Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!decvax!mcnc!gatech!bloom-beacon!husc6!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ut-sally!utah-cs!utah-gr!uplherc!sp7040!obie!wsccs!terry
From: terry@wsccs.UUCP (terry)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Using an ANSI emulator with VMS editors
Message-ID: <191@wsccs.UUCP>
Date: 26 Feb 88 04:51:49 GMT
References: <2058@bsu-cs.UUCP> <719@ddsw1.UUCP> <1112@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Lines: 47
Summary: Nasty SMG$ routines...

In article <1112@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>, hildum@iris.ucdavis.edu (Eric Hildum) writes:
> In article <719@ddsw1.UUCP> karl@ddsw1.UUCP (Karl Denninger) writes:
> >The biggest problem with VAX/VMS and terminals (in my opinion) is that you 
> >can't make your own termcap entries.  The software knows of only a few 
> >terminals -- all DEC products.  (Ever wonder why there's such a market for
> >VT100/VT220 look-alike terminals?  Now you know!)
> >
[some references which don't explain my question deleted]
> Too often I have seen stupidly written code for VMS.  Now I understand
> why, the engineers for these companies are spending too much time
> complaining about why VMS doesn't do what they want, and not enough
> time learning that, in fact, the solution is already there.

	Honest true?  And tell me, how DO I ask SMG$ what sequence I should
expect the terminal to send... for instance, how do I ask it what the help
key sends?  Sure, SMG$ will RECOGNIZE it for me, but I don't want it to...
I want to do it in a reasonable amount of time, after all, as this is a
realtime application.  I can just use tgets() under UNIX; how do I do the
same under VMS???

	Before you rag on me to consult my manual, I can assure you that after
examining your references, I went back and looked and the incantation with
12 arguments still wasn't there... I could ask it about the sequence to use
to clear the screen, etc, but *only* _OUTPUT_ oriented stuff.  I have been
told that I should pretend they are there and the linker would resolve it...
no dice.  I have access to the source on fische.  It ain't there, buddy.

	DEC makes mistakes (*BLASPHEMY!* Kill the infidel!)... for instance
look at the docs in the IO Services manual where the QIO$ for setting tty
modes is concerned... specifically parity... if you pass the parameter
that way, it doesn't work.  Anybody doing I/O to terminals in C may have
noticed the disappearnce of the TT$M_ALTRPAR mask from a header file
TTDEF.H.

	Everybody kludges; don't rag UNIX programmers porting code to VMS
for not "VMS-i-fying" things... some things can't be "VMS-i-fied".  You
should be thankful that someone is willing to go through the pain.  I would
hazard a guess that greater than 50% of all DECUS stuff originated on
non-VMS systems (This is an educated guess).


| Terry Lambert           UUCP: ...!decvax!utah-cs!century!terry              |
| @ Century Software       or : ...utah-cs!uplherc!sp7040!obie!wsccs!terry    |
| SLC, Utah                                                                   |
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