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

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2016-09-19 21:33, 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).

Indexed files on RSX and VMS are not different. VMS is just a superset 
of RSX. RSX only have up to RMS Prologue version 2.

If you copy a file, no translation is done. You get it block by block. 
If it is prologue version 3, RSX RMS will just tell you that it's an 
unsupported prologue version when you try to access it.

You can also request that NFT translates files during transfer. But that 
can't be done for indexed files. But it can be done between stream and 
record format files for example.

> FAL knows the characteristics of the OS, and will 'translate' files if
> necessary.

Technically, it's not FAL that do the translation, but the client. In 
RSX that part is called NFT. In VMS I'm not sure it even have a name...
But FAL itself tries to do things simple. It's on the client side any 
magic will be done, if needed, or requested.

For example, if you read a file from a TOPS-20 (or RSTS/E, or Unix) 
system, the file will normally be a stream file. By default, that will 
be translated into a sequential record file since that is how text files 
are represented natively in VMS or RSX. But FAL will serve the stream as 
such.

> No such functionality exists with IP.

That is nonsense. If we talk file transfer, then we talk FTP. FTP deals 
with text files being stored in different formats on different systems, 
and do the translation just fine as well.

	Johnny