[Info-vax] EDTINI.EDT Issues

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2016-06-28 03:19:36 +0000, Paul Richards said:

> Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> 
> 
> Stephen: thanks you for the reply. Believe me, I have the various 
> OpenVMS HTNL documents permanently set up in tabs in my browser.

Download the PDFs.  (HPE has been shuffling their web site around for a 
while, and HPE is also getting out of the OpenVMS business per their 
roadmap save possibly as a reseller of VSI.)   Then read the User's 
Manual.  Then read the programming concepts and/or the system managers 
manuals.

> So if EDT is deprecated and I want to use EVE/TPU is there a mechanism 
> (similar to EDTINI.EDT) for passing things like function key 
> definitions into EDIt/EVE/TPU?

Yes.   Please read the EVE manual.  Please also see the PuTTY docs and 
FAQs and articles around the 'net for the PC to VT keyboard mappings, 
as support for remapping keys is not universal within applications.

>> EVE is the name of a text editor on OpenVMS, not a document type or 
>> document format.
> 
> I realise that. What I meant was that the document makes reference to 
> EVE. Now it also mentions an EVE$INIT.EVE file - maybe this is what I'm 
> looking for (answering my own question) and I should create this file
> and put my definitions into it.

EVE and EDT are *not* like peanut butter and chocolate, nor 
stroopwafels and Nutella, nor New England clam chowder and tabasco, 
or...  The two editors don't mix.  Commands for one don't work with the 
other.

> My confusion stems from not really knowing the difference between EDT and EVE.

That much has been obvious, and more than a few folks have been 
attempting to drag you back from that particular precipice.

> Just for the record I am familiar with several operating systems apart 
> from Windows e.g. Unix, Linux, OS/2, OpenSTEP, HP's MPE/ix, these last 
> three I have running in VMs.

Just for the record, that'll serve you poorly — except in the most 
general system concepts.  Folks here in the comp.os.vms newsgroup have 
gone through this discussion with more than a few folks over the years, 
and who might or do know more than a few operating systems, and — 
unless you have some grounding in RSX-11M/M+, IAS, RSTS, TOPS or 
related operating systems — OpenVMS will likely look and work rather 
differently than most of what you've used before.  Not completely 
differently.  But more than different enough to be frustrating and 
confusing.   In other words, you've been stymied by a text editor 
command and initialization file, so those other operating systems — as 
good as they are, and as useful of your knowledge of those is — aren't 
really helping here.

Unfortunately, OpenVMS lacks a dumb-as-a-post keyboard-only editor such 
as nano or pico, so there's not a good basic editor.  Yes, some folks 
will cite EDT for that, but editors such as nano and pico put the core 
commands on the display, and don't encourage nor require the use of the 
LK-series keypad, which means entirely avoiding the case where the 
end-user either lacks the keypad, or has to determine the particular 
mapping for the particular hardware environment or terminal emulator 
involved.


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