[Info-vax] Open Source on OpenVMS Conference Call - 08:00 EDT 16 Sep 2021

[Phillip Helbig undress to reply]

In article <mailman.5.1631235599.20579.info-vax_rbnsn.com at rbnsn.com>,
<pedersen at ccsscorp.com> writes: 

> The next conference call for the Open Source on OpenVMS community is
> scheduled for Thursday, 16 September at 08:00 EDT.

> We hope to have your involvement and participation!!!

I hope to find the time to participate more in the future, not just in 
the conference call but also actually doing something.

Something to think about: LaTeX and associated software is used by a 
huge number of people.  Much of it was developed on VMS.  (Leslie 
Lamport wrote it while at DEC, but perhaps in Tops-20 and not VMS.  In 
any case, along with (UN)ZIP it is one of the most portable programs.)  
It is still under active development and, amazingly, is better at many 
things than more modern software.  I'm still using a [TEXMF...] tree 
put together by Ralf Gärtner from a freeware disk from a quarter of a 
century ago.  From time to time I've added some missing packages and so 
on, and it is good enough.  However, it would be nice to be able to 
easily update it, or even do a fresh install.

Two approaches are worth considering.  One would be getting the TeXLive 
distribution to build out of the box on VMS.  The other would be to have 
a minimal distribution which would automatically fetch anything found to 
be missing from a CTAN mirror somewhere.