comparison vms/VMSNOTES @ 0:376386a54a3c r19-14

Import from CVS: tag r19-14
author cvs
date Mon, 13 Aug 2007 08:45:50 +0200
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1 See the file VMSINSTALL for VMS installation information.
2
3 * Deficiencies of VMS GNU Emacs
4
5 All GNU Emacs features which on Unix work by running a Unix utility
6 in a subprocess currently do not work on VMS.
7
8 These include Dired, listing a file directory, reading and sending
9 mail, reading and posting netnews, spelling correction, displaying the
10 time and load in the mode line, queueing output for printing, and the
11 `sort-columns' command. Naturally, the commands to view Unix manual
12 pages and execute Unix shell commands also do not work.
13
14 It is not possible to fix these problems in a general way on VMS
15 because they involve interfaces to parts of the operating system which
16 work very differently on VMS. Each feature must be reimplemented
17 individually.
18
19 I hope that someone will send me an implementation for directory listing
20 on VMS. This should not be very hard to do. Most of the code you need
21 is already provided in [.src]dired.c.
22
23 The normal commands for running an inferior shell or lisp with I/O
24 through an Emacs buffer do not work on VMS, but you can instead create
25 a DCL subprocess which does I/O through an Emacs buffer and get a
26 similar effect. See the file [.lisp]vms-patch.el.
27
28 * Specifying terminal type.
29
30 To specify a terminal type for Emacs that is not known to VMS,
31 define the logical name EMACS_TERM with the terminal type as value.
32 Terminal types are looked up in the termcap data base, which is
33 found as the file `[etc]termcap.dat' in the Emacs distribution.
34
35 * Specifying file names.
36
37 GNU Emacs accepts both Unix and VMS file name syntax. Most Lisp
38 code that runs in Emacs uses Unix syntax so it can run everywhere.
39 Users on VMS will generally type file names with VMS syntax.
40
41 The EMACSLOADPATH logical name, if you use it, should contain
42 directory names in Unix syntax, separated by commas.
43
44 find-file prompts with the current directory. You can then type a
45 relative directory spec to get somewhere else in the hirearchy. For
46 instance:
47
48 Find File: emacs_library:[src][-.lisp]startup.el
49
50 is converted to emacs_library:[lisp]startup.el by
51 expand-file-name. The basic rule is:
52 ][- is treated like /.. (dir:[file.sub][-.other] ==> dir:[file.other],
53 dir:[file.sub][-] ==> dir:[file])
54 ][. elides the ][ (dir:[file][.sub] ==> dir:[file.sub])
55 ][alpha backs up to the previous [ (dir:[file][other] ==> dir:[other])
56 a colon appearing after a ] forces a new "root" disk.
57 (dev:[file]dev2:[other] ==> dev2:[other])
58 expand-file-name also tries to be smart about decnet node names,
59 but this is not yet known to work.
60
61 * A possible problem.
62
63 For VMS versions 4.4 and up, make sure the file
64 SYS$SYSTEM:RIGHTSLIST.DAT has WORLD:R access. Emacs reads this file
65 to check file access. If this file does not have appropriate access,
66 Emacs may think that you cannot write any files.
67
68