[Info-vax] VMS documentation, was: Re: Special deals on Tape Drives

[Simon Clubley]

On 2022-03-12, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
> On 3/12/2022 1:53 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>                     as well as the fact the documentation needs to be
>> written at a lower level than with the Unix documentation to deal with
>> all the exposed structures that in Unix are hidden behind call interfaces,
>> C structs, etc.
>
> There is nothing low level in sending over complex structures instead
> of simple data types. Almost all modern API's does that (it is just
> called an object!).
>

RMS, Arne, RMS. In any sane environment, that's how it would be implemented
behind the scenes in a OO language or behind a subroutine interface in C
instead of being something that the user would have to directly manipulate.

Also itemlists and having to specify every bit of information you want
along with where to store it, instead of just returning an object (or a
struct) containing all available fields and your program just referencing
what it needs.

Also, in Unix (thanks to C being the lowest supported language), pointers
are an abstraction that the compiler deals with behind the scenes for you
when it comes time to store them away and pass them around. In VMS,
traditional pointers are an unabstracted and direcly exposed longword
field that cannot just be automatically resized by passing "-m64" or
similar on the compiler command line.

Just some examples off the top of my head.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.