[Info-vax] SET DEFAULT iterative logical name translation

[alanfe...@gmail.com]

On Monday, October 25, 2021 at 12:31:01 PM UTC-4, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2021-10-25 04:28:45 +0000, alanfe said: 
> 
> > But Hoff, it _was_ fixed! Looks like no one knows when or what version 
> > of VMS it was fixed in.
> If this purported logical name colon-oscopy makes you happy and if 
> logical names do what you need, by all means enjoy and use logical 
> names. They are what is available, of course. 
> 
> For my usage, logical names are a weak and volatile system-integrated 
> key-value store design straight from the 1980s, and largely intended 
> for app customization, and competitively woefully inadequate for app 
> needs past device and file redirection, and I'm increasingly skeptical 
> there. 
> 
> Logical names provide one facet of app customization semi-adequately, 
> and that is not an issue I tend to have encounter or create in newer 
> app designs, while poorly providing for other app customization 
> requirements, and the whole of logical-name-based settings maintenance 
> is just utterly and stupidly disconnected from the apps themselves. 
> 
> The whole realm of logical names and app customization needs an 
> overhaul of a scale well past the VAX/VMS V4.0 overhaul.
> > Here's a bonus question. When was EDT updated to allow more than 22 
> > lines? IDK, but it's made me happy!
> EDT was long ago considered deprecated and ~immutable, and now it's 
> apparently not. That's a decision that VSI gets to make, of course. 
> Whether its apparent commutation was a wise decision remains to be 
> seen. But then I tend to use EDT only when that's the last editor 
> available this side of PATCH. For those that do still prefer to use 
> EDT, yay, it's not dead yet. Maybe some of the 🤬 in the EDT help gets 
> fixed too, as VSI develops their strategy for text editor support. 
> 
> BTW: LSEDIT permits the EDT keypad, and has supported far larger 
> displays, and with app development features massively better than EDT.
> -- 
> Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

"Logical name colonoscopy?" I was talking about SET DEFAULT and my program (DCL command procedure) TO.COM. Yes, TO.COM does stuff with logical names. But it does a lot more than that. SET DEFAULT had 2 or 3 silly bugs that I figured wouldn't take long to fix. But year after year they didn't fix it. This is one of the reasons I wrote TO.COM. Hey, at least one person has used it, as he wrote to me about it! I figured if anyone would ever use it I better give it lots of features and make it as bulletproof as possible. 

I get the impression you don't think highly of logical names! I can't imagine removing them from VMS though. Sounds like a lot of work, as they are so ubiquitous. And there are all the 3rd-party apps that use them!

Anyway, I am curious about when, what version, and want to get a copy of the release notes for it. I found them for EDT now having more than 22 lines! (You also don't seem to think much of EDT!)

[The following is a tad long, but you've now and in the past told me there are better editing tools than EDT, so I'd like to tell you why I didn't use them much.]

Speaking of EDT, I have to say it has served me well. When I was at a remote place to do an experiment in the late 1980s, I tried EVE/TPU/whatever. Didn't work. Something with terminal settings -- maybe is was the Eightbit thing. I don't recall for sure. OTOH, I found that EDT worked everywhere under any circumstances without any fuss! "It just worked." But its 22-line limit became really annoying when bigger screens became available. And it was finally extended last year! Another project that probably took very little time to implement. But no. We were stuck with the 22-line limit and the silly SET DEFAULT bugs year after year after year for no good reason. 

[Stay with me here. I get to the editors shortly.] At one job c. 1999, I was working on exporting data from a database -- using DCL, no less! As a former mere physicist, I was excited that I figured out a way to do it. And I only had DCL to work with. Sure, tell me all the better ways I could and should have done it. (Actually, maybe not.) All I had was DCL. Oh, and I had to export ALLIN1 Word Perfect documents, too! A third party vendor was going to charge us something like $11,000 plus expenses _just_ for the database export! I saved my company at least that much money. Now, I mention this because I was very frustrated that EVE didn't have EDT's SET NOTRUNCATE feature. I sorely needed that for a particular task but EDT didn't support long-enough lines. So I just had to struggle. (There was no native support in that database for exporting data that anyone could find, including the third party we hired to put the exported data into their newfangled database.)

I didn't use VMS from 2010 until 2015 when (as you have probably already guessed, the migrate-off-of-VMS part), I was to help export the file trading system to a Unix system with Autosys for the scheduling. VMS was pretty soon a very minor part of the process until we finally found the contact for two very important files they sent us every workday. Maybe it was late 2016 or early 2017. In 2018 I left the company. None of this was app development, unless you count the export work c. 1999, where EDT and EVE each had their respective annoying shortcoming.

Out of curiosity I recently looked at the freeware page at VSI and saw an old version of TO.COM (v4.3.1) and that the link to download it was broken. I did the "Contact Us" routine and was told it could be fixed and would I like to submit an updated version. "Sure!" I said. 

So I was really glad to see EDT now has unlimited lines. Better late than never! Actually, it's kind of mind-blowing to see EDT on my screen with roughly 50 lines and sometimes a little more!

As for EVE and LSE, I never had any luck with those programs. EVE didn't work at remote labs without a lot of fuss. Locally I tried to customize EVE and at one point it kept saying "Compilation aborted at line 1." But EDT always worked and worked everywhere. Once I learned the nokeypad commands, I customized it to my liking. I even fiddled with it a little now. I already know it. I don't already know the others. Modifying a key definition was super easy. You could see them all at once, and just edit the one you needed to modify, and close the file! Oh, and I forgot what the problem with LSEDIT was. EVE and LSE were too-powerful tools for my needs. Like using a blow torch to light a cigarette.

As for LSEDIT supporting larger displays, I don't seem to need that. As for app-development features, I don't need them either. I'm pretty much only working on TO.COM. Maybe I'll spruce up a couple of others. If I ever get an OpenVMS job again, maybe I'll check them out again.

To end on a positive note, I was very happy when "Proactive Reclamation of Memory from Idle Processes" came on the scene. And it was v5.4-3. Boy that made things run better! At my last job, before my app died, we had it running on a fleet of as many as 40 MicroVAXes at one point. One of them in London had only 8 MB of RAM, while the others running the same app had 40 MB. Memory was very tight, but it still ran like a champ! 

Hey, a second positive note! My favorite feature of EVE is the box editing. I think I can probably make use of it to improve my help page, which has two columns in it. And I did occasionally make use of it in the past.

Thanks for your reply.