[Info-vax] VMS Features I Wish Linux Had

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2016-06-15 16:35, VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
> In article <njrla6$ikd$1 at Iltempo.Update.UU.SE>, Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se> writes:
>> 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
>
> What do you want in input character handling?

That would depend on a lot of things. If your system use Unicode and 
UTF-8 for example, but your terminal speaks Latin-1, this would be an 
obvious thing you would want to convert in the input character handling 
section.

	Johnny