[Info-vax] Windows terminal revamped and open sourced

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2019-05-11 12:37:40 +0000, IanD said:

> I know it's early days for the OpenVMS revamp but I wonder if something 
> like what MS are doing with their windows terminal revamp might/could 
> be used in OpenVMS?

Little or none of that seems useful.

The interest here is that Windows finally Sherlocked the various 
Windows terminal emulator add-ons; of PuTTY and various other add-on 
packages.  Windows didn't have an emulator built in.  OpenVMS—with 
DECwindows—does.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sherlocked

There's also that VSI isn't aiming OpenVMS at workstations and 
desktops. OpenVMS is for servers, per VSI. You only really need a 
terminal emulator if you have a graphical environment.

More generally, this does little for OpenVMS.  OpenVMS already has a 
decent emulator with DECterm.  DECterm was the VT terminal firmware, 
built as an OpenVMS app.  The vtterm OpenVMS Freeware package for 
now-older Windows was made available a while back, too.  That was also 
using the VT terminal firmware.

There are a number of open-source terminals available, and for various 
platforms.  macOS has a half-dozen or more open-source options 
available.  Some of the open-source terminal emulators are 
GPU-accelerated.  Some other and more portable terminal emulators—such 
as xterm—have long ago been ported to OpenVMS.  Other terminal 
emulators are now running in a browser window.  
https://github.com/xtermjs/xterm.js  There are almost certainly 
emulators using wasm, too.  q.v. http://bellard.org/jslinux/

Less than all of the available terminal emulators will pass the 
available VT tests, though.  
https://invisible-island.net/vttest/vttest.html  But I digress.

As for terminal emulation features found on other platforms, Unix and 
macOS already do as well or better than OpenVMS.  The integrated 
terminal emulator on macOS provides UTF-8 support, for instance.  And 
some are GPU-accelerated, as was mentioned.

> They are also building the Linux kernel in Windows as well, certainly 
> interesting directions coming out of the windows camp

WSL2 uses the Windows NT environment subsystem, which is an operating 
system feature of NT with origins dating back to DEC MICA; a feature 
arising after OpenVMS and which—like most other MICA features—was never 
retrofit.  It'd be interesting to see work toward subsystems and 
sandboxing and other features from DEC MICA and other and more recent 
platforms, but that's only happening well after the port becomes 
available and with acceptable stability and performance, and after a 
whole pile of other pending work.  (and then maybe also common unix 
printing system, security content automation protocol, etc?)

For now and likely the next several years, GNV and such and DECterm are 
what OpenVMS has available.



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