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Annotation of GNUtools/emacs/VMSNOTES, revision 1.1.1.1

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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