[Info-vax] The best VMS features, was: Re: openvms renaming file

[Simon Clubley]

On 2018-05-28, seasoned_geek <roland at logikalsolutions.com> wrote:
> On Sunday, May 27, 2018 at 6:32:20 PM UTC-5, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> 
>> The HELP command on VMS is utterly useless unless you already know
>> exactly what you are looking for and don't need to navigate between
>> topics.
>> 
> HELP on OpenVMS is better than any non-Internet based help system and
> mostly navigable by an idiot with only a few collision topics where a short
> help item name is the first part of a longer help item name so you can only
> get the long help item.
>

This assumes you already know exactly what you are looking for because
there is no search facility in VMS HELP. Also, navigating between
sub-topics is extremely tedious and time consuming.

> man pages on Linux are a completely useless help system written to be
> expert friendly so one can navigate directly to a page number they already
> know.
>

I also mentioned Info. However, man has at least two things that VMS HELP
does not: the ability to do title searches with "man -k" and because man
output is piped through a pager, you can search the page itself.

>> 
>> You are kidding, right ?
>
> EDT is a fine fine feature. It has inspired many keypad oriented editors
> and editors to support EDT keypad mode, like JED.
>

I am using an EDT keypad mode emulation right now to type this in another
editor. However, EDT the editor is incredibly limited when compared to
even EVE/TPU. It is not one of the top ten features of VMS in 2018.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world