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

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 9/11/21 8:54 AM, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
> In article <iq3lmfFjiduU1 at mid.individual.net>, Bill Gunshannon
> <bill.gunshannon at gmail.com> writes:
> 
>>>>> Something to think about: LaTeX and associated software is used
>>>>> by a huge number of people.
>>>>
>>>> Depends on what you consider huge number.
>>>>
>>>> There must be hundreds of thousands of people using Tex/LaTex at
>>>> universities particular at math and natural sciences departments.
>>>>
>>>> But there are billions of people using MS Office, LibreOffice,
>>>> Google Docs etc..
>>>
>>> Pick the low-hanging fruit first? Getting LaTeX going will be
>>> substantially simpler than porting Libre Office or a full-fat web browser.
>>
>> Only real problem with that is no one in academia is still using VMS.
>> And updating Tex/LaTex (yes, updating as it was always available on
>> VMS in the past) is not going to bring anyone back.
> 
> Well, I still use it.  I'm probably not the only one, but I agree, VMS
> is rare in academia these days.

And what part of academia are you in?  Does your University have VMS
machines in its data center?  I used VMS right up until the pushed me
out the door at my University.  Sadly, that did not constitute use
of VMS in academia.

> 
> One reason DEC was so successful back in the day is because it was
> present in academia.  Maybe VSI should try to get that market back, or
> at least expand what is left of it by a significant factor.

Snowballs chance in hell. What possible reason would they have to go
back to VMS now?  What academic tools (SPSS, Matlab, etc.) are even
still available on VMS?  The days of Professors writting their own
applications iun Fortran and Pascal are long past.

> 
> Alternatively, modern LaTeX on VMS would make it easier for non-academic
> users to use LaTeX.
> 

Why on earth would any non-academic want to use Latex?  A more likely
scenario is that academia will stop requiring Latex and go with DOCX
like everyone else in the world.

bill