[Info-vax] What would you miss if DECnet got the chop? Was: "bad select

[johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk]

On Monday, 19 September 2016 20:33:10 UTC+1, Dirk Munk  wrote:
> David Froble wrote:
> > Bob Koehler wrote:
> >> In article <nrlmbk$if0$1 at dont-email.me>, David Froble
> >> <davef at tsoft-inc.com> writes:
> >>> In general I agree with what you've written.  I consider DECnet as a
> >>> part of VMS, and if one really doesn't want VMS, then just go and use
> >>> something else.
> >>
> >>    Having used DECnet on VMS, MVS, RSX, TOPS-20, MS-DOS, Ultrix, AIX, and
> >>    Linux, I find your concept much too narrow for reality.
> >>
> >
> > You're always so easy to get along with Bob ....
> >
> > :-)
> >
> > Yes, there have been implementations of the DECnet transport part on
> > multiple OSs, both DEC and others.  But, as far as I know, there has not
> > been the full range of DECnet tools available on those environments.  As
> > an example,  does FAL exist on all those implementations?
> 
> Bob didn't mention MAC OS. MACs also had FAL, and it was a beautiful 
> implementation. If you copied a file from MAC to MAC (using your VMS 
> system for the command), the complete file would be transferred, 
> resource fork + data fork. If you copied a file to your VMS system, only 
> the data fork would be copied, the resource fork was useless for VMS.
> 
> Indexed files on RSX and VMS are different. If you copy an indexed file 
> between RSX and VMS, you get a proper indexed file on the other side (if 
> it was within the limits of that OS of course).
> 
> FAL knows the characteristics of the OS, and will 'translate' files if 
> necessary.
> 
> No such functionality exists with IP.
> 
> >
> > For me, it's the utilities, tools, and such that I feel make DECnet
> > worth keeping around.  Much more so than the communications stuff.  Of
> > course, those utilities, tools, and such do use the communications stuff.

Careful. Terminology matters. Proper FAL functionality 
doesn't exist within the usual IP applications. There
could be (are?) ways of doing FAL over IP using something
other than the usual IP-oriented applications. One of
them might be to use one of the various ways of routing
DECnet over IP, assuming both ends speak FAL and DECnet.
(I think you already knew this - others may not).

Apologies if that's not as clear as it should be, it's
been a long day.