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

[Michael Moroney]

helbig at asclothestro.multivax.de (Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)) writes:

>In article <pejh51$qjd$2 at pcls7.std.com>, moroney at world.std.spaamtrap.com
>(Michael Moroney) writes: 

>> >> > EDT,
>> >> 
>> >> You are kidding, right ?
>> 
>> >Not at all.
>> 
>> People love EDT or despise it.
>> 
>> I mentioned this before but I will repeat it. A while back I eliminated 
>> the annoying 24 line terminal assumption from EDT and released it
>> internally (to VSI). After then a few people came up to me and thanked
>> me for doing so. It was almost like being at an AA meeting, with people
>> saying: "My name is Joe Smith, and...and I use EDT" followed by a thank 
>> you.

>Another reason I am waiting for VMS on x86.  It WILL be part of the 
>distribution, right?

It's already checked into what will (probably) be V8.5, before x86 VMS
comes out.

>What about the other assumptions (maxima of 65535 commands at once, 255 
>characters in a line)?  In practice, these aren't a big problem (and, 
>for me, neither is the 24-line limit), but it would be nice if they were 
>removed (or greatly increased).

EDT is rather ugly code, filled with hard-coded assumptions (such as all
terminals were 24 lines). Those will be rather difficult to tackle, esp.
since if I recall it uses an unsigned byte to store the line length so
that field needs expansion, which breaks other assumptions, ... Plus EDT
is definitely not an official project, and hacking EDT is not a way to
endear myself to the managers (unless they use EDT themselves, I guess)

>I can type fast; I learned (on a semi-electric typewriter) about 40 
>years ago.  Even of fast hardware, with TPU sometimes the cursor lags 
>behind my fingers.  The end-of-line handling in TPU leaves something to 
>be desired, EDT is better with special characters, it starts up faster, 
>and so on.

TPU in EDT mode always had quirks that annoyed me, which is why I never
left real EDT.  BTW not the first time I've been involved with a "rogue"
editor. In college, the editor for the (CDC) system sucked rocks but an
alternate editor appeared which I learned. Shortly after the university
released an "official" editor that the computer-related courses were
expected to teach. (official because it was created locally, by someone in
the computer center, no, there weren't any editor police checking how you
were editing your source code)  I never got involved with the official
editor, having learned the other first which was also faster. Especially
after I got a hold of its source code and added some speedups to it.

This was shortly after batch punch cards so ANY editor was a godsend.