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From: linwood@cbnewsk.att.com (linwood.d.johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer
Subject: Re: Why use U* over VMS
Summary: Stone Age VMS
Keywords: Editors Old Present
Message-ID: <1990Oct31.011215.23303@cbnewsk.att.com>
Date: 31 Oct 90 01:12:15 GMT
References: <ANDYO.90Oct23101417@glasperl.masscomp> <+SP6XL@xds13.ferranti.com> <8354@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 37

In article <8354@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM>, terryl@sail.LABS.TEK.COM writes:
> >   Oh yeah.   VMS has some great editors also.  
   [the rest deleted for the sake of brevity]
   [but the rest repeated to make a point]
> 
> 
>      Yeah, a stupid (And I do mean STUPID) standard editor that forces one
> to have line numbers while one is editing a file, and have said line numbers
> stay static even if one is adding/deleting lines, and those line added MUST
> not be out of the range of line numbers one is adding between, and having
> such stupid default line numbers such that one could add at MOST one line
> between two lines, and then forcibly going back into command mode (instead
> of input line mode), and forcing the user to MANUALLY renumber all of the lines
> in the d*mn file??? You call that a great editor??? Boy, I thought I had a
> warped view of the world.....
> 
>      (To be fair, this was MANY, MANY moons ago on a VMS 1.6 system, if memory
> serves me correctly, but gads how I hated EDIT!!! Luckily, it was somewhat
> easy to change all of the default numbering schemes, but there was ABSOLUTELY
> no way to defeat the line numbering scheme while in the editor, and every so
> often you would find yourself forcibly thrown out of line input mode back into
> command mode, where the only thing you could really do is a command to cause
> all of the lines in the file to be renumbered....)

 Boy,  
 I'm glad you were fair about it!!! Damn,  I always wondered what VMS
was like in the STONE AGE.  I was talikng about a later, much later
version than 1.6.  Like, somewhere close to the present.  Maybe one
should look at the present before hollering about how hard it was in the
past.


-- 
+===================================================================+
| Linwood D. Johnson       |  linwood@ihlpf.att.com                 |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are mine and mine only.       |