Windows Terminal: Everything you need to know now - TechRepublic

While not strictly Linux, this provides a choice of command prompts, including Linux shells. It's also more configurable than the usual Windows terminals. Now, all it needs is a VAX/VMS shell. ;-) https://www.techrepublic.com/article/windows-terminal-everything-you-need-to-know-now/?ftag=TRE684d531&bhid=12825460&mid=12870752&cid=712355268

On Tue, 9 Jun 2020 at 10:25, James Knott via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
While not strictly Linux, this provides a choice of command prompts, including Linux shells. It's also more configurable than the usual Windows terminals.
Now, all it needs is a VAX/VMS shell. ;-)
DCL, here we come!!!! -- When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"

On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 10:30 AM Christopher Browne via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
On Tue, 9 Jun 2020 at 10:25, James Knott via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
While not strictly Linux, this provides a choice of command prompts, including Linux shells. It's also more configurable than the usual Windows terminals.
Now, all it needs is a VAX/VMS shell. ;-)
DCL, here we come!!!!
Trying to understand what DCL means I found that there are some 320+ definitions to said letter grouping. Would you please delineate what you are referring to? Regards

| From: o1bigtenor via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 10:30 AM Christopher Browne via talk | <talk@gtalug.org> wrote: | > On Tue, 9 Jun 2020 at 10:25, James Knott via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote: | >> Now, all it needs is a VAX/VMS shell. ;-) | > DCL, here we come!!!! | Trying to understand what DCL means I found that there are some 320+ | definitions to said letter grouping. Would you please delineate what you are | referring to? Googling for VAX VMS DCL gets you a number of references to DEC Command Language. Don't bother to look at them: it's dead and gone.

On 2020-06-09 11:46 a.m., D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
Googling for VAX VMS DCL gets you a number of references to DEC Command Language.
Don't bother to look at them: it's dead and gone.
Is not! You take that back ... ;-) OpenVMS 9 for x86_64 was released recently. You're unlikely to see it unless you're in very niche banking and healthcare applications, though. But the Win2k kernel owes more than a little to VMS, and some of the low-level Windows tools bear a striking resemblance to VMS command line tools. As a hobbyist, you can't currently get an OS for your legacy VAX hardware (or emulation on Raspberry Pi), as the licensing scheme has recently fallen over. It should be back up soon, though. My brother was doing some consulting in the last decade for a well-known prestige British car maker. They had some really ancient equipment. My brother was auditing their systems, and they had a very important body-panel press controller that no-one could find. They eventually traced the wiring from the control terminal to a junk-filled room. Under the junk was a smallish VAX that had been running undisturbed since the 1980s. I still miss VMS's file versioning; edit FILE.TXT;1 and you'd get a new file FILE.TXT;2 appear as well. Opening FILE.TXT would always open the most recent version. So very simple and solid. cheers, Stewart

On 2020-06-09 07:27 PM, Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote:
I still miss VMS's file versioning; edit FILE.TXT;1 and you'd get a new file FILE.TXT;2 appear as well. Opening FILE.TXT would always open the most recent version. So very simple and solid.
I also remember the keystroke playback, after a crash. One day I was working on a text document, when the system crashed. After it came back up, I watched as it repeated my keystrokes! There were also the gold keys in the text editor. Incidentally, on one occasion, I was able to get into a co-workers account and add a logout command to his login script. ;-) BTW, when I was taking Fortran (Actually WATFIV. I still have the text "WATFIV: structured programming and problem solving" by D. M. Etter on my book shelf.) at Ryerson, I did my homework on the VAX. I was taking it at night school. Rather than trying to find a free working terminal, I'd go home and dial into the VAX. I was using Procomm Plus on an XT clone and had to dial a gateway, which would connect me to the IBM mainframe at Ryerson.

On 2020-06-09 07:27 PM, Stewart C. Russell via talk wrote:
OpenVMS 9 for x86_64 was released recently. You're unlikely to see it unless you're in very niche banking and healthcare applications, though. But the Win2k kernel owes more than a little to VMS, and some of the low-level Windows tools bear a striking resemblance to VMS command line tools.
Too bad the DEC Alpha's gone. IIRC, Linux was the first OS for it and we could have had Linux and VMS on the same box.

| From: James Knott via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | While not strictly Linux, this provides a choice of command prompts, including | Linux shells. It's also more configurable than the usual Windows terminals. | | Now, all it needs is a VAX/VMS shell. ;-) | | https://www.techrepublic.com/article/windows-terminal-everything-you-need-to-know-now/?ftag=TRE684d531&bhid=12825460&mid=12870752&cid=712355268 Thanks for the pointer. What a horribly intricate terminal program. The original Windows "cmd.exe" terminal was terrible. You could only size it to certain official sizes, and not on the fly. The Windows terminal for powershell.exe seems quite serviceable. I admit that my use has been limited so I might not have noticed important deficits. Based on my reading of that article, the new Windows terminal has a lot of feature, mostly bric-a-brac. And to configure it, sometimes you have to edit JSON. Wow. Somehow the Windows folks haven't absorved the philosophy of UNIX. But then again, neither have enough Linux folks. Heck, even the BSD folks didn't get it: <http://harmful.cat-v.org/cat-v/> (That site is even named after Pike's USENIX talk on the subject.)
participants (5)
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Christopher Browne
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D. Hugh Redelmeier
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James Knott
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o1bigtenor
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Stewart C. Russell