[Info-vax] VMS Features I Wish Linux Had

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2016-06-15 14:58, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2016-06-15 11:57:06 +0000,   VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG said:
>
>> THere IS line editing in the terminal driver but it's limited.
>> Extending that to 'vi' and 'emacs' capabilities is NOT appropriate in
>> the terminal driver.  Put it where it belongs!
>
> What most folks would want is some flexibility around editing command
> input, allowing vim or emacs or (since this is OpenVMS) EDT-compatible
> cursor control.

Right.

> The cursor handling is inherently going to be part of the driver (and
> also sensitive to the character encoding), whether the command history
> or recall buffer or the rest is part of the driver or is implemented
> elsewhere is an implementation detail.  If OpenVMS ever went onto Mach
> (past that prototype from many years ago), this handling could be in a
> process somewhere, for instance, and for all anybody using it cared.

Well, one can argue that it isn't inherently a part of the driver. Unix 
is a fine example of it not being so...
But I agree that much in here is implementation details. I essentially 
just think that it should always be available, no matter what program or 
environment I happen to be in, with the exception of programs that 
actually actively turn this off (such as full screen editors for example).
The most natural place for it to exist, in some way, is at least partly 
in the terminal driver, as that is the only common component.

> Akin to the lack of FUSE support within the OpenVMS I/O and file system
> implementation on OpenVMS, there's also no input character handling
> layer on OpenVMS.

There is no input character handling layer in VMS? Interesting. Such a 
think do exist in RSX, and is where I did the command line editing. (In 
combination with the output character handling layer, since I also 
wanted to capture promts and deal with redisplaying input after output 
slightly different than default.)

It's called ACD in RSX, and they were originally designed with character 
handling/translation functionality in mind. And DEC did one that managed 
DEC MCS on a VT100, for example.

	Johnny