pay a browser maker to maintain a VMS version of that browser 
> (expensive, doesn't address plugins)
> 5) Maintain a local port / build of a browser (expensive, doesn't 
> address plugins, plus adds delay after the "reference" version(s) of 
> the browser are released)

6) update the OpenVMS compilers, C and network APIs and related tools, 
to allow easier and faster porting, and requiring fewer source code 
changes.  Firefox add-ons themselves are portable and are usually based 
on Javascript, HTML and CSS. 
<https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=Extensions> 
 FWIW, Firefox plugins have been deprecated.   (There are APIs changes 
underway to better secure the browser environment.)

I can see reasons to provide integrated HTTPS with OpenVMS — HTTPS is 
currently less likely to be blocked at firewalls than many other 
protocols, and it provides a secure transport — for patch access and 
related services, and for secure remote access of various web-based 
application services.  This via libcurl, or otherwise.   Having direct 
DCL access to IP sockets and related tools would be handy.  Maybe also 
added support for a (very limited) modern browser for interactive use 
on OpenVMS, but then I'd prefer to see VSI implement modern software 
update mechanisms, modern disk file services, and other infrastructure 
services, as there are already good browsers on other platforms.    
Server infrastructure, not client infrastructure.   With the server 
infrastructure, I can drag-and-drop files onto the OpenVMS server from 
a client box, and otherwise manage it remotely.   But as for using 
OpenVMS as a modern desktop, no; it'll take a decade or more of work to 
get the tools and capabilities that most folks expect and want for 
that, likely at the expense of much of the rest of OpenVMS that also 
needs work, and the expectations of the rest of the world will just 
move further forward in that decade.


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