[Info-vax] A DCL wish list of sorts...

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2019-03-20 18:35:07 +0000, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply said:

> In article <q6tqor$90t$1 at dont-email.me>, Stephen Hoffman
> <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> writes:
> 
>> No menuing support in DCL, for instance.
> 
> Many have written menus in DCL, though.

Many badly-written menus exist, yes.  Some exist within OpenVMS itself. 
 Some of those many menus around still feature the DCL equivalent of an 
XSS flaw, too.  And yes, there are some good menus around, too.  In 
OpenVMS and elsewhere.  It's simply that it's painful to deal with 
errors and arbitrary user input and displays and the rest, and getting 
a good menu takes more effort than it really should.  And things here 
are really going to get interesting with some menus, should UTF-8 
support arise.  And again, I really don't think DCL is the best path 
forward.  Not as DCL is written and implemented, and with the (lack of) 
frameworks available.  Python, maybe.  Nor is the command line the best 
path for most menuing.  With the available development tools, it takes 
less effort to create a native and flexible app UI on some other 
platforms, than it does to create and to get a DCL menu working.  And 
with far less effort to iterate the UI than to iterate the DCL UI.





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