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Annotation of GNUtools/emacs/VMSNOTES, revision 1.1

1.1     ! root        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 reading and sending mail, reading and posting netnews,
        !             9: spelling correction, displaying the time and load in the mode line,
        !            10: and the `sort-columns' command.  (dired and sending output to printers
        !            11: don't work in version 18, but will in version 19.)  Naturally, the
        !            12: commands to view Unix manual pages and execute Unix shell commands
        !            13: also do not work.
        !            14: 
        !            15: It is not possible to fix these problems in a general way on VMS
        !            16: because they involve interfaces to parts of the operating system which
        !            17: work very differently on VMS.  Each feature must be reimplemented
        !            18: individually.
        !            19: 
        !            20: I hope that someone will send me an implementation for directory listing
        !            21: on VMS.  This should not be very hard to do.  Most of the code you need
        !            22: is already provided in [.src]dired.c.
        !            23: 
        !            24: The normal commands for running an inferior shell or lisp with I/O
        !            25: through an Emacs buffer do not work on VMS in Emacs version 18, but
        !            26: will work in version 19.  For the meanwhile, you can create a DCL
        !            27: subprocess which does I/O through an Emacs buffer and get a similar
        !            28: effect.  See the file [.lisp]vms-patch.el.
        !            29: 
        !            30: * Specifying terminal type.
        !            31: 
        !            32: To specify a terminal type for Emacs that is not known to VMS,
        !            33: define the logical name EMACS_TERM with the terminal type as value.
        !            34: Terminal types are looked up in the termcap data base, which is
        !            35: found as the file `[etc]termcap.dat' in the Emacs distribution.
        !            36: 
        !            37: * Specifying file names.
        !            38: 
        !            39: GNU Emacs accepts both Unix and VMS file name syntax.  Most Lisp
        !            40: code that runs in Emacs uses Unix syntax so it can run everywhere.
        !            41: Users on VMS will generally type file names with VMS syntax.
        !            42: 
        !            43: The EMACSLOADPATH logical name, if you use it, should contain
        !            44: directory names in Unix syntax, separated by commas.
        !            45: 
        !            46: find-file prompts with the current directory.  You can then type a
        !            47: relative directory spec to get somewhere else in the hirearchy.  For
        !            48: instance:
        !            49: 
        !            50: Find File: emacs_library:[src][-.lisp]startup.el
        !            51: 
        !            52: is converted to emacs_library:[lisp]startup.el by
        !            53: expand-file-name.  The basic rule is:  
        !            54: ][- is treated like /.. (dir:[file.sub][-.other] ==> dir:[file.other],
        !            55:                          dir:[file.sub][-] ==> dir:[file])
        !            56: ][. elides the ][ (dir:[file][.sub] ==> dir:[file.sub])
        !            57: ][alpha backs up to the previous [ (dir:[file][other] ==> dir:[other])
        !            58: a colon appearing after a ] forces a new "root" disk.
        !            59:        (dev:[file]dev2:[other] ==> dev2:[other])
        !            60: expand-file-name also tries to be smart about decnet node names,
        !            61: but this is not yet known to work.
        !            62: 
        !            63: * A possible problem.
        !            64: 
        !            65: For VMS versions 4.4 and up, make sure the file
        !            66: SYS$SYSTEM:RIGHTSLIST.DAT has WORLD:R access.  Emacs reads this file
        !            67: to check file access.  If this file does not have appropriate access,
        !            68: Emacs may think that you cannot write any files.
        !            69: 
        !            70: 

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